The Rap Sheet

Dagger Designees

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 21:42:00 +0000

The British Crime Writers’ Association today released its longlists of contenders for the 2026 Dagger Awards, in 11 categories. Coming next in this process will be the revelation of shortlists on May 28, followed by an announcement of the year’s Dagger winners in July.

KAA Gold Dagger:
• Carnival of Lies, by D.V. Bishop (Macmillan)
• Don’t Forget Me, Little Bessie, by James Lee Burke (Orion)
• King of Ashes, by S.A. Cosby (Headline)
• The Death of Us, by Abigail Dean (Hemlock Press)
• Not Quite Dead Yet, by Holly Jackson (Michael Joseph)
• Quantum of Menace, by Vaseem Khan (Zaffre)
• The Frozen River, by Ariel Lawhon (River Swift Press)
• The Rush, by Beth Lewis (Viper)
• A Voice in the Night, by Simon Mason (Riverrun)
• The Good Father, by Liam McIlvanney (Zaffre)
• Hotel Ukraine, by Martin Cruz Smith (Simon & Schuster UK)
• The Art of a Lie, by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (Mantle)
• A Case of Life and Limb, by Sally Smith (Raven)

Ian Fleming Steel Dagger:
• The Midnight King, by Tariq Ashkanani (Viper)
• The Ghostwriter, by Julie Clark (Zaffre)
• King of Ashes, by S.A. Cosby (Headline)
• The Big Empty, by Robert Crais (Simon & Schuster UK)
• The Death of Us, by Abigail Dean (Hemlock Press)
• The Chemist, by A.A. Dhand (HQ Fiction)
• A Dead Draw, by Robert Dugoni (Thomas & Mercer)
• A Sting in Her Tale, by Mark Ezra (No Exit Press)
• Burying Jericho, by William Hussey (Zaffre)
• Such Quiet Girls, by Noelle Ihli (Pan)
• The Good Father, by Liam McIlvanney (Zaffre)
• We Are All Guilty Here, by Karin Slaughter (HarperCollins)

ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-fiction:
• The Devil Takes Bitcoin, by Jake Adelstein (Scribe)
• Shadow of the Bridge: The Delphi Murders and the Dark Side of the American Heartland, by Áine Cain and Kevin Greenlee (Pegasus Crime)
• Saffie, by David Collins (Silvertail)
• The Spy in the Archive: How One Man Tried to Kill the KGB, by Gordon Corera (William Collins)
• The Murder Game, by John Curran (HarperCollins/Collins Crime Club)
• The CIA Book Club: The Best-Kept Secret of the Cold War, by Charlie English (William Collins)
• Murderland, by Caroline Fraser (Fleet)
• The Einstein Vendetta: Hitler, Mussolini, and a True Story of Murder, by Thomas Harding (Michael Joseph)
• A Spy in the Family, by Paul Henderson and David Gardner (Mirror)
• The Cleveland Street Scandal, by Neil Root (The History Press)
• That Dark Spring, by Susannah Stapleton (Picador)
• The Illegals, by Shaun Walker (Profile)

Historical Dagger:
• A Granite Silence, by Nina Allan (Riverrun)
• Spoiler’s Prey, by Robin Blake (Severn House)
• Benecula, by Graeme Macrae Burnet (Polygon)
• The Mourning Necklace, by Kate Foster (Mantle)
• The Frozen River, by Ariel Lawhon (Swift Press)
• The Rush, by Beth Lewis (Viper)
• Barvick Falls, by Rob McInroy (Tippermuir)
• The Devil’s Draper, by Donna Moor (Fly on the Wall Press)
• Gunner, by Alan Parks (Baskerville)
• Cairo Gambit, by S.W. Perry (Corvus)
• The Art of a Lie, by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (Mantle)
• A Case of Life and Limb, by Sally Smith (Raven)

Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger:
• Home Before Dark, by Eva Björg Ægisdóttir,
translated by Victoria Cribb (Orenda)
• Murder Mindfully, by Karsten Dusse,
translated by Florian Duijsens (Faber & Faber)
• Scars of Silence, by Johana Gustawsson,
translated by David Warriner (Orenda)
• The Lake, by Jørn Lier Horst,
translated by Anne Bruce (Penguin Random House)
• Seesaw Monster, by Kotaro Isaka,
translated by Sam Malissa (Penguin Random House)
• Red Water, by Jurica Pavičić,
translated by Matt Robinson (Bitter Lemon Press)
• The Grave in the Ice, by Satu Rämö,
translated by Kristian London (Bonnier)
• Big Bad Wool, by Leonie Swann,
translated by Amy Bojang (Allison & Busby)
• The Winter Job, by Antti Tuomainen,
translated by David Hackston (Orenda)
• Strange Pictures, by Uketsu,
translated by Jim Rion (Pushkin Press)

Whodunnit Dagger (for “cosy crime, traditional mysteries, and Golden Age crime” stories):
• The Christmas Cracker Killer, by Alexandra Benedict
(Simon & Schuster UK)
• The Queen Who Came in from the Cold, by S.J. Bennett (Zaffre)
• Etiquette for Lovers and Killers, by Anna Fitzgerald Healy (Fleet)
• Little Secrets, by Victoria Goldman (Three Crowns Publishing UK)
• A Queer Case, by Robert Holtom (Titan)
• The Margaret Code, by Richard Hooton (Sphere)
• A Cinnamon Falls Mystery, by R.L. Killmore (Simon & Schuster UK)
• Other People’s Houses, by Clare Mackintosh (Sphere)
• Not Another Bloody Christmas, by Jo Middleton (Avon)
• A Trial in Three Acts, by Guy Morpuss (Viper)
• A Murder for Miss Hortense, by Mel Pennant (Baskerville)
• Bad Influence, by C.J. Wray (Orion)

Twisted Dagger (for “psychological and suspense thrillers”):
• What Happens in the Dark, by Kia Abdullah (HQ Fiction)
• Her Many Faces, by Nicci Cloke (Harvill Secker)
• Some of Us Are Liars, by Fiona Cummins (Macmillan)
• The House of Water, by Fflur Dafydd (Hodder & Stoughton)
• The Death of Us, by Abigail Dean (Hemlock Press)
• Beautiful Ugly, by Alice Feeney (Macmillan)
• Scenes from a Tragedy, by Carole Hailey (Corvus)
• Don’t Let Him In, by Lisa Jewell (Century)
• The Bodies, by Sam Lloyd (Bantam)
• The Good Father, by Liam McIlvanney (Zaffre)
• We Live Here Now, by Sarah Pinborough (Orion)
• 59 Minutes, by Holly Seddon (Orion)

ILP John Creasey (First Novel) Dagger:
• The Malt Whiskey Murders, by Natalie Jayne Clark (Polygon)
• Etiquette for Lovers and Killers, by Anna Fitzgerald Healy (Fleet)
• The Peak, by Sam Guthrie (HarperCollins)
• The Retirement Plan, by Sue Hincenberg (Sphere)
• The Lost Detective, by Elspeth Latimer (Story Machine)
• The Wolf Tree, by Laura McCluskey (Hemlock Press)
• The Vanishing Place, by Zoë Rankin (Viper)
• Coram House, by Bailey Seybolt (Raven)
• A Beautiful Family, by Jennifer Trevelyan (Mantle)
• Holy City, by Henry Wise (No Exit Press)

Short Story Dagger:
• “Arlene,” by William Boyle (from Birds, Strangers and Psychos: New Stories Inspired by Alfred Hitchcock, edited by Maxim Jakubowski;
No Exit Press)
• “Split Your Silver Tongue,” by S.A. Cosby (from Birds, Strangers
and Psychos)
• “Chest,” by Ragnar Jónasson (from Birds, Strangers and Psychos)
• “The Karpman Drama Triangle,” by Denise Mina (from Birds, Strangers and Psychos)
• “Full Circle,” by Abir Mukherjee (from Playing Dead: Short Stories in Honour of Simon Brett by Members of the Detection Club, edited by Martin Edwards; Severn House)
• “The Apple Falls Not Far,” by Ambrose Perry (Canongate)
• “Once Upon a Time in New Jersey,” by Zoë Sharp and John Lawton (from CrimeFest: Leaving the Scene Celebrating 16 Years, edited by Adrian Muller; No Exit Press)
• “Strangers on a School Bus,” by Peter Swanson (from Birds,
Strangers and Psychos)
• “Waiting,” by Michael Wood (from Criminal Pursuits: This Is Me, edited by Samantha Lee Howe; Telos)

Dagger in the Library (“for a body of work by an established crime writer that has long been popular with borrowers from libraries”):
• Ben Aaronovitch
• Damien Boyd
• Reverend Richard Coles
• Rhys Dylan
• Paula Hawkins
• J.D. Kirk
• Clare Mackintosh
• Freida McFadden (aka Sara Cohen)
• Abir Mukherjee
• Tim Sullivan
• Robert Thorogood

Publishers’ Dagger (“awarded annually to the Best Crime and Mystery Publisher of the Year”):
• Allison & Busby
• Baskerville (John Murray/Hachette)
• Bitter Lemon Press
• Constable (Little, Brown)
• Faber & Faber
• Harvill Vintage (Penguin Random House)
• Muswell Press
• No Exit Press (Bedford Square)
• Pan Macmillan
• Polygon (Birlinn)
• Simon & Schuster
• Viper (Profile Books)

In addition, actor-turned-novelist Mark Billingham is slated to receive the 2026 CWA Diamond Dagger, a prize that “recognises authors whose crime-writing careers have been marked by sustained excellence, and who have made a significant contribution to the genre.”

Bullet Points: Long Overdue Edition

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 15:30:00 +0000

During the four days I spent in San Francisco this last February, attending the latest Left Coast Crime convention, more than one fellow attendee came up to me to say how much they like my periodic, multiple-subject “Bullet Points” posts. While that gladdened my heart, it also reminded me of how long it had been since I’d produced such a compilation. I think the last one went up in October, which in these tense, turbulent times seems like a lifetime ago.

With a few free hours on my hands today, I went trolling through my computer bookmarks to find new subjects worth sharing.

• Well, what do you know: In Reference to Murder reports that the American author who, since 2013, has published best-selling psychological thrillers (such as The Housemaid, The Tenant, and The Divorce) under the name Freida McFadden has finally revealed her true identity. She is “in reality Sara Cohen, a doctor who treats brain disorders and only created the pseudonym because she didn’t want her writing career to conflict with her hospital job. ‘My whole goal was to keep it a secret until I was [ready to] step back from my doctor job, so it wouldn’t be like everyone I work with suddenly knew and it compromised my ability to do my job,’ McFadden says. In late 2023, she stopped working full-time.” But even her nom de plume is rooted in the medical profession; Cohen told the BBC that “She chose the name Freida as a medical in-joke—after a hospital training registry, the Fellowship and Residency Electronic Interactive Database.”

• April 1 marked the 28th anniversary of Kevin Burton Smith launching that essential online crime-fiction resource, The Thrilling Detective Web Site. His page went live on that date back in 1998! Congratulations to my old friend Kevin for sticking with this project for so long and growing it so expertly.

• Speaking of milestones, it was half a century ago this year—on September 22, 1976, to be precise—that the hour-long “jiggle TV” crime drama Charlie’s Angels debuted on America’s ABC network. In early commemoration of that fact, three of the show’s stars, Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith, and Cheryl Ladd, “reunited” earlier this week at PaleyFest in Los Angeles (“an annual television festival hosted by the Paley Center”). According to the Associated Press, “They were greeted with a standing ovation and whoops and cheers from an audience at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.” Smith, now 80 years old (!), may have delivered the occasion’s best line: “I knew the show was different, special and unique. Three women chasing danger instead of getting rescued.” Charlie’s Angels aired for five seasons and was a pop-culture hit (despite talk of it undermining feminism), but underwent several cast changes over time, the first of those coming in 1977, when Fawcett left amid a contract dispute. She was replaced by Ladd.

• London’s two-day Capital Crime festival has issued its full program of 2026 events, which are set to kick off at the Leonardo Royal Hotel on Thursday, June 18. Among the headliners will be authors Elly Griffiths, Jeffrey Archer, Jane Harper, and Sophie Hannah, with Irish comedian and actor Ardal O’Hanlon (formerly of Death in Paradise) also participating. An overview of events can be found here. Winners of the annual Fingerprint Awards, celebrating the foremost crime and thriller fiction in more than half a dozen categories, will be honored in a special ceremony on the 18th.

• Erle Stanley Gardner’s The D.A. Calls It Murder (1937)—the first of his legal mysteries starring small-town California district attorney Douglas Selby—was reissued last summer through Otto Penzler’s American Mystery Classics imprint. What I hadn’t realized until recently, however, was that publisher Open Road Integrated Media has also returned to print seven of the eight other entries in the Selby line. Which is good news! As I wrote in CrimeReads, “While those stories never enjoyed the same level of reader enthusiasm Perry Mason’s escapades did, and were neither as humorous nor as briskly paced as another series Gardner launched in 1939, built around mismatched L.A. gumshoes Bertha Cool and Donald Lam, they certainly offered plenty in the way of knotty plots, ill-starred suspects, and razzle-dazzle legal shenanigans.” Click here for more about those paperbacks.

• By the way, the remaining Selby novel, 1948’s The D.A. Takes a Chance, was last reprinted in 2014 by The Murder Room, an imprint of UK publisher Orion. Although The Murder Room is evidently now defunct, Open Road hasn’t yet added it to its catalogue. Maybe soon?

• There seems be no end of television-related news lately, beginning with word that the ITV and BritBox “reimaginging” of Dalziel and Pascoe has begun filming in the North of England. This sex-switching update of characters born in novels by Reginald Hill—and made additionally famous in a 1996-2007 BBC One series—finds grumpy, intransigent, and very politically incorrect Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel (played in the original show by Warren Clarke) being transformed into Detective Inspector Andrea Dalziel and portrayed by Kerry Godliman, while Dalziel’s more forward-thinking police partner, DI Peter Pascoe (Colin Buchanan) becomes Detective Sergeant Paige Pascoe, brought to the small screen by Nina Singh. The opening season of this new crime drama will comprise six episodes; there’s no official debut date at present. Jon Farrar, executive vice president of programming, BritBox, is quoted in Variety as assuring fans of the earlier production that this one will hew to familiar themes: “Dalziel and Pascoe has always been about friction, intellect, and the uneasy bond of opposites, forged in pursuit of truth. Dalziel and Pascoe’s chemistry, wit, and moral clarity perfectly complement this richly layered mystery. It’s timeless crime storytelling that not only honours but sharpens its legacy.” I look forward to judging for myself.

• For all of those people who, like me, watched and enjoyed the slow-burning “cat-and-mouse thriller” The Game, and thought its ambiguous but not unsatisfying ending offered zero chance of a sequel … well, what the hell do we know? Even the Web site TVGuide.co.uk concedes this is “rather surprising” news; Channel 5 thrillers are usually one-season wonders, “self-contained nuggets of deliciously daft drama” (e.g., The Au Pair and The Rumour). But The Game, which had its UK airing in 2025 and found Jason Watkins (McDonald & Dodds) playing Huw Miller, a recently retired police detective who becomes convinced that his suave new neighbor, Patrick Harbottle (Grantchester’s Robson Green), is the repeat killer he’s long pursued, “left viewers wanting more,” says TVGuide.co.uk. At the close of Series 1, Patrick was being arrested and Huw was seriously injured. The follow-up is set a year on. It sees Huw having survived and thinking himself free of the psychological grip Patrick held him in. “Retreating with his wife, Alice (Sunetra Sarker), to an isolated house by the sea,” The Killing Times explains, “Huw is determined to rebuild a quiet life, far from the violence that nearly destroyed them. But peace, he soon realises, is an illusion.” Channel 5 says The Game will return in 2027.

• Robson Green is much in demand. The Killing Times reports that, with his work done on Grantchester’s 11th and final season (set to premiere on PBS Masterpiece come June 14), he will assume one of the leading roles in an eight-part BBC serial, The Northumbria Mysteries.

Set against the sweeping Northumberland coastline and its surrounding market towns, the series centres on an unlikely crime-solving duo.

Green will star as Joe Ruby, a jack-of-all-trades whose life has been shaped by mistakes, regrets and missed opportunities, alongside Oxford-educated DI Rose O’Connell (casting to be announced), a rarefied intellectual, a deep thinker with a brilliant mind and an ice-cool disposition. In a classic odd-couple pairing, Joe and Rose combine their talents as they frustrate, confound, and ultimately surprise one another while unravelling a series of compelling crime mysteries.

• Something I should have mentioned long ago: HBO-TV has ordered an eight-episode drama based on Adrian McKinty’s best-selling 2019 child-abduction novel, The Chain. Behind this project is Damon Lindelof, who previously gave us Lost and The Leftovers, and was once a writer on Nash Bridges and Crossing Jordan. As The Wrap recalls, Irish author McKinty’s chilling tale “follows Rachel, a divorcée who is undergoing treatment for cancer, who gets a call that her daughter, Kylie, has been kidnapped and is now part of The Chain. To get Kylie back, she must kidnap another child after paying a ransom. Kylie will be released when the parents of the child Rachel has kidnapped take yet another child and continue the chain.” The Wrap notes, however, that “Lindelof is said to be expanding the mythology of McKinty’s award-winning thriller.”

• Blogger Lou Armagno points me toward a piece in Variety that’s likely to delight fans of Earl Derr Biggers’ renowned Charlie Chan. It says actor Tzi Ma (Mulan, Kung Fu) will executive produce and headline a possible new Canadian Chan TV series reimagining Biggers’ Chinese-American Honolulu policeman as a Hong Kong immigrant to Vancouver, British Columbia, “who, after retiring from the Vancouver police department in frustration, quietly launches a private investigation agency, taking on cases for the city’s overlooked and forgotten.”

• Meanwhile, Stranger Things’ Maya Hawke has signed up to play a criminal investigator in Netflix’s adaptation of Liz Moore’s 2024 hit novel, The God of the Woods. … Actor-writer Stephen Fry will star as a quirky but brilliant former MI6 agent in a forthcoming Fox-TV show called The Interrogator. … See-Saw films, the production company behind Slow Horses, has acquired the rights to develop a fresh TV series from Jonathan Gash’s novels about a British antiques dealer-cum-sleuth known only as Lovejoy—books that were already the source material for a 1986-1984 BBC1 comedy-drama featuring Ian McShane. … Filming is underway on the sophomore season of Lynley, based on Elizabeth George’s Inspector Lynley yarns. … And Murder, She Wrote, a Universal Pictures film inspired by the 1984-1996 CBS-TV series starring Angela Lansbury as a mystery writer and amateur crime-solver, is slated to reach theaters just in time for Christmas, 2027. Jamie Lee Curtis will play Fletcher in this version.

• My other blog, Killer Covers, returns from a too-long hiatus with proof that there are simply too many crime, mystery, and thriller novels fronted by silhouettes of people in windows.

• We still await any information regarding the next James Bond feature film (now under the control of Amazon). But in the meantime, we can look forward to a new Bond novel for adults. Titled King Zero, it’s by Charlie Higson, the author of a half a dozen Young Bond yarns, as well as the 2023 007 adventure, On His Majesty’s Secret Service. Shotsmag Confidential provides this plot précis:

Beginning with the murder of an agent in Saudi Arabia by a weapon never before seen by the Secret Service and spanning the globe in an epic race against time to avert global catastrophe, the novel brings the literary Bond squarely into the twenty-first century, where the old world that made him is crumbling and a terrifying new order emerges while a dangerous villain—the most distinctive since Goldfinger –moves in the shadows. Higson explores themes of power, technology, and international tensions over resources in an extraordinarily timely story.

UK publisher Michael Joseph has promised to deliver King Zero to bookshops on the other side of the pond by September 24.

• Wow, a Kickstarter campaign to create action figures based on monster-hunting reporter Carl Kolchak and other characters featured in two 1970s teleflicks (The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler) and a subsequent TV series collected way more money than was sought! I guess old Carl hasn’t been forgotten, after all.

• Finally, this CrimeReads piece by writer and artist Frank Ladd, comparing the oeuvres of American private eye novelists Ross Macdonald and Raymond Chandler, deserves attention from fans of both. He concludes that “In a way, Macdonald is writing moral ghost stories. The present is haunted by the past, and the novel becomes a kind of exorcism. Chandler is writing moral fever dreams, hallucinatory journeys through corruption. There is no past worth redeeming.”

Pithy and Powerful

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 02:08:00 +0000

I was apparently so distracted by other editorial projects, that I failed to notice the Short Mystery Fiction Society (SMFS) releasing its complete lists of finalists for the 2026 Derringer Awards earlier this week. Let me now post those contenders.

Best Flash Story (up to 1,000 words):
• “Bradycardia,” by Elizabeth Dearborn (Punk Noir, 2/4/2025)
• “Check Rear Seat,” by Carl Tait (Exquisite Death, 5/1/2025)
• “It All Comes Out in the Wash,” by James Patrick Focarile (Gumshoe Review, 10/31/2025)
• “Just Like Old Times,” by Shari Held (Yellow Mama, 2/15/2025)
• “The Man Under the Bridge,” by Bern Sy Moss (Spillwords, 6/1/2025)

Best Short Story (1,001 to 4,000 words):
• “Blind Pig,” by Michael Bracken (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, September/October 2025)
• “Chains,” by Frank Vatel (All Due Respect, 9/1/25)
• “Hollywood Prometheus,” by Christa Faust (from Crime Ink: Iconic: An Anthology of Crime Fiction Inspired by Queer Icons, edited by by John Copenhaver and Salem West; Bywater)
• “The Artist,” by Linda Ann Bennett (from Midnight Schemers & Daydream Believers: 22 Stories of Mystery & Suspense, edited by by Judy Penz Sheluk; Superior Shores Press)
• “Wax On, Wax Off,” by Nina Mansfield (from Donna Andrews Presents Malice Domestic: Mystery Most Humorous, edited by John Betancourt, Michael Bracken, and Carla Coupe; Wildside Press)

Best Long Story (4,001 to 8,000 words):
• “A Sign of the Times,” by Tom Milani (from Sleuths Just Wanna Have Fun: Private Eyes in the Materialistic Eighties, edited by Michael Bracken; Down & Out)
• “Masterpiece,” by Mark Thielman (Black Cat Mystery Magazine, September 2025)
• “Six-Armed Robbery,” by Ashley-Ruth M. Bernier (from Donna Andrews Presents Malice Domestic: Mystery Most Humorous)
• “Whatever Kills the Pain,” by C.W. Blackwell (from Whatever Kills the Pain, by C.W. Blackwell; Rock and a Hard Place Press)
• “Zebra Finch,” by donalee Moulton (from The Most Dangerous Games, edited by Deborah Lacy; Level Short)

Best Novelette (8,001 to 20,000 words):
• “Aswarby Hall,” by David Dean (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, March/April 2025)
• “Loose Change from a Mini Cooper,” by Frank Zafiro (Chop Shop Episode 10, Down & Out)
• “Saint Bullethead,” by Nick Kolakowski (from Fighting Words: Bruisers, Brawlers, & Bad Intentions, edited by Scott Blackburn; Leonardo Audio)
• “The High Priest of Low Men,” by C.W. Blackwell (Myopic Duplicity: Do the Ends Ever Justify the Means?, edited by Jeff Circle;
Leonardo Audio)
• “The Temporary Murder of Thomas Monroe,” by Tia Tashiro (Clarkesworld, January 2025; audio version)

The half-dozen nominees for this year’s Best Anthology Derringer Award were announced at the beginning of February.

As the SMFS explains, the winners in all of these categories “will be determined by member vote in April and announced May 1.”

Spring in the Air, Books in the Bag

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 20:12:00 +0000

Incredible as this seems, The Rap Sheet will turn 20 years old in 2026. (Its actual “birth date” is May 22.) And throughout most of those two decades, I've assembled lists of forthcoming crime, mystery, and thriller releases to help readers choose what they should pick up next. Those started as just occasional lists, but they quickly evolved into quarterly offerings. Rarely since then have I failed to deliver my selections on schedule and at rather intimidating length. My fall 2025 rundown, for example, extended to more than 425 reading recommendations from both sides of the Atlantic.

But last summer I found I was desperately short of time and unable to post my usual seasonal selections. Then the computer crash I experienced at the end of 2025 put an end to my hope of compiling picks for the first three months of this year. I promised myself I would get back on track again come spring; yet here we are near the close of March, and my suggestions of which new books from our favorite genre deserve special attention remain incomplete.

Rather than wait any longer, I’ve decided to go with what I have so far: more than 200 works of note due out in the United States between now and the end of May. Those include fresh novels by headliners in the field such as Charles Todd, Tana French, Anthony Horowitz, Jane Harper, Vaseem Khan, Sujata Massey, John Katzenbach, and Michael Connelly, together with stories from less-familiar fictionists on the order of Nicola Whyte, Joshua Moehling, Libby Klein, Jeff Boyd, and A. Rae Dunlap. The next three months will deliver to bookshops the late Anne Perry’s Death Times Seven, her concluding case for attorney Daniel Pitt; Craig Johnson’s The Brothers McKay, his 22nd Sheriff Walt Longmire novel, inspired by Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov; Murder and Acquisitions, “a gripping story of greed, rivalry, and revenge in the publishing industry” by veteran publisher Thomas Dunne; the third and last installment in Kim Sherwood’s Double O Trilogy, Hurricane Room, which imagines a perhaps “broken” James Bond joining his fellow British secret agents to head off a worldwide cyberattack; Alison Gaylin’s Booked, her latest lively yarn featuring Sunny Randall, Robert B. Parker’s other Boston private invetigator; and Michael Crichton’s never-before-published Tinseltown thriller, Murder in Hollywood.

Beyond all those, expect three more George Gross police procedurals by Tim Sullivan; Jordan Harper’s new portrayal of Los Angeles' criminal underbelly, A Violent Masterpiece; Mad Mabel, Sally Hepworth’s clever tale of a cantankerous 81-year-old woman with a “shady past,” who becomes entangled in her neighbor’s dubious demise; and Thomas Perry’s The Tree of Light and Flowers, the presumably final outing for trouble-tackling Native American “guide” Jane Whitfield (as that Edgar-winning author perished last September).

While I regret not including here my customary myriad listings of coming attractions from UK publishing houses, it cannot be helped. The time necessary to gather all of those as well might delay the posting of The Rap Sheet’s list until mid-April, when it would be signally less useful. I shall simply have to find another way, either through a separate compilation or perhaps by including more British titles in my “Revue of Reviewers” posts, to get the word out about near-future releases from the opposite side of the pond.

As it is, I suspect there are a few fine U.S.-published works of crime fiction absent from the lengthy catalogue below, which I shall endeavor to find and add in updates over the next two and a half months. (Please let me know in the Comments section at this post’s end if you are already aware of any I have missed.) For now, though, I invite you to explore the following 200-plus. Non-fiction works are marked here with asterisks (*); the rest are novels or short-story collections.

MARCH (U.S.):
• Agatha Christie Seek-and-Find: Find Clues and Criminals in 20 Classic Mysteries! by Sarah Dvojack (Chronicle)
• The Antique Hunter’s Murder at the Castle, by C. L. Miller (Atria)
• A Bad, Bad Place, by Frances Crawford (Soho Crime)
• The Baffle Book, by Lassiter Wren and Randle McKay (Penzler/American Mystery Classics)
• Beatrice Ophelia Is Flickering Out, by Megan Gerig (Lamplighter)
• The Best Little Motel in Texas, by Lyla Lane (Harper Perennial)
• Bloodlust, by Sandra Brown (Grand Central)
• The Boy in the Wall, by Jeffrey B. Burton (Severn House)
• Bright and Tender Dark, by Joanna Pearson (Bloomsbury)
• Buried in a Book, by T.C. LoTempio (Severn House)
• Chaos Man, by Andrew Mayne (Thomas & Mercer)
• A Crime Through Time, by Amelia Blackwell (Pan)
• The Dark Time, by Nick Petrie (Putnam)
• The Daughters, by Joanna Margaret (Mysterious Press)
• A Day of Judgment, by Charles Todd (Mysterious Press)
• A Defiant Woman, by Karen E. Olson (Pegasus Crime)
• The Delivery, by Andrew Welsh-Huggins (Mysterious Press)
• The Dreadfuls, by A. Rae Dunlap (Kensington)
• The End of the Sahara, by Saïd Khatibi (Bitter Lemon Press)
• Enemy of My Enemy, by Alex Segura (Hyperion Avenue)
• Everyone in This Bank Is a Thief, by Benjamin Stevenson (Mariner)
• Everything on Black, by F.T. Grant (Vigilante Crime & Pulp)
• Felony Review: Tales of True Crime and Corruption in Chicago, by Randy E. Barnett (Encounter)*
• Finlay Donovan Crosses the Line, by Elle Cosimano (Minotaur)
• Frederick Knott and Dial M for Murder: The Creation and Evolution of an Iconic Thriller, by Richard Weill (McFarland)*
• From the Dust, by David Swinson (Mulholland)
• A Ghastly Catastrophe, by Deanna Raybourn (Berkley)
• Girl in a Shroud / The Girl Who Was Possessed / The Lady is Available, by Carter Brown (Stark House Press)
• A Good Person, by Kirsten King (Putnam)
• A Grave Mistake, by Kate MacLean (Kate MacLean)
• The Guilty Daughter, by Victoria Jenkins (Bookouture)
• Hard Times, by Jeff Boyd (Flatiron)
• The Harvey Girl, by Dana Stabenow (Head of Zeus/Aries)
• The Hiding Season, by Ava Glass (Bantam)
• I Came Back for You, by Kate White (Thomas & Mercer)
• I Did Not Kill My Husband, by Linda Keir (Blackstone)
• The Imposter, by Adriane Leigh (Podium)
• Incidentals, by Sheila Yasmin Marikar (Little A)
• The Jewish Policeman, by Jonathan Dunsky (Lion Cub)
• Judge Stone, by Viola Davis and James Patterson (Little, Brown)
• The Keeper, by Tana French (Viking)
• Killing Me Softly, by Sandie Jones (Minotaur)
• The Last Celebrity, by Madeleine Henry (Little A)
• A Lie for a Lie, by Ren DeStefano (Berkley)
• Little Sins, by Clifford Beal (Little Brigand)
• London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth, by Patrick Radden Keefe (Doubleday)*
• Missing, by E.A. Jackson (Atria/Emily Bestler)
• Missing Sister, by Joshilyn Jackson (Morrow)
• The Most Mysterious Bookshop in Paris, by Mark Pryor (Kensington)
• Murder As a Fine Art, by Carol Carnac (Poisoned Pen Press)
• My Grandfather, the Master Detective, by Masateru Konishi (Putnam)
• Never Spar with a Viscount, by Lindsay Lovise (Forever)
• No Good Deed, by Katherine Kovacic (Poisoned Pen Press)
• The Perfect Girl, by Andy Maslen (Thomas & Mercer)
• The Pie & Mash Detective Agency, by J. D. Brinkworth (Berkley)
• A Place to Die For, by A.M. Strong and Sonya Sargent (Thomas & Mercer)
• The Plans I Have for You, by Lai Sanders (Simon & Schuster)
• The Politician, by Tim Sullivan
(Atlantic Crime)
• Poured Out, by Steve Exeter (Independently published)
• The Primrose Murder Society, by Stacy Hackney (Morrow Paperbacks)
• The Pryce of Fame, by Kari Bovée (Vinci)
• Robbie McNeil’s Hit List, by Brianna Heath (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Ruby Falls, by Gin Phillips (Atlantic Crime)
• The Secret Lives of Murderers’ Wives, by Elizabeth Arnott (Berkley)
• Served Him Right, by Lisa Unger (Park Row)
• She Fell Away, by Lenore Nash (Atria/Emily Bestler)
• Sisters in Yellow, by Mieko Kawakami (Knopf)
• Society Women, by Adriane Leigh (Harper Perennial)
• Sorry for Your Loss, by Georgia McVeigh (Dutton)
• Stakeouts and Strollers, by Rob Phillips (Minotaur)
• The Star from Calcutta, by Sujata Massey (Soho Crime)
• Storm Warning, by Alice Henderson (Morrow)
• Strange Buildings, by Uketsu (HarperVia)
• Strangers in the Villa, by Robyn Harding (Grand Central)
• The Survivor, by Andrew Reid (Minotaur)
• The Tree of Light and Flowers, by Thomas Perry (Mysterious Press)
• The Story of Marceau Miller, by Marceau Miller (Blackstone)
• This Story Might Save Your Life, by Tiffany Crum (Pine & Cedar)
• To Sleep, Perchance to Kill, by James Quentin (Over It)
• Two Kinds of Stranger, by Steve Cavanagh (Atria)
• Vanished in the Crowd, by Rhys Bowen and Clare Broyles (Minotaur)
• Vengeance in Venice, by Erica Ruth Neubauer (Kensington)
• Want to Know a Secret? by Freida McFadden (Poisoned Pen Press)
• What the Fields Saw, by Linda Norlander (Severn River)
• Where the Truth Lies, by Katherine Greene (Crooked Lane)
• Whidbey, by T. Kira Madden (Mariner)
• Yesteryear, by Caro Claire Burke (Knopf)

APRIL (U.S.):
• Afternoon Hours of a Hermit, by Patrick Cottrell (Ecco)
• Agnes Sharp and the Wedding to Die For, by Leonie Swann
(Soho Crime)
• All Them Dogs, by Djamel White (Riverhead)
• The Architect of Deception, by Debbie Baldwin (Gatekeeper Press)
• As Far as She Knew, by Diana Awad (Mindy’s Book Studio)
• Brenda, by Samuel S. Taylor (Stark House Press)
• The Caretaker, by Marcus Kliewer (Atria/Emily Bestler)
• Cat on a Hot Tin Woof, by Spencer Quinn (Minotaur)
• Cats Don’t Need Coffins, by Dolores Hitchens (Penzler/American Mystery Classics)
• The Chambermaid’s Key, by Genevieve Graham (Simon & Schuster)
• City of the Muse, by Kate Hilton
(Simon & Schuster)
• Confessions of an Amateur Sleuth, by Lynn Cahoon (Kensington Cozies)
• Countdown, by Sara Driscoll (Kensington)
• A Cruise to Die For, by Heather
Graham (Mira)
• Dark Hazard / The Quick Brown Fox, by W.R. Burnett (Stark House Press)
• The Dead Can’t Make a Living, by Ed
Lin (Soho Crime)
• A Deadly Episode, by Anthony Horowitz (Harper)
• The Dead Ringer, by Dane Bahr (Counterpoint)
• Death Times Seven, by Anne Perry and Victoria Zackheim (Ballantine)
• Double Shadow, by Andrew Ludington (Minotaur)
• The Edge of Darkness, by Vaseem Khan (Hodder & Stoughton)
• The Ending Writes Itself, by Evelyn Clarke (Harper)
• An Enigma by the Sea, by Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini
(Bitter Lemon Press)
• Everyone Is Perfect Here, by Jane Haseldine (Severn House)
• The Faces of the Dead, by Chris Nickson (Severn House)
• Fair Chase, by Travis Mulhauser (Grand Central)
• Gimme Shelter, by Libby Klein (Kensington)
• The Girls Trip, by Ally Condie (Grand Central)
• Guilt, by Keigo Higashino (Minotaur)
• Gunner, by Alan Parks (Pegasus Crime)
• Harmless Women, by Rebecca Sharpe (Minotaur)
• Her First Lie, by Lucinda Berry (Thomas & Mercer)
• Hollywood Payback, by Jon Lindstrom (Crooked Lane)
• Holy Island, by L.J. Ross (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Hope Rises, by David Baldacci (Grand Central)
• Hot Shots: Celebrating Thirty Years of the Short Mystery Fiction Society, edited by Josh Pachter (Level Short)
• How to Cheat Your Own Death, by Kristen Perrin (Dutton)
• The Insomniacs, by Allison Winn Scotch (Berkley)
• In the Spirit of French Murder, by Colleen Cambridge (Kensington)
• Kill Dick, by Luke Goebel (Red Hen Press)
• A Killing Breath, by Faye Snowden (Flame Tree Press)
• Last One Out, by Jane Harper (Pine & Cedar)
• Liar’s Creek, by Matt Goldman (Minotaur)
• The Lost Angels, by Michele Domínguez Greene (Thomas & Mercer)
• The Lost Book of Elizabeth Barton, by Jennifer N. Brown
(St. Martin’s Press)
• Mad Mabel, by Sally Hepworth (St. Martin’s Press)
• The Missing Ones, by A.R. Torre (Thomas & Mercer)
• The Monk, by Tim Sullivan (Atlantic Crime)
• Mrs. Shim Is a Killer, by Kang Jiyoung (Harper Perennial)
• Murder Mindfully, by Karsten Dusse (Soho Crime)
• Murders and Acquisitions, by Thomas Dunne (Blackstone)
• The Museum of Unusual Occurrence, by Erica Wright (Severn House)
• Obelists Fly High, by C. Daly King (Penzler/American
Mystery Classics)
• One Second Away, by Rick Mofina (Doubleday Canada)
• The Patriot’s Daughter, by Brittany Butler (Crooked Lane)
• The Plunge, by Lila Raicek (Park Row)
• Pomona Afton Can Totally Catch a Killer, by Bellamy Rose (Atria/Emily Bestler)
• Raskin’s World, by Charlie Stella
(Stark House Press)
• Reasonable Suspicion, by James Chandler (Severn River)
• Redbelly Crossing, by Candice Fox (Crooked Lane)
• Revenge Prey, by John Sandford (Putnam)
• Sanctuary, by James Cleary (Berkley)
• The Secret of Saint Olaf’s Church, by Indrek Hargla (Pushkin Vertigo)
• The Secrets of the Abbey, by Jean-Luc Bannalec (Minotaur)
• Short Circuit, by Wolf Haas (HarperVia)
• The Silent Ones, by Anna McPartlin (Canelo)
• The Silver Fish, by Connor Martin (Mysterious Press)
• The Sound, by Ruth McIver (Blackstone)
• Spies and Other Gods, by James Wolff (Atlantic Crime)
• Staged Evidence, by Traci Hunter Abramson (Shadow Mountain)
• The Summer House Murder, by Ava Roberts (Crooked Lane)
• The Ten Teacups, by Carter Dickson (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Thanks for Watching, by Kate Cavanaugh (Inimitable)
• This Weekend Doesn’t End Well for Anyone, by Catherine
Mack (Minotaur)
• Too Close to Home, by Seraphina Nova Glass (Park Row)
• To the End of Reckoning, by Joseph Moldover (Mysterious Press)
• Two Truths and a Lie, by Mark Stevens (Thomas & Mercer)
• Vanessa’s Men, by Jason Starr (Jason Starr)
• A Violent Masterpiece, by Jordan Harper (Mulholland)
• The Washashore, by Christopher Mirabile (Slack Tide Press)
• We Would Never Tell, by Anne-Sophie Jouhanneau (Sourcebooks Landmark)
• What Happened Next, by Edwin Hills (Thomas & Mercer)
• When the Wolves Are Silent, by C.S. Harris (Berkley)
• Yours Always, by Corinne Sullivan (Thomas & Mercer)

MAY (U.S.):
• Against Their Will, by Karina Kilmore (Blackstone)
• An Accidental Death, by Peter Grainger (Union Square)
• And the Corpse Wore Tartan, by Stuart MacBride (Macmillan)
• The Anniversary, by Alex Finlay (Minotaur)
• The Architect, by John Katzenbach (Blackstone)
• The Author Weekend, by Laura Zigman (Blackstone)
• Beneath a Broken Sky, by Joshua Moehling (Poisoned Pen Press)
• The Brothers McKay, by Craig Johnson (Viking)
• Caller Unknown, by Gillian McAllister (Morrow)
• The Children of Eve, by John Connolly (Atria/Emily Bestler)
• City on Fire, by Simon Elegant (Pegasus Crime)
• Days of Feasting and Rejoicing, by David Bergen (Blackstone)
• Dissection of a Murder, by Jo Murray (Dutton)
• The Divorce, by Freida McFadden (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Dreadful Summit, by Stanley Ellin (Penzler/American
Mystery Classics)
• The Echo of Crows, by Phil Rickman (Atlantic)
• The Fine Art of Lying, by Alexandra Andrews (Harper)
• Five, by Ilona Bannister (Crown)
• A Fortune of Sand, by Ruta Sepetys (Ballantine)
• Going, Going, Gone, by Nasheema Lennon (HarperNorth)
• The Great Houses of Pill Hill, by Diane Josefowicz (Soho Crime)
• Hawai’i Rage, by Tori Eldridge
(Thomas & Mercer)
• Hidden in Lies, by Viveca Sten
(Amazon Crossing)
• Holy F*ck, by Joseph Incardona (Bitter Lemon Press)
• Hurricane Room, by Kim Sherwood (Morrow)
• Ironwood, by Michael Connelly
(Little, Brown)
• I, Spy, by L.M. Kemp (Minotaur)
• The Last Mandarin, by Louise Penny and Mellissa Fung (Minotaur)
• The Lemon Twist, by Élan Les Vies (Keylight)
• The Library After Dark, by Ande Pliego (Bantam)
• A Little Bit Bad, by Cassandra Neyenesch (S&S/Summit)
• The Lost Soldiers, by Andrey Kurkov (HarperVia)
• The Mediator, by Robert Bailey (Thomas & Mercer)
• Moonlight Murder, by Uzma Jalaluddin (Harper Perennial)
• Murder at the Hotel Orient, by Alessandra Ranelli (Gallery/
Scout Press)
• A Murder in Hollywood, by Michael Crichton (Blackstone)
• Murder Like Clockwork, by Nicola Whyte (Union Square)
• Murder on the Rocks, by T.E. Kinsey (Thomas & Mercer)
• My Name Was Gerry Sass, by Tiffany Hanssen (Atlantic Crime)
• Not to Be Taken: A Puzzle in Poison, by Anthony Berkeley
(Poisoned Pen Press)
• Ode to the Bones, by Carolyn Haines (Minotaur)
• The One Day You Were My Husband, by Rosie Walsh (Pamela Dorman)
• An Ordinary Sort of Evil, by Kelley Armstrong (Minotaur)
• Red Verdict, by James Comey (Mysterious Press)
• Robert B. Parker’s Booked, by Alison Gaylin (Putnam)
• Reverse, by Steven F. Havill (Severn House)
• Safari Murder Party, by Rachel Moore (Berkley)
• Storm Warning, by James Byrne (Minotaur)
• The Teacher, by Tim Sullivan (Atlantic Crime)
• True Crime: A Memoir, by Patricia Cornwell (Grand Central)*
• The Tuxedo Society, by Paul Rudnick (Atria)
• 26 Beauties, by James Patterson (Little, Brown)
• The Vampyre Client, by Jeri Westerson (Old London Press)
• A Very Vexing Murder, by Lucy Andrew (Morrow)
• You Can Tell Me, by Melinda Leigh (Montlake)

Wish me luck in trying to get things back in order here, so I can produce a full summer books list for early June.

How About Some Prizes?

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 13:59:00 +0000

This last week brought word of which books have been chosen as finalists for the 2026 Lambda Literary Awards, “celebrating outstanding LGBTQ+ voices in literature.” There are 26 categories of contenders, with five works vying for top LGBTQ+ Mystery honors:

• A Queer Case, by Robert Holtom (Titan)
• Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter, by Samantha Crewson (Crooked Lane)
• Girl Falling, by Hayley Scrivenor (Flatiron)
• Mirage City, by Lev AC Rosen (Minotaur)
• The Case of the Missing Maid, by Rob Osler (Kensington)

Recipients of this year’s “Lammys,” as they’re familiarly known, are to be announced on Friday, June 12, during the 38th Annual Lambda Literary Awards Ceremony in New York City.

* * *

Meanwhile, In Reference to Murder reports that four popular works are competing for the 2026 Minnesota Book Award for Genre Fiction.

• Apostle’s Cove, by William Kent Krueger (Atria)
• Broken Fields, by Marcie Rendon (Soho Crime)
• The Codebreaker’s Daughter, by Amy Lynn Green (Bethany House)
• The Quiet Librarian, by Allen Eskens (Mulholland)

The winners in all nine Minnesota Book Award divisions will be revealed during a ceremony on Wednesday, May 6.

* * *

Finally, a commendation I somehow failed to mention until now. From Elizabeth Foxwell at The Bunburyist:

The latest recipient of the Dove Award—which is awarded by the Popular Culture Association’s Mystery and Detective Fiction Area and recognizes contributions to the serious study of mystery, detective, and crime fiction—is Stewart King, associate professor of European languages at Monash University (Melbourne, Australia). King, a specialist in Spanish and Catalan crime fiction, has edited or co-edited 6 books (e.g., The Cambridge Companion to World Crime Fiction, 2022), produced 35 book chapters and 28 articles, as well as co-edits the journal Crime Fiction Studies. He previously served on the editorial board of Clues: A Journal of Detection (I am managing editor of the journal).

Past Dove Award winners include Martin Edwards, Barry Forshaw, Douglas G. Greene, H.R.F. Keating, Janet Rudolph, and Foxwell herself.

Revue of Reviewers: 3-20-26

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 21:27:00 +0000

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

A Modest Man, a Masterful Career

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 20:46:00 +0000

Just a month after celebrating his 97th birthday, British spy novelist Len Deighton—author of The IPCRESS File, Funeral in Berlin, SS-GB, and other classics of the genre—died Sunday at his home on the island of Guernsey. No cause for his passing has yet been specified.

In his excellent obituary for The Guardian, Mike Ripley recalls,

When he made the remark that he was “the most illiterate writer ever”, in an interview with Argosy magazine in 1969, Len Deighton ... had already published five bestselling spy novels, starting with The Ipcress File, three of which had been made into successful films. He had also written two cookbooks and a comic novel, edited an iconic guide to London in the swinging 60s and a book on fine wines and spirits, written a television play for the Armchair Theatre [TV anthology] series and two film scripts, become travel editor for Playboy and produced two films. He was to go on to write a further 21 novels and a collection of short stories, and to establish a reputation as a military historian.

Deighton was an established and “quite comfortable” freelance graphic artist when he began writing The Ipcress File “for a lark” while living in France in 1960, completing it the following year while on holiday, but it was not until he met the literary agent Jonathan Clowes at a party in London that he was persuaded to submit it for publication.

Rejected by two publishers, one of whom remarked sniffily that there was no market for spy stories, it was taken by a third and published in November 1962 after serialisation in the London Evening Standard. It was an instant success, the first print-run of 4,000 copies selling out on the day of publication, and its impact on spy fiction has been called seismic.

The New York Times mentions that the London-born Deighton regarded The IPCRESS File (as its title appeared originally) as “a riposte to the James Bond novels of Ian Fleming.

Instead of Bond’s cartoonish and morally simplistic take on spycraft, Mr. Deighton offered a shadow world through which his unnamed hero—christened Harry Palmer for the film versions—made his way, beset by disinformation, triple-crosses and dim bureaucrats.

Unlike the impossibly suave, action-oriented Bond or George Smiley, John le Carré’s dumpy, cerebral, upper-class spy hero, Mr. Deighton’s central character is self-consciously proletarian, with a jaded, frequently hostile attitude toward his superiors, a droll sense of humor and a love of cooking.

Mr. Deighton took a sardonic view of his sudden achievement as a brand-name writer. “All you need is a profound inferiority complex, no training as a writer and growing up a victim of the English class system,” he told Publishers Weekly in 1993.

In its own posthumous tribute, The Washington Post adds,

Mr. Deighton dismissed writing as a “goof-off profession,” but he said he thrilled at the impact his novels had on readers. “When you make a book, it’s like making a hand grenade,” he told the Telegraph. “It’s a dull process but when you throw it, the person at the other end gets the effect.”

His spy works are marked by elliptical narratives short on explanatory details, reflecting the mysteries of espionage, yet filled with unforgettable moles, traitors and other characters who double- and triple-cross one another.

“Deighton’s wry and ironic recognition of the realities of espionage and the crackling energy that motivates his fiction place him in the first rank of spy novelists,” critic George Grella wrote in the 1985 edition of Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers. “He writes thrillers that are witty, thoughtful, authentic, and entertaining, a rare combination of merits.”

In his later years, Mr. Deighton’s shyness and his pivot to historical fiction and nonfiction works left him more removed from public awareness. “I’ve never written books for people more clever than I am, or more stupid,” he once said. “I’ve always tried to direct things at people like me.”

“Fiercely protective of his private life, he rarely gave interviews and avoided public appearances at festivals and conventions,” Ripley observes. “He was elected to the Detection Club in 1969, but turned down the offer of a Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement from the Crime Writers’ Association on three occasions, maintaining that ‘two things destroy writers—alcohol and praise.”

Len Deighton was a fictionist of distinction, for sure.

READ MORE: “Len Deighton, R.I.P.,” by Martin Edwards (‘Do You Write Under Your Own Name?’); “Len Deighton Dies at 97,” by Bill Koenig (The Spy Command); “Len Deighton: A Personal Appreciation,” by Mike Ripley (Shotsmag Confidential); “Len Deighton (1929-2026) Remembered,” by Chris Connor (Crime Fiction Lover).

Barry Tough Choices

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 18:31:00 +0000

Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine has released its list of contenders for the 2026 Barry Awards, in four separate categories.

Best Mystery:
• The Impossible Thing, by Belinda Bauer (Atlantic Monthly)
• Crooks, by Lou Berney (Morrow)
• King of Ashes, by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron)
• The Black Wolf, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
• The White Crow, by Michael
Robotham (Scribner)
• Presumed Guilty, by Scott Turow
(Grand Central)

Best First Mystery:
• Leverage, by Amran Gowani (Atria)
• All the Other Mothers Hate Me, by Sarah Harman (Putnam)
• Dead Money, by Jakob Kerr (Bantam)
• The Vanishing Place, by Zoë
Rankin (Berkley)
• Stillwater, by Tanya Scott (Atlantic Monthly)
• Julie Chan Is Dead, by Liann Zhang (Atria)

Best Paperback Original Mystery:
• Crimson Thaw, by Bruce Robert Coffin (Severn River)
• Splintered Justice, by Kim Hays (Seventh Street)
• Making a Killing, by Cara Hunter (Morrow)
• If Two Are Dead, by Rick Mofina (Mira)
• Wolf Six, by Alex Shaw (Boldwood)
• The Dentist, by Tim Sullivan (Atlantic Crime)

Best Thriller:
• Witness 8, by Steve Cavanagh (Atria)
• The Oligarch’s Daughter, by Joseph Finder (Harper)
• Midnight Black, by Mark Greaney (Berkley)
• Clown Town, by Mick Herron (Soho Crime)
• Head Cases, by John McMahon (Minotaur)
• The Mailman, by Andrew Welsh-Huggins (Mysterious Press)

To select the winners, we are told that “Readers of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine are eligible to vote. One vote per category. Send votes to george@deadlypleasures.com.” The results will be announced on October 22, during the opening ceremonies at this year’s Bouchercon in Calgary, Alberta.

The Barry Awards, established in 1997, are named in honor of Barry Gardner, a longtime DP “fan reviewer.”

Sam, Scarlett, and the Tarts All Weep

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 15:05:00 +0000

This wasn’t the sort of news I was longing to receive on a Thursday morning. As Shotsmag Confidential’s Ayo Onatade reports,

It is with deep sadness that the crime writing community have learned of the recent death of the award-winning crime writer Lauren Milne Henderson. As well as being an author, Lauren worked as a journalist for a number of well-known newspapers and magazines. [She was 59 years old.]

Under the name of Lauren Milne Henderson, she was the author of the Sam Jones series featuring sculptor-turned-sleuth Sam Jones. The first book in the series is Dead White Female [which] was published in 1995 and … was followed by six more books: Too Many Blondes (1996), The Black Rubber Dress (1997), Freeze My Margarita (1998), The Strawberry Tattoo (1999), Chained (2001) and Pretty Boy (2002).

Following on from her Sam Jones series, she also wrote the Young Adult Kiss/Scarlett series starting with Kiss Me Kill Me in 2008, which featured 16-year-old Scarlett Wakefield, who must clear her name after the last boy she kisses dies in her arms and she is accused of his death. There were 3 more books in this series published: Kisses and Lies (2009), Kisses in the Dark (2010) and Kisses of Death (2011). Kiss Me Kill Me was nominated for an Anthony Award in 2009. ...

Under the name Rebecca Chance she was also the author of 10 glamourous thrillers and what was known as ‘Bonkbusters’. Whilst all standalones, previous characters could be found in other books. The first book in the series was Divas (2009), and the last book Killer Affair (2017). Killer Heels (2012), Bad Angels (2012), Killer Queens (2013) and Bad Brides (2014) all made the Sunday Times best-seller list.

Wikipedia adds that Henderson helped establish Tart Noir, “a branch of crime fiction that is characterized by strong, independent female detectives with an amount of sexuality often involved. The books in the genre also occasionally feature a murderer protagonist and are sometimes presented in a first person point of view.” What I hope is a full list of her books can be found here.

Eliza’s Mettle Is No Longer in Doubt

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 14:14:00 +0000

This is rather sad news, but was certainly expected at some point: PBS-TV’s Masterpiece umbrella series has announced that the upcoming Season 7 of Miss Scarlet will bring an end to that well-written Victorian-era mystery drama. Filming of the six episodes to comprise this final run has already begun in Belgrade, Serbia.

Miss Scarlet, you will recall, debuted in Great Britain in March 2020 as Miss Scarlet and the Duke (and made its way to Masterpiece early the following year). It starred Kate Phillips as Eliza Scarlet, London’s resourceful first female private detective, with Stuart Martin cast as her childhood friend and reluctant Scotland Yard ally, Inspector William “the Duke” Wellington. But Martin left the show after Season 4, Tom Durant-Pritchard joined the ensemble as Inspector Alexander Blake, and the drama’s title was necessarily shortened.

So what might we expect to see in Miss Scarlet’s concluding installments? According to a news release, “Eliza Scarlet has found love, but with it comes a new set of challenges, both on a professional and personal level. As she faces mounting pressures both at work and at home, she is reunited with familiar friendly faces, as well as a powerful new crime boss who has arrived in town—and it’s not who you might expect. Meanwhile, Blake’s promotion brings its own complications, as he finds himself answering to a surprising new boss with whom he shares a complicated history. Season 7 raises the stakes, deepens the drama, and brings Eliza and Blake’s journey to a thrilling and satisfying close.”

“What a journey this has been,” Kate Phillips is quoted as saying. “Miss Scarlet has been one of the greatest joys of my career, and I will forever be grateful to Rachael New for creating such a witty, sharp, and delightful character in Eliza. It’s been a privilege to work on a show crafted with so much love and dedication and as we prepare to say goodbye, I’m so proud of what we’ve achieved and the memories we’ve made. Thank you to everyone who has supported us—I can’t wait to share the farewell Miss Scarlet deserves.”

Despite a bit of unevenness in its early years, Miss Scarlet will be remembered as a delightful blend of whodunit, humor, and thoughtful character study. I, for one, will miss it greatly.

A Hammett-Seasoned Assembly

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 00:53:00 +0000

(Above) R-Evolution, American artist Marco Cochrane’s 47-foot-tall, steel rod-and-mesh sculpture of a nude woman, rises from Embarcadero Plaza on the San Francisco waterfront. It has stood there in front of the Ferry Building since April 2025.

Time was when I visited San Francisco regularly—maybe once a year, or at least once every couple of years. However, before last week, a full decade and a half had elapsed since my previous call on Northern California’s most colorful and captivating metropolis; the last time was back in 2010, when Bouchercon took over the Hyatt Regency hotel on the Embarcadero, directly across from the historic Ferry Building. During the interim, I’d seen stories about how that City by the Bay had fallen into social and financial decline. Elon Musk, the South Africa-born right-winger who founded Tesla and destroyed Twitter (today’s X)—and who is a product of Silicon Valley, the high-tech hub located just to the south—had portrayed San Francisco as “a crime-ridden wasteland where homeless drug addicts freely roam.”

So I was fully prepared to see this place I have loved for so long reduced to a shadow of its erstwhile glory. Yet that isn’t what I found. In fact, central San Francisco looked pretty much like every other big city I’ve traveled to since the COVID-19 pandemic. There were scattered empty storefronts along Market Street, and one of my all-time favorite breakfast venues—Dottie’s True Blue Café, formerly on Jones Street but moved since my last drop-by to a larger, Sixth Street location—had shut its doors. Yes, there were some unhoused residents on sidewalks, benefiting from this burg’s moderate climate and extensive public services, but no more than I see nowadays in Seattle or Portland ... and none of them were shooting up in the gutters. San Francisco struck me as a locale that’s weathered bad economic times and is on its way to finding its footing again.

It certainly did a superb job of hosting the 2026 Left Coast Crime convention, which was held last week (Thursday, February 26, to Sunday, March 1) in the same Hyatt Regency I’d frequented 15 years ago.

Not surprisingly, given that (1) we were in Dashiell Hammett country and (2) this year brought an end to copyright restrictions on the author’s detective-fiction masterpiece, The Maltese Falcon, there was considerable attention paid to that 1930 novel. Falcon statuettes were presented to all four of LCC 2026’s guests of honor. One of the gathering’s Thursday panel discussions found Bay Area author Mark Coggins and Randal S. Brandt—who writes The Rap Sheet’s “Book Into Film” column and curates the California Detective Fiction Collection at the University of California, Berkeley’s Bancroft Library—examining the book’s still-enduring impact on crime fiction. And that same night, Coggins and Brandt appeared together at a downtown used bookshop to chat with other mystery enthusiasts about Poltroon Press’ recent re-release of The Maltese Falcon, to which both contributed.

One of this convention’s first panel exchanges was “Let’s Talk About the Black Bird,” which addressed Dashiell Hammett’s best-known novel, The Maltese Falcon. Participating were—left to right—authors Elizabeth Crowens (Bye Bye Blackbird), Domenic Stansberry (the North Beach mysteries, The Lizard), and Kelli Stanley (the Miranda Corbie series, The Reckoning), as well as librarian Randal Brandt, who moderated the colloquy. Not shown, but also part of the group, was Mark Coggins. He took this shot and e-mailed it to me with a note that joked, “Looks like someone photobombed them.”

Hours after that panel presentation concluded, Brandt and Coggins (shown above on the left and right, respectively) joined San Francisco author and philanthropist Robert Mailer Anderson (center) at Kayo Books, a treasury of used works on Post Street downtown, to celebrate Hammett’s considerable influence on today’s detective fiction. Afterward, Anderson—who rents the pocket-edition apartment at 891 Post where Hammett lived from 1927 to 1929 and penned his first three novels—escorted a few members of the audience on a brief tour of those rehabbed digs.

Yes, that’s me, Jeff Pierce, seated in the very apartment (#401) where ex-Pinkerton operative Hammett crafted his earliest novels and many of his short stories. Neither the wooden desk nor the typewriter are original fixtures, but they certainly add to the crib’s Jazz Age ambiance. (Photograph by Mark Coggins)

In a memorable treat for yours truly, immediately prior to the Kayo Books event, Coggins and I accompanied local novelist Robert Mailer Anderson (Boonville) to the fourth-floor apartment Hammett once rented at 891 Post Street, one block east of the bookshop. It was there, in the late 1920s, that Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, and The Maltese Falcon were all batted out noisily on a typewriter, the author likely working longer into the night than his neighbors would have preferred. For many years, architect and Hammett fan Bill Arney lived in those 275-square-foot lodgings, but after his passing in 2021, Anderson took over the rent. He has since restored the apartment to how it might have looked during Hammett’s time. Anderson is also working on a project that will bring modern authors into the place and film them reading excerpts from Hammett’s prose.

For a guy like me, who discovered Dashiell Hammett, Sam Spade, and the Continental Op during college, and who’s been re-reading their adventures ever since, this opportunity to stand where their fictional lives began was nothing short of electrifying.

Those four days in mostly sunny San Francisco were a whirlwind of activities, from genre panel discussions and serendipitous encounters in hallways with friends to the discovery of new attractions the city has to offer. A few of my other favorite experiences:

• My daily morning walks around downtown, during which I not only got exercise and fresh air, but made a point of reaching buildings and monuments familiar to me from my years of writing about SF history.

• Sitting down with local author Kelli Stanley and talking about her efforts to relocate from the United States to Europe; her latest novel, The Reckoning; and how she couldn’t relax at LCC because she needed to get home and finish her sequel to that book by its deadline.

• Chatting up the friendly doorkeepers at the Hyatt Regency and finally questioning them about where to find the best Mexican food in the Mission District. This provoked much debate and research, until they finally directed me to Gallardos at 3248 18th Street (corner of 18th and Shotwell). I took the BART train down to the 16th and Mission station, then walked south on Mission and left on 18th for three more blocks. My being the only white guy in the restaurant suggested authenticity, as did the fact that credit cards weren’t accepted—Gallardos is cash-only. And the food? Well, I ordered the Guadalajara Dinner, a combination plate featuring an enchilada, a chili relleno, and a taco. With a side of house-made tortillas! It was savory and filling, and more than I could eat, but I had no refrigerator in my hotel room to hold the leftovers. I’ll definitely go back there the next time I’m in the Bay Area.

• Finding myself at the hotel bar next to Chicago’s Lori Rader-Day, an hour before Saturday night’s Lefty Awards banquet was to commence. I first met Lori during an airport shuttle ride into Raleigh, North Carolina, for Bouchercon 2015—back when she was just starting her career composing fiction. Since then, she’s produced six more novels, among them this year’s Wreck Your Heart, and survived breast cancer. I have done … well, nothing even remotely so courageous or dramatic. But it was good to catch up for a spell over gin-and-tonics.

• And then after the banquet and prize dispersals, joining Los Angeles author Gary Phillips at that same bar. He told me about the delights of rearing his late daughter’s young child, and briefed me on his soon-forthcoming novel, The Haul, which recounts the story of a professional thief coming out of retirement to engineer “a multi-million-dollar raid of a tech billionaire’s secret bunker.” Gary and Lori are such kind and generous people; I’m sorry I live so far from them.

When Sunday rolled around, I was not close to being ready for departure. I mused on how wonderful it might be to spend another week roaming San Francisco, just photographing sidewalk scenes and the elegant decorations of old buildings. I hadn’t had a chance during my stay to wander out to spacious Golden Gate Park. Or to hop a Powell-Hyde Cable Car to The Buena Vista café, which is credited with introducing Irish coffees to the United States in 1952. Nor had I stopped at John’s Grill on Ellis Street, where Spade ordered “chops, baked potatoes, [and] sliced tomatoes” in The Maltese Falcon.

But I had to be back home the next day, so couldn’t stay. Next time, I told myself. And next time would be sooner than 15 years off!

Thursday’s “Thoughts on Podcasting” session was moderated by Jaime Parker Stickle (far left), author of the Corey in Los Angeles series and host of The Girl with the Same Name. Tackling the topic with her were Sabrina Thatcher (Slaying the Craft: Inside the Mind of a Thriller Writer), Jim Fusilli (Writers at Work), Mike Adamick (Crime Adjacent), and Dan White (OutWithDan).

“The Liars Panel” on Friday was one of this convention’s more unusual offerings, but its title says it all. Five writers told stories of their encounters with famous people, and the audience was charged with identifying which were factual and which were fabricated. Shown from left to right: Lee Matthew Goldberg (The Great Gimmelmans), Holly West (The Money Block), the legendary Sara Paretsky (creator of the V.I. Warshawski series), Lori Rader-Day (this panel’s moderator), and Lina Chern (Tricks of Fortune).

Guest of Honor Gary Phillips was interviewed onstage Friday afternoon by fellow fictionist Christa Faust (The Get Off). During their engaging 45-minute exchange, Phillips was asked which of all his books he would like to have outlast him. His answer: Violent Spring, his 1994 debut novel (featuring private eye Ivan Monk), and his 1999 standalone, The Jook.

Finally, Lori Rader-Day’s selfie showing the two of us enjoying chilled libations in the Hyatt Regency’s lobby bar.

Sometimes Only a Wrap-up Will Do

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 23:46:00 +0000

Three recent news items that might have passed through your radar unnoticed, as they almost passed through ours:

• The Glencairn Glass Crime Short Story Competition is now open for submissions. “The official glass for Scotch whisky, Glencairn is once again raising a toast to crime fiction with the return of its popular annual competition, in partnership with the Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival,” explains Crime Fiction Lover. “Experienced and novice writers from around the world are invited to submit an original crime story of under 2,000 words. You don’t have to be Scottish to enter, but your protagonist must be a Scot.” Entries are to be accepted through March 31. “The overall winner will receive £1,000, publication of their story on the Bloody Scotland website, and the chance of a guest appearance at the Bloody Scotland Festival in September 2026. The runner-up will win £500, with both winning stories also published on the Glencairn Glass website.”

• Lee Child, Jane Harper, Peter James, and Lucy Foley, are among the authors announced as headliners for this year’s Capital Crime festival, set to take place in London from June 18 to 20.

• And Season 15 of the Robert Thorogood-created series Death in Paradise is scheduled to debut in the States on BritBox come March 24. (It has already been airing in Great Britain.) There will be eight new episodes. Mystery Fanfare has a trailer here.

Revue of Reviewers: 3-5-26

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 22:28:00 +0000

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

Speak to Me

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 20:32:00 +0000

Just last evening, the Audio Publishers Association revealed the recipients of this year’s Audie Awards, recognizing quality in audiobooks and spoken-word entertainments. There were 27 winners, but two are likely of greatest interest to Rap Sheet followers.

Mystery: Gone Before Goodbye, by Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben; narrated by Reese Witherspoon, Chris Pine, Kiff VandenHeuvel, Suehyla El-Attar Young, Peter Ganim, Saskia Maarleveld, and James Fouhey (Hachette Audio)

Also nominated: Gray Dawn, by Walter Mosley, narrated by Michael Boatman and Walter Mosley (Hachette Audio); The Queens of Crime, by Marie Benedict, narrated by Bessie Carter (Macmillan Audio); Secret Sister, by Sarah A. Denzil, narrated by Jessica Gunning, Sacha Dhawan, Joanne Froggatt, Nathaniel Curtis, and Hopi Grace (Audible Originals); and Vera Wong's Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man), by Jesse Q. Sutanto, narrated by Eunice Wong (Penguin Ranndom House Audio)

Thriller/Suspense: Don't Let Him In, by Lisa Jewell; narrated by Richard Armitage, Joanne Froggatt, Tamaryn Payne, Gemma Whelan, Louise Brealey, and Patience Tomlinson (Simon & Schuster Audio)

Also nominated: Beautiful Ugly, by Alice Feeney, narrated by Richard Armitage and Tuppence Middleton (Macmillan Audio); Everyone Is Lying to You, by Jo Piazza, narrated by Rachel F. Hirsch, Sarah Reny, Vas Eli, and Saskia Maarleveld (Penguin Random House Audio); Havoc, by Christopher Bollen, narrated by Maggi-Meg Reed (HarperAudio); and To Die For, by David Baldacci, narrated by Zach Villa, Mela Lee, Cassandra Morris, Rena Marie Villano, Christine Lakin, Will Collyer, Kiff Vandenheuvel, and Erin Bennett (Hachette Audio)

Only Winners Left

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 06:09:00 +0000

I just returned home from San Francisco and the 2026 Left Coast Crime convention. I’ll have more to say about that event soon, but for now, let me just post the winners of this year’s Lefty Awards.

Lefty for Best Humorous Mystery Novel:
Scot’s Eggs, by Catriona McPherson (Severn House)

Also nominated: Solid Gold Murder, by Ellen Byron (Kensington); Star-Crossed Egg Tarts, by Jennifer J. Chow (St. Martin’s Paperbacks); Bye Bye Blackbird, by Elizabeth Crowens (Level Best); and All’s Faire in Love and Murder, by Cindy Sample (Cindy Sample)

Bill Gottfried Memorial Lefty for Best Historical Mystery Novel:
The Case of the Missing Maid, by Rob Osler (Kensington)

Also nominated: Huguette, by Cara Black (Soho Crime); The Girl in the Green Dress, by Mariah Fredericks (Minotaur); A Daughter’s Guide to Mothers and Murder, by Dianne Freeman (Kensington); City Lights, by Claire M. Johnson (Level Best); and Knave of Diamonds, by
Laurie R. King (Bantam)

Lefty for Best Debut Mystery Novel:
Whiskey Business, by Adrian Andover (Chestnut Avenue Press)

Also nominated: We Don’t Talk About Carol, by Kristen L. Berry (Bantam); Mask of the Deer Woman, by Laurie L. Dove (Berkley); The Retirement Plan, by Sue Hincenbergs (Morrow); Best Offer Wins, by Marisa Kashino (Celadon); and Mortal Zin, by Diane Schaffer
(Sibylline Press)

Lefty for Best Mystery Novel (not in other categories):
River of Lies, by James L’Etoile (Oceanview)

Also nominated: Crooks, by Lou Berney (Morrow); Throwing Shadows, by Claire Booth (Severn House); Edge, by Tracy Clark (Thomas & Mercer); Waters of Destruction, by Leslie Karst (Severn House); and The Library Game, by Gigi Pandian (Minotaur)

These results were announced last night, Saturday, February 28, during a banquet at the Hyatt Regency-Embarcadero.

Book Into Film: “High Sierra”

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 18:10:00 +0000

(Editor’s note: This is the third installment in a series comparing noteworthy crime, mystery, and thriller novels against their Hollywood feature adaptations—for better or worse.)

By Randal S. Brandt

Book: High Sierra, by W.R. Burnett, 1940
Movie: High Sierra—John Huston, W.R. Burnett (screenplay),
Raoul Walsh (director), 1941
Movie: Colorado Territory—John Twist, Edmund H. North (screenplay), Raoul Walsh (director), 1949

“I’ve been trying to crash out ever since I can remember.”
—Marie Garson (High Sierra)
“This time, Wes, we can really bust out.”
—Colorado Carson (Colorado Territory)

William Riley “W.R.” Burnett had an incredible track record of getting his books adapted for the silver screen. His first novel, Little Caesar (1929), was an overnight success and led to a wildly popular 1931 gangster film of the same name starring then little-known actor Edward G. Robinson. In 1949, he published The Asphalt Jungle, which was filmed the next year under the direction of John Huston and is widely considered to be a quintessential heist film. These are just two examples of Burnett’s output, but he clearly had a knack for turning out filmable fiction. It probably didn’t hurt that he was a skilled screenwriter, as well as a novelist, and often adapted his own work.

Much of Burnett’s storytelling in the crime genre revolved around gangsters and robbery capers. In 1940, he penned a tale that incorporated both and added a twist by moving the action out of the asphalt jungle of the city and into the wilds of the American West. High Sierra, published by Alfred A. Knopf, is the story of Roy Earle, a small-time gangster who ran with John Dillinger and wound up being sentenced to a lifetime’s confinement in prison. As the novel opens, however, Roy is driving across the country, headed for California, after just six years behind bars in Illinois. At 37, he’s been granted a full pardon, secured for him by “Big Mac” M’Gann, who bribed the governor in order to get Roy out of stir. Mac, suffering from ill health, has engineered the heist of a popular mountain resort in Southern California, where all the big shots from Hollywood go to gamble and flaunt their wealth and jewelry, and he wants Roy to pull off one last score for him. Two inexperienced thugs, Red Hattery and Babe Kozak, have been enlisted to do the dirty work, and an inside man, Louis, is providing key information about the layout of the resort. Roy is needed to organize the crew and lead this seemingly easy job.

(Right) High Sierra, Alfred A. Knopf, 1940.

During the drive west, Roy meets “Pa” and “Ma” Goodhue. They have lost their farm in Ohio and are taking their granddaughter, Velma (who is afflicted with a club foot), to Los Angeles to live with Velma’s mother. Roy, who was also reared on a Midwestern farm and longs to return to that idyllic life, hits it off immediately with the Goodhues and is attracted to Velma.

When he arrives at the motor camp near the resort, where the gang is meeting to plan and wait for their go-ahead, Roy finds out there is another person there, Marie Garson, a girl who Babe picked up at a “dime-a-dance joint” in L.A. Roy is not pleased with this turn of events, but he ends up letting Marie stay. He is also introduced to a mangy stray dog called Pard by the camp’s Black handyman, Algernon, who explains to Roy that Pard brings bad luck to anyone who adopts him. Not being the superstitious type, Roy takes in the dog, too.

Can anyone guess where this is going? Right. Pear-shaped.

Marie falls in love with Roy. Roy falls in love with Velma, pays to have her foot operated on, and has his marriage proposal rejected (Velma’s already got a fiancé back home). Predictably, the heist goes sideways—a security guard is shot and Red and Babe are killed in a car crash during the getaway—and Roy, Marie, and Pard end up on the run. Things get even worse when Roy reaches L.A. and finds that Big Mac has died and he has no way to collect his cut of the money for their stolen jewels. In the meantime, Roy is wounded, Louis squeals to the cops, and a manhunt for Roy (now dubbed “Mad Dog” Earle in the press) ensues. Roy convinces Marie to take Pard and head east to San Bernardino to wait for him. Short on gas and cash, Roy holds up a drugstore and is recognized, leading to a chase over a mountain pass in the shadow of mammoth Mount Whitney. When Roy is stopped by a boulder blocking the road, he takes off up the mountain on foot. The police draw near and a marksman shoots him. Fade to black.

High Sierra in paperback (left to right): From Bantam, 1950, with art by Harry Schaare; Corgi, 1958; and Carroll & Graf, 1986.

The novel has two major flaws. The first is the abruptness of its ending. For a book called High Sierra, the chase up that 14,505-foot mountain and subsequent standoff occupy fewer than four pages at the end. Both film versions discussed below vastly improve on the drama and tension of Burnett’s original climax. The second flaw is much more serious. The racism the author heaps on Algernon is unforgivable. Not only is the character treated as a stereotype and a caricature, but he is repeatedly referred to with vile racial epithets, both in the white characters’ dialogue and in Burnett’s exposition. Even for 1940, this seems extreme, cruel, and wholly unnecessary.

The initial big-screen version of High Sierra, which premiered on January 25, 1941, is an important bridge between the popular gangster films of the 1930s and film noir (a term that had not been coined yet). It is not really a gangster film, or a heist film, or a film noir, and yet it contains elements of all three. The screenplay was written collaboratively by John Huston and Burnett, and the plot is extremely faithful to the novel. For the role of Roy Earle, director Raoul Walsh reluctantly cast Humphrey Bogart, who up until that time had only served in supporting roles in B-pictures.

(Left) Humphrey Bogart with his younger screen “moll,” Ida Lupino.

According to Marilyn Ann Moss, in her 2011 biography of Raoul Walsh, Bogart lobbied Warner Bros. hard for this role. He won it after top Warner star Paul Muni, who’d played the lead in Scarface—a 1932 Howard Hawks-directed feature that Burnett had also had a hand in scripting—and George Raft, who was adamant that his fans did not want to see him die onscreen, turned it down. Bogart didn’t get top billing, though; that honor went to Ida Lupino for her role as Marie. Lupino’s star had risen significantly after her appearance the previous year in They Drive By Night, also directed by Walsh and starring both Raft and Bogart. A big part of the reason Warner wanted Raft for High Sierra was due to the success of Drive; studio execs saw the Walsh-Raft-Lupino combo as a winner.

Shot on location outside Lone Pine, California, High Sierra was a box office hit and made Humphrey Bogart a star. It also boosted John Huston’s career and, based on the success of this film, Warner Bros. decided to let him try his hand as a director. His debut in said capacity came with The Maltese Falcon, which was released later that same year, starred Bogart as San Francisco private eye Sam Spade—another role that Raft refused to play—and, well, you know the rest of the story. Bogart never again received second billing to anyone.

But Ida Lupino, then only 23 years old, deserved her headliner status in this film. Her performance is terrific as Marie, the taxi dancer who wants to crash out of her dead-end life and sees Roy as the means to that end. It also helped pave the way for Lupino to begin writing, directing, and producing her own motion pictures by the end of the decade. (And in 1953, she became the first woman to direct a film noir when she helmed RKO’s The Hitch-Hiker.)

The official, 1941 trailer for High Sierra.

As mentioned previously, the ending of this flick vastly improves on what the novel offers. Maybe Burnett realized his original was jarringly abrupt and was happy to get a do-over, or perhaps the credit belongs to Huston. In any event, this time the standoff with Roy on Mount Whitney lasts long enough for a large crowd to gather below, including newspaper and radio reporters. (In a bit of coincidental casting, Jerome Cowan appears as a journo with just about as many lines as he would be given later that year playing Sam Spade’s doomed partner, Miles Archer.) The standoff also provides time enough for Marie and Pard to arrive on the scene. When Marie refuses to call up the mountain to Roy and lure him out into the open, Pard’s barking does the job, giving a police sharpshooter the opportunity to take him out. After Roy’s lifeless body tumbles down the slope, one of the closing shots is of Pard, licking his hand. That dog was bad luck, after all.

The movie also treats handyman Algernon (played by Willie Best) marginally better than the book. There are no racial slurs in the dialogue, but a cringe-worthy portrayal of Algernon as a lazy, superstitious “Stepin Fetchit” stereotype is hard to watch.

In many respects, High Sierra reminds the viewer of a western, especially with it climactic shootout amid dramatic mountain scenery. Director Raoul Walsh certainly saw those qualities in the first film adaptation and, in 1948, when Warner Bros. found itself short on good scripts, he pitched the idea of actually turning High Sierra into a western. Studio mogul Jack Warner approved the project, shooting took place in New Mexico from September to November, 1948, and the finished Colorado Territory premiered in June 1949.

This time around, the protagonist is mid-19th-century bank robber Wes McQueen (played by Joel McCrea), who is busted out of jail by his old friend Dave Rickard (Basil Ruysdael) and told to head off to Colorado Territory. In the stagecoach along the way, McQueen meets Fred Winslow (Henry Hull, who played the doctor in High Sierra) and his daughter, Julie Ann (Dorothy Malone—not disabled like Velma Goodhue, just in a very bad mood); they are bound west to take up ranching. Julie Ann is the spitting image of Wes’ old girlfriend, Martha, who died while he was in prison. McQueen travels to the ghost town of Todos Santos, where he meets the rest of his gang: Reno (John Archer), Duke (James Mitchell), and Colorado Carson (Virginia Mayo), who Reno picked up in an El Paso dance hall. In this version of the story, the gang has been assembled to execute a train robbery. Wes is tired of the outlaw life and hopes to use his share of the loot from this one last job to buy his own ranch and settle down, preferably with Julie Ann as his wife.

Following the general outline of High Sierra, McQueen is betrayed at every turn, first by the “inside man” railroad station agent, then by his partners, and finally—and most cruelly of all—by Julie Ann, who is barely stopped by Colorado Carson from turning him in for the reward money, a selfish impulse that earns her a slap from her father. Only Colorado can be trusted, and Wes eventually recognizes her as his true love. They go on the lam together and try to get married at the derelict Todos Santos mission, but the padre there explains he is “not a priest, only a brother,” and cannot perform wedding ceremonies. When Wes realizes the posse is closing in on them, he unsaddles Colorado’s horse to prevent her from following him. He rides into the “Canyon of Death,” hoping to elude his pursuers and escape south into Mexico, where he and Colorado can be reunited. Not so easily deterred, Colorado follows on foot and eventually catches up to the posse, which has McQueen holed up in the abandoned “City of the Moon,” an ancient Pueblo settlement carved out of the canyon wall. When Colorado arrives, the sheriff tricks her into luring Wes out into the open, where a sniper can shoot him. This time, though, Wes is only wounded. Colorado races up to meet him, carrying two pistols. As Colorado starts blasting lead at posse members, the doomed couple is cut down in a hail of gunfire, dying hand in hand.

Again, a much more dramatic climax than Burnett’s novel offered.

Not surprisingly, given its source material and director, Colorado Territory is a very good production, one which American film historian David Meuel thinks, “in several ways, improves on the original.” Although not quite an “A” picture, it definitely rises above “B” status. It is also a prime example of the “noir western” subgenre that combined elements of film noir (including cinematography techniques) with the traditional western—Walsh was a pioneer of the noir western, with his 1947 film, Pursued, featuring noir stalwart Robert Mitchum, often considered to be one of the earliest examples.

The original, 1949 theatrical trailer for Colorado Territory.

The acting in Colorado Territory is strong, even if the Wes McQueen role is somewhat miscast. A veteran of countless westerns, Joel McCrea was resistant to playing “bad guy” parts during his career. So, he is not quite believable as an outlaw, even one who wants to leave behind his life of crime and settle down with the woman he adores. But he has strong chemistry with Virginia Mayo and he is not someone to be messed with in a gunfight. There are no dogs or racial stereotypes in this version, although we are told that Colorado is a “half-breed” (“Unusual for a blonde, wasn’t it?” Virginia Mayo is reported as saying years later). Otherwise, the Native Americans in the film, although in small roles, appear to be treated in non-stereotypical ways and with basic respect and dignity—on both sides of the law.

High Sierra was remade again in 1955 as I Died a Thousand Times. It is described as a scene-by-scene remake of the 1941 version, albeit in color, and this time Burnett is the sole credited screenwriter. In an interview (quoted in Marilyn Ann Moss’ Walsh biography), Burnett stated that the script for the original was weakened by the interference of associate producer Mark Hellinger and indicated his clear preference for this version. “The main point wasn’t as strong as it should have been. I corrected that in the remake … The remake is a better picture. Except we had two repulsive people in it—Jack Palance and Shelley Winters … I think the script is much better. I cleaned up the script …” This writer has not yet seen it.

SOURCES
Meuel, David. The Noir Western: Darkness on the Range, 1943-1962. McFarland & Company, 2015.
Moss, Marilyn Ann. Raoul Walsh: The True Adventures of Hollywood’s Legendary Director. The University of Kentucky Press, 2011.
Nott, Robert. Last of the Cowboy Heroes: The Westerns of Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, and Audie Murphy. McFarland & Company, 2000.

READ MORE: W.R. Burnett’s 1982 Obituary.

Bringing Kerr’s Berlin to Television

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 14:55:00 +0000

We were already aware that the streaming service Apple TV+ intended to adapt the late Philip Kerr’s excellent Berlin Noir thrillers for the small screen. But the London Times brings news now that filming “is at last underway,” with Jack Lowden (Slow Horses) starring as Kerr’s Nazi-era detective, Berlin Gunther. As The Times explains,

The series will be based on Metropolis, which chronologically is the earliest Gunther story, although the last published by Kerr. It is set in 1928—hence the title’s nod to Fritz Lang’s film of the time—and features Gunther as a young policeman working the vice beat in the seething German capital immortalised by Christopher Isherwood.

Kerr’s early novels have been characterised as Raymond Chandler transposed to the period of Weimar and the rise of Nazism, with later books cutting between the war years and those before and after it. The hard-boiled Gunther, who served as a sergeant in the First World War and whose wife then died of Spanish influenza, certainly shares similarities with Chandler’s cynical gumshoe, Philip Marlowe. The common tone is one of world-weariness. Both are essentially disappointed romantics who have come to an accommodation with the powers that be. They try to do the right thing, particularly when there is an attractive woman involved, but often find themselves in the role of fall guy.

The paper goes on to remark that “Part of the appeal for Apple is doubtless parallels that could be drawn now with a period when extremism was also on the rise. It is in Metropolis, as he investigates a baffling series of murders of those living on the margins, that Gunther first encounters nascent fascism. The chief challenge, however, for screenwriter Peter Straughan, who adapted Wolf Hall for television and won an Oscar for Conclave, will be capturing Kerr’s ability to meticulously recreate the era, as well as the spirit of the other principal character in the books, Berlin and its hard-headed inhabitants. With luck, Kerr will finally get the popular recognition he deserves.” Tom Shankland will direct the new show.

In addition to Lowden, this historical drama will feature Oscar winner Colin Firth, playing “Paul Lohser, a brilliant but prickly Murder Detective with the Berlin Police. Meticulous, anti-social and well-educated,” according to Deadline, “he’s everything Bernie isn’t. And as his partner and unlikely mentor, Lohser is Bernie’s best and only hope of catching … a serial killer targeting victims on the fringes of society.”

Times Tallies Talent

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 17:47:00 +0000

Presentation of the 2026 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes is set to take place on Friday, April 17. In the run-up to that, five final contenders have been announced in the Mystery/Thriller category. They are:

• El Dorado Drive, by Megan Abbott (Putnam)
• Everybody Wants to Rule the World, by Ace Atkins (Morrow)
• Crooks, by Lou Berney (Morrow)
• The Proving Ground, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)
• King of Ashes, by S.A. Cosby (Pine & Cedar)

In addition, Tod Golberg’s Only Way Out (Thomas & Mercer) has found a place among candidates in the general fiction category.

Congratulations to all of the nominees! To see more finalists for this year’s L.A. Times prize categories, click here.

Revue of Reviewers: 2-16-26

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 19:21:00 +0000

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

A Bumper Crop of Commentaries

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 16:34:00 +0000

The Winter 2026 edition of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine was transmitted last week to subscribers, and at 106 pages in length (which editor George Easter says makes it the “largest issue ever”), it furnishes a great deal of material for enjoyment.

Dominating the mag this time are 89 lists of the “best” mystery, crime, and suspense novels published in 2025. We’re given picks by DP’s usual contributors, but also those from myriad other print and Web publications (including The Rap Sheet) as well as large booksellers on both sides of the Atlantic. Further, Easter has sifted through all of those selections to determine which titles appear most frequently (S.A. Cosby’s King of Ashes and Richard Osman’s The Impossible Fortune win that race). He noticed a couple of trends while compiling these lists: “There didn’t appear to be any diminution of the number of psychological/domestic suspense novels, but there did seem to be an evident uptick in the number of traditional mysteries published. Also there seems to be a blending of the line between mystery/crime fiction and horror fiction. A few titles that I would consider horror fiction have made it onto best mysteries of the year lists.”

Ah, but there’s more (as so many TV commercials often like to promise)! Filling out his electronic pages, Easter includes here a “Most Anticipated Mysteries of 2026 list” that runs to “300+ titles”; an interview with author Elizabeth Heider and reviews of her two books starring Naples, Italy, investigator Nikki Serafino (May the Wolf Die and the brand-new Children of the Savage City); and of course, DP’s stable of critics have their say about recent releases in this genre (Max Allan Collins’ Return of the Maltese Falcon wins plenty of attention). Easter’s quarterly is always strong on book reviews, but this number provides many more than we have come to expect.

Gone are the days when Deadly Pleasures was available in print; it’s now a more handsome digital periodical, available for an annual subscription price of $10. Learn more here.

Fredericks, the Flapper, and the “Card Cad”

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 17:03:00 +0000

What history tells us is this much: On the morning of Friday, June 11, 1920, wealthy bridge-playing playboy Joseph Elwell was found dying in the drawing room of his locked-tight, four-story home on West 70th Street in New York City, a bullet having been fired from a semi-automatic pistol into the center of his forehead. Police at the time were baffled—and the murder hasn’t since been solved.

That puzzle propels the action in Mariah Fredericks’ seventh historical mystery, The Girl in the Green Dress (Minotaur), touted by Bookreporter as “over-the-top brilliant, an iconic fact-based work of art.” Publishers Weekly, for its part, called the novel a “riveting standalone” and added, “Fredericks has struck gold.” The Girl in the Green Dress has been nominated this year for an Agatha Award and a Lefty Award. It found a place among my own “favorite crime fiction of 2025” selections, largely based on the appeal of its real-life players.

Thirty years after Elwell’s untimely passing, a journalist by the name of Morris Markey offered this gossipy description of the deceased in an article for Esquire magazine:

The dashing Elwell (who was forty-four years old when he died) was no Johnny-come-lately. He had put together a quite substantial fortune despite the fact that the only capital he possessed at the beginning was his nimble mind, plus instinctive good taste, plus the manners of a gentleman that he had learned at his mother’s knee. On the morning that the bullet found him, he owned about $500,000 worth of real estate. He had about $100,000 worth of personal property. His stable of twenty thoroughbreds was racing at Latonia. He kept his yacht at Palm Beach for his annual winter sojourn there. He owned five automobiles and, of course, the house on 70th Street.

It is true that he laid the foundation of these riches at the card table, where he played bridge for ten dollars a point and, on one occasion at least, gained thirty thousand dollars. Yet, significantly enough, the very friends who lost to him insisted unanimously that he was by no means a professional gambler. “It was a pleasure to play with him,” they said, “and it was worth it to have him beat you, because he had a cool passion for the science of bridge, the philosophy of a card game. He never seemed to give a thought for the money involved, whether he won it or paid it out.”

Gambling at cards was not, in short, his weakness.

But he had a weakness. And it seems to have absorbed his time and his thoughts to an almost fantastic degree.

Among the countless distinguished men who were delighted to know him, he was a man of impeccable honor, of fastidious regard for the social conventions. He was generous and considerate, and his nod of assent was better than a signed contract. But among the countless beautiful women who were equally delighted to know him, he was an insatiable voluptuary, a heartless rake who, with neither compunction nor pity, took the full advantage of their frailty. He played upon a whole orchestra of women as a conductor upon the podium bends the fiddles and the woodwinds to his whim.

It’s appropriate to my story here that Markey should’ve penned that Esquire piece. Born Lawrence Morris Markey in Alexandria, Virginia, in January 1899, he is said to have engaged in railroad work before signing on with the military in France during World War I. His initial newspaper job after returning stateside was with The Atlanta Journal. He eventually became a member of the original staff at The New Yorker, serving from 1925 to 1931 “in virtually every department” and launching that cosmopolitan weekly’s “A Reporter at Large” column, according to his New York Times obituary. Other than what he called an “unproductive” stint as a scriptwriter in late-1930s Hollywood, and his turn as a war correspondent in the South Pacific during World War II, Markey persisted in his civilian reporting career. He undertook assignments for McCall’s magazine, the North American Newspaper Alliance, Reader’s Digest, and of course, Esquire.

(Above) The opening spread of Markey’s October 1950 story in Esquire magazine, “Who Killed Joe Elwell?”

Morris Markey is also one of the two “celebrity sleuths” Fredericks enlists to solve Elwell’s slaying in The Girl in the Green Dress.

The other is 20-year-old Zelda Fitzgerald, bibulous and madcap mate to Jazz Age novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald (This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby), and much later, an author in her own right.

As the principal plot of Fredericks’ novel kicks off, it’s the small hours of June 11, 1920, and Markey is a headline-hungry newshound with the New York Daily News (“a new tabloid based on the idea that most readers hate to read”)—21 years old, impecunious, and love-starved. After staggering back to his West 70th cellar flat from a party dominated by writers (notable among them: then-drama critic Dorothy Parker), he espies Elwell, “a gentleman in a silk top hat and tails, stepping out of a canary yellow roadster” and entering his own abode directly across the street. Fredericks explains:

The door to the roadster was held open by a uniformed chauffeur in olive green. The gentleman carried a silver-topped walking stick, which he swung idly liked a bored conjurer. He was tall and arrow-slim. His sleek brown hair formed a clean, elegant line along his chiseled profile. His beauty and grace were such the grubby little street seemed transformed into a Broadway stage.

He lifted a laughing girl from the car. Alighting from the roadster, she raised her bare arms and shimmied. She wore a dress of green and silver shards, as if she had been showered in dollar bills, with just enough clinging to her body to avoid arrest. Around her shorn auburn hair, a headband with a peacock’s feather drew the eye to her glorious, exposed neck. Markey stared. He felt sure he would step in front of a bus to protect that neck, the long, graceful arms, the sheer joy of her. She was a girl you’d do anything for because she’d make you feel you could do anything.

Markey soon retreats to bed, only to be jolted awake by a woman screaming outside. She’s Elwell’s housekeeper, who has just discovered the “Bridge King of Manhattan” shot and slumped in red silk pajamas. While ostensibly helping her and searching for killers secreted in Elwell’s closets, Markey inspects the crime scene in order to write all about it. No sign of the mysterious Girl in the Green Dress, but he does find evidence that Elwell had spent part of the prior evening at Midtown’s swank Ritz-Carlton Hotel. So he speeds there, looking for people who might have seen Elwell … only to land on the doorstep of two other hotel guests, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. His first encounter with the latter is memorable, indeed. “She was not entirely dressed,” writes Fredericks. “Covered, somewhat, in men’s pajama bottoms and a silk robe that looped at the waist. A sudden gesture and it would fall open, and she seemed a girl given to sudden gestures.”

The June 14, 1920, edition of the New York Evening World supplies the latest news regarding investigations into Elwell’s murder.

Zelda is given as well to boredom. She’s desperate for fresh entertainment, while her hubby focuses on his writing rather than on her. Which is why she quickly volunteers to help Markey investigate Elwell’s demise. Her First Flapper renown opens doors through Gotham society that would’ve been closed to the scoopster, and her oft-flirtatious goading keeps Markey digging into who might have offed the card mechanic (a jealous inamorata—or perhaps an incensed husband?); what became of the lissome lovely Elwell brought home on his last morning alive; what the truth is behind the deceased’s “heartless rake” notoriety; and what all of this has to do with an organization dedicated to exposing German sympathizers during the recent war in Europe.

The Girl in the Green Dress re-creates Jazz-Age Manhattan in meticulous detail, with an air of ebullient postwar hedonism that refuses to be stifled by priggish moralizers. And it delivers occasionally splendid shorthand character descriptions, such as that of Markey’s demanding editor—“a wrung-out rag of a man who hadn’t really approved of anything besides a stiff drink in decades.” In addition, the yarn both captures the clever banter, boldness, and rompish energy we’ve come to associate with Zelda Fitzgerald (thanks to several film and TV portrayals over the years), and periodically reveals her more philosophical mien. “This town is more a reflection of itself than anything real,” she muses. “When people talk about New York, they’re really talking about themselves being in New York, like the city’s a mirror they like to see themselves in.” What’s more, around her book’s main mystery plot, Fredericks wraps the equally curious fate of Morris Markey, who—like Joseph Elwell—died at the wrong end of a gun.

(Left) Mariah Fredericks.

It was in mid-September of last year that I met author Mariah Fredericks at Bouchercon in New Orleans, shortly after The Girl in the Green Dress debuted. At the time, I was busy planning end-of-the-year wrap-ups and not anxious to shoulder additional responsibilities. However, I so enjoyed my conversation with her, that I finally asked Fredericks if she would consent to be interviewed for The Rap Sheet. Her agreement let me inquire into her roots as a New Yorker; her time spent on the payroll of the Book-of-the-Month Club; her formative years as a young-adult author; her four-book mystery series starring early 20th-century lady’s mail Jane Prescott; her 2022 novel, The Lindbergh Nanny, which examined the 1932 kidnapping of aviator Charles Lindbergh’s first son from the perspective of that child’s caretaker, Betty Gow; her subsequent book, The Wharton Plot, which embroiled author Edith Wharton in the 1911 shooting of muckraking journalist David Graham Phillips; and of course, the background of The Girl in the Green Dress. In addition, I asked about what she has been working on since.

My original intent was to publish the following exchange more than a month ago, but computer difficulties postponed its appearance.

J. Kingston Pierce: Am I correct that you graduated from Vassar in the 1980s with a B.A. in history? What specific area of history did you specialize in? And why make that your primary focus?

Mariah Fredericks: You are correct. I specialized in Russian history, as well as Russian language, and traveled to the Soviet Union as it was then. For that, we can lay all the blame on Robert Massie’s Nicholas and Alexandra [1967] and Warren Beatty’s Reds [1981].

JKP: How long after college did you go to work for the Book-of-the-Month Club? Were there any other jobs in between?

MF: I landed at Book-of-the-Month Club about seven years after graduating. Before then, I worked in a bookstore and answered the telephone for various businesses. I had the idea that you should stay away from the publishing business if you wanted to write. That was a dumb idea. I remained artistically pure, but completely ignorant of how publishing works—which partly explains the three unpublished novels written in this time.

JKP: How many years did you work for the Book-of-the-Month Club? And what were your roles there? I understand you eventually wound up as head copywriter. What responsibilities did that entail?

MF: I worked there for almost a decade, starting as junior copywriter and rising to head writer. It was a wonderful job. Every three weeks, you were handed 30 titles ranging from literary fiction and genre to history and how-to. I, with two other writers, had to write articles for each book. It was a terrific education in commercial publishing. They had author lunches and I met people like Robert Harris (lovely) and Robert B. Parker (grumpy the day I met him). I’m still friends with old BOMC colleagues today.

JKP: Had you always wished to pursue a fiction-writing career?

MF: Sadly, yes. I remember at 7 typing out a half-page “spy novel,” because I noticed my parents’ obsession with Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and I thought it would be a good way to get their attention.

JKP: Did you begin writing novels while you were still working for the BOMC? Or did that come later?

MF: No, I was on my fourth failed novel by then. But I got my first agent and wrote my first book that ever sold while working there.

JKP: You’re talking about The True Meaning of Cleavage (2003). What led you into the young-adult fiction genre, rather than adult fiction? And what did you learn from working on Cleavage that helped you become a professional novelist?

MF: All my failed adult novels were informed by what was selling at the time. Bret Easton Ellis, Tama Janowitz, and Jay McInerny. The coke-and-clubbing novels. Since I neither did coke nor went clubbing, I don’t know what I was thinking. I did the break-up novel, the I-hate-my-mother novel, etc. They were bad and they got rejected. I got depressed and sat in an empty bathtub in the dark. At which point, my husband, who worked in children’s books and deeply admired those authors, suggested I try something for younger readers. Since he thought I could do it, I felt I had to try. So I turned to an event from 9th grade, a betrayal of a friend of which I was deeply ashamed, and that became The True Meaning of Cleavage. It was much more emotionally direct and authentic than anything I’d written until then. I found my first voice with that book. I learned a few things from that success. If what you’re writing isn’t getting you where you want to go, change it up. And while you should know something of the market, if you hate what’s selling, don’t try to imitate it. Write what you would read.

JKP: Before we move on, let me ask about those unpublished novels of yours that you’ve referenced three times already. Whatever happened to those books? Did you later cannibalize them for other stories, or are they never destined for any public exposure whatsoever?

MF: Never destined for public exposure. 😊

JKP: So you published your second novel, a women’s lit work titled Fatal Distraction (2004), as “Emmi Fredericks.” Why the pseudonym (which you used only once, as far as I can tell)?

MF: My young-adult editor preferred that I keep the careers separate. (He had a tricky experience with a middle-grade author who went on to write some very racy books.) I also used the pseudonym for a tarot guide that I sold as The Neurotic Girl’s Guide to Tarot, but ended up as The Smart Girl’s Guide to Tarot [2004].

JKP: At the time Fatal Distraction saw print, you described yourself as a “celebraholic.” Was that true, or was it merely a character trait you invented for your author alter ego? If it was true, then in what ways did your celebraholicism (is that actually a word?) manifest itself? Have you remained a follower of the famous? Who among today’s media personalities attract your attention most strongly?

MF: Absolutely true! I tried to be classy about it—People magazine, but not National Enquirer—but I was fascinated by celebrities in a “what are they really like?” kind of way. Living in New York, I was glared at by Sean Connery, I tripped over Jack Nicholson, and I once sat behind Stephen Sondheim at the theater. (My sister forbid me to speak to him.) I watched every awards show, hoping someone would be drunk or senile enough to reveal themselves. Every royal wedding, every royal funeral.

The rise of Kardashian culture has sort of killed the passion. With every move and emotion scripted and performed for public consumption, it’s hard to feel there’s any real person to discover. Also the intense nastiness of social media; you feel too aware of what anyone in the public eye has to cope with. A lot of that curiosity has shifted to historical figures. What would it be like to be in a room with Edith Wharton or E.B. White? Would someone evil be weirdly likable one on one? Would someone admirable be an annoying bore?

JKP: Tell me if I’m wrong, but you continued penning young-adult fiction/romance through 2013, with The Girl in the Park and Season of the Witch being your last entries in that category. Can we say that The Girl in the Park was also your first published crime novel?

MF: Oddly enough, my third YA novel, Crunch Time [2006], was my first published crime novel. It was about four kids who take the SATs; one of them cheats and you have to figure out which one did it. I had no idea it was a crime novel until it was nominated for an Edgar Award. I had just given birth and was in that sleep-deprived state where you wonder if you’ll ever leave the house again, so needless to say, I was a happy mom writer when I got the news. I remember the ceremony (I lost) being so good-humored and unpretentious. Everyone seemed happy to celebrate one another. And you got an Edgar Allan Poe bobblehead! I was like, I need to find a way back to this party. So Girl was my attempt at that, but it didn’t get nominated.

JKP: Had you long been a crime-fiction enthusiast?

MF: As a kid, I read true crime, Agatha Christie and Ira Levin. (Who, I realize is more horror than crime, but he lays clues to the conspiracy throughout his books.) I thought you had to be a brilliant puzzle-minded person to write mystery. I never thought I was smart enough. So I am eternally grateful to the Mystery Writers of America and Edgar voters for setting me on that path.

JKP: After that, you launched your well-received adult mystery series starring early 1900s Manhattan lady’s maid Jane Prescott. How did you choose her as your ideal amateur detective? And what were your objectives in creating a series around her?

MF: I didn’t choose Jane, she chose me. I was writing one of my last YA novels and the first two lines of No Importance came into my head: “I will tell it. I will tell it badly.” It was a young woman, but the tone was not contemporary. She had a secret she had kept for a long time. She didn’t think anyone would listen to her—why? Because she had no power. What would you keep a secret? Murder. A famous murder that only she knew the truth about precisely because she was a nobody. That’s how she became a lady’s maid. It had to be New York, because that’s the city I know, and it had to be 1910s, because I can’t cope with the facial hair before then. That’s how I ended up writing something I never thought I could write: a historical mystery. For Jane, I was willing to try.

My goal for the series was the lead-up to the Great War. One book for every year of the 1910s, each touching on a major event of that year—Triangle Fire, Armory Show—with a sense of domestic and international violence growing worse and worse until the war touches everyone in the series.

JKP: You were born, reared, and remain a resident of New York City. The Jane Prescott books gave you the perfect excuse to exercise your fascination with the city’s history. How satisfying was that?

MF: It’s more than satisfying. It’s healing. My parents met working for The New York Times. They made a point of taking me—as many parents do—to key places in the city. Broadway. Gino’s. The Plaza. The old Times building. I lost them relatively young and to write about a particular side of the city, to honor the places and people they valued, and have it recognized lets me connect with them in a way that gives me real joy.

JKP: What did your parents do at The New York Times, and did they live out their whole careers at that broadsheet?

MF: My mother was a fact checker for the magazine—Russell Baker once sent her flowers. And my dad was the picture editor for the magazine. He was forced to retire early, went into teaching, then back to magazines for the rest of his career. He and Morris Markey have a few things in common. Mom retired from the magazine joyfully.

JKP: Does your family claim deep roots in New York City history?

MF: Neither of my parents were born here. My father moved all over, my mother was from Ohio. They were what E.B. White called “settlers”—in his view, the best kind of New Yorker. But we have a lot of writers and therapists in the family, and a connection by marriage to the Zabars [of specialty markets fame]. I’ve lived in three of the five boroughs. So … pretty New York.

JKP: Why did you stop penning the Jane Prescott series after Death of a Showman (2021)? Did you run out of ideas or interest, or did you think it had played out as far as it could?

MF: Oh, not at all. I would love to go back to Jane. So many stories in my head! But the economics of series makes it hard. I really hope I find a way to get those books out in the world someday.

JKP: So you followed up Showman with The Lindbergh Nanny. Was that book one you had been noodling over for some while? I’ve heard that your interest in the Lindbergh kidnapping was ignited originally by watching the 1974 film adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express. Can that really be the case?

MF: You mean did my otherwise intelligent parents think that was a good movie to take an 8-year-old to? The answer is yes. I was completely horrified—and fascinated—by the idea that the worst thing in the world could happen to a small child. My parents had always assured me otherwise.

JKP: The Prescott series was told from the viewpoint of a lady’s maid with detective instincts. Nanny explores the snatching of 20-month-old Charles Lindbergh Jr. through the perspective of Betty Gow, that child’s real-life nurse—who for a while was a suspect in the still-infamous crime. In the course of your writing both, what did you discover about the domestic staffs of yore that watchers of, say, Upstairs, Downstairs or Downton Abbey do not know?

MF: What struck me was the lack of a private life. You are living in someone else’s home. You can’t leave, except on your day off. You are there to serve the family’s needs—as unobtrusively as possible. We think of domestic staff being beloved characters—Jeeves or for that matter, Jane. But really, you weren’t supposed to have a personality. Who wants the washing machine to offer an opinion? A lot of the Morrow/Lindbergh staff had substance-abuse issues. I think it must have been a way for them to create a private mental space for themselves.

JKP: How much research, and of what varieties, did you have to do for The Lindbergh Nanny in order to prepare yourself to advance your own theory about that 1934 kidnapping? Did it take you a lot longer to write Nanny than it had your previous historical novels? After all, that kidnapping has been studied by so many people, you were likely to face criticism for any small deviations from the historical record.

MF: The historical Betty Gow left behind just the right amount of information. We know what she was doing at key points of Charles Lindbergh Jr.’s life and after his death. We have a sense of her voice, her opinions of the family, and the basics of her timeline. She was not an overwhelming subject in the way that, say, Zelda Fitzgerald is.

Because I viewed the crime as a domestic tragedy, I started with the biographies of the Lindberghs. Then you move on to the big basic books on the crime, like Jim Fisher’s The Lindbergh Case [1994], then the more targeted, such as [Mark W. Falzini’s] Their Fifteen Minutes [2008]. I think I consulted at least 30 books. Most of the original source materials—police interviews, witness statements—are held at the New Jersey State Police Museum. I was writing during COVID and the museum was closed. I was enormously fortunate that a fellow writer reached out and offered his digital files. The archivist of the museum, Mark Falzini, was also very generous about answering questions. And I did check out the many message boards, just to make sure I was aware of the different arguments and takes.

It took me about a year and a half to write. The research was intense, but of course, your plot is basically written for you. I tried very hard to get the details right and not to deviate from the known facts, except in a few small points which I covered in the afterword. Because yes, there are a lot of people who are fascinated and quite knowledgeable about this case. With one unpleasant exception, the Lindbergh kidnapping community has been very generous to me and to the book.

JKP: Because so much is known about Charlie Lindbergh’s abduction, was it difficult to find ways to exercise your creativity in The Lindbergh Nanny, to make that story your own?

MF: No, because I knew no one had done Betty Gow’s point of view before. [British table maid and onetime suspect in the kidnapping] Violet Sharpe, yes, but not Betty. And oddly, little Charlie can get a bit overlooked. I wanted the reader to see him as a real little boy, adorable, much loved, difficult as toddlers can be. There are little scenes of him, pulling off his shoe, getting his hair cut, jumping on sofa cushions, so that hopefully the reader remembers him once he’s gone.

JKP: Your depiction of Charles Lindbergh and his wife, the former Anne Morrow, is not all that complimentary. Did your opinions of them change as you researched their behavior before and after the kidnapping, or did you always have a sense that they were somewhat less-than-skilled parents?

MF: The Lindberghs’ approach of leaving Charlie to fend for himself seems to us like a cruel isolation from care—Betty Gow had real problems with it. But who knows what future generations will say about the “cry it out” sleep method. Yes, Lindbergh had a callous, juvenile side that showed itself in disturbing ways. Anne made some questionable calls. Against that, you have to put the reality that some of his children at least tell stories of him as a creative, committed, and engaged dad. (Albeit one who had secret families.) But whenever something terrible happens to a child, we look for what the parents did “wrong.” Unconsciously, I think, so it won't happen to us. I’m in the minority here, but in some ways, the last thing I would judge about the Lindberghs is their parenting. They suffered the worst loss you can and it just seems like cruelty on top of cruelty.

JKP: Do you do the vast majority of your historical study before you start writing one of these novels, or do you begin writing early but continue to research as the story progresses?

MF: I start by doing just enough to get rolling with the voice and a general sense of the story arc. With Lindbergh Nanny, for example, I learned that Betty had her first interview with the Lindberghs in a hallway in the Morrow house [in Englewood, New Jersey]. I learned what was said—what she remembered—and developed the voices of all three characters in that scene. What the actual house might have looked like got researched later on. Architectural and scenic details are my least favorite.

JKP: Many people don’t remember nowadays that there were a number of prominent kidnappings during the 1930s. Not just the Lindbergh case, but also the abductions of Mary McElroy, Charles F. Urschel, Brooke Hart, and others. What was the cause of that “trend,” and what sort of national law-enforcement action did it provoke?

MF: Of course, one of the first books I looked at when starting my research was David Stout’s The Kidnap Years [2020]. It was the Depression. People were brutalized economically, and some became brutal in response. Gangs had been involved in the kidnap business since the turn of the [20th] century. Sometimes the child was returned once the ransom was paid, which may have led to some complacency about the scope of the problem. The Lindbergh kidnapping ended that. The case notably brought about the Little Lindy Law [aka the Federal Kidnapping Act of 1932], which made interstate kidnapping a federal offense. But it also led to a more “professional” approach on the part of law enforcement; it was a big boost for J. Edgar Hoover. Before then, the parents were allowed to take the lead on how the negotiation should proceed. The police weren’t seen as having any special tools or expertise and it was their child, after all.

(Right) A 1932 poster asking for the public’s help to find 20-month-old Charles Lindbergh Jr.

JKP: After exploring an unsolved crime through the eyes of a real-life character in Nanny, did you find the writing of The Wharton Plot—which enlists author Edith Wharton as a crime solver—any easier? Or was it just harder in other ways?

MF: Harder in almost every way. It was the first third-person novel I had ever written, and I decided it should “sound” like a Wharton novel. No problem! Also, while Betty was authentically part of the crime narrative, I had to work to make it credible-within-the-bounds-of-genre-fiction that Edith Wharton would insert herself into a murder investigation. And the victim in this case [novelist-journalist David Graham Phillips] was very hard to pin down as a personality.

But it was a happier story than Lindbergh. Betty’s story is one of terrible loss and survival. Edith begins The Wharton Plot at a crossroads. But she ends happy and triumphant.

JKP: Were you a big Wharton fan before diving into this novel?

MF: Yes. I remember reading The House of Mirth alongside Portrait of a Lady in high school and the teacher insisting that Henry James was the superior writer. I thought she was out of her mind.

JKP: I imagine that capturing Wharton’s voice and attitudes with confidence was difficult. With Nanny, relatively little was known about Betty Gow, so you could embellish her character somewhat. But with Wharton, much is known. It must have been an intimidating assignment, to try and resurrect her at an uncertain stage in her midlife, and then charge her with solving the real-life slaying of a fellow author. How did you finally connect with her as a character?

MF: We are both middle-aged New Yorkers who write and love dogs. I was aware when I wrote it that I was no longer young; my “era” has passed. I felt a strong need for change and a fear of being disloyal or thoughtless. That was similar to what she was feeling in 1911.

And I could connect to her over the “fun” of a writer’s life. In that very first chapter, Edith is laying siege to her poor editor. She is dissatisfied with everything: her advances, the publicity, even the way they’ve printed her book. All true. She’s aware that she’s coming off as demanding and imperious, but the drive to make her views known on something that matters enormously to her—her work—overrides that. I think every author on the planet can relate to that. And probably every editor can sympathize with poor [William Crary] Brownell. (Mine wrote “Ha!” in the margins several times.)

JKP: Had you happened across the Phillips slaying while doing research for your Jane Prescott series, also set in the early 1910s? Were you hoping to write about that crime, and finally dove in because you discovered that Wharton was in New York at the time? Or did you want to write about Wharton, first, and went looking for some real-life crime that gave her reason to gumshoe about Gotham?

MF: The interest in David Graham Phillips’ murder came first. There’s something about a muckraking journalist, a self-proclaimed enemy of the American aristocracy, being shot in broad daylight right outside [architect and fellow murder victim] Stanford White’s old house that feels emblematic of the transition from the Gilded Age to the era of mechanized slaughter. But my editor felt we needed a bigger draw than Phillips, so I started thinking about writers, because I’m always fascinated by the narratives we create around a crime. I took a look at what Edith Wharton was doing and when I saw that she was in the process of upending much of her life—leaving New York, settling in France, leaving her husband—I realized that also represented the last gasp of the Gilded Age and the stories dovetailed nicely.

JKP: After writing about the well-known Lindbergh case, did you find it freeing to re-create Phillips’ demise, about which so little is remembered these 115 years later? Did it allow you more leeway to fictionalize around the edges?

MF: It did—and I had to because in the actual crime, the killer committed suicide right after killing Phillips, so there was actually no mystery about who’d done it. I feel ambivalent about the changes. Every “notable” crime has its own theme. With Lindbergh, it’s who do you let inside the house? Inside your life? When you monkey with the facts, you lose some of the elements that support the thematic and historical narrative. There were aspects that resonated with the [2022] attack on Salman Rushdie, for example, and the toxic reach of social media. The truth was more harrowing than my version. But in a mystery, it’s not fair to have a total unknown be revealed as the killer at the last minute.

JKP: Are there advantages to writing standalone novels versus series?

MF: The key advantage to a standalone is its “news value.” You do Wharton in one book, Zelda the next. It’s not just the “next Jane Prescott.” You do get to meet new people and grapple with fresh narratives, which is fun. But if you’re someone like me who gets attached to characters, it’s very hard to leave them behind.

JKP: Lots of people have tried (with varying degrees of success) to shape mystery tales around historical crimes. Are there ingredients that are vital to make it work, or approaches that are better than others to grip the reader? And how much extra value is there in combining a real-life crime with a genuine historical figure, even if he or she is used fictitiously?

MF: I’ll only say what I try to do. I try to find a story that hit a nerve with the public because it revealed something ugly about their world that they might have suspected, but now—here’s the proof. Some of those anxieties are perpetual—as with Lindbergh. To be crude, you take the pain/fear point and put your finger on it and press hard. Give people a sense of how it felt to go through that.

I started putting famous writers into the story because the story that gets told about the crime is almost as fascinating as the crime itself. Their job is to depict the times in which they live. Crime is a great lens through which to see an era. And in the case of Wharton and Zelda, their lives reflect some of the societal change and turmoil that made the crimes resonate with the public so strongly at the time.

JKP: How did you come to compose The Girl in the Green Dress? And what led you to choose the journalist Morris Markey as your sleuth, rather than the more boisterous and bibulous Zelda Fitzgerald?

MF: I discovered Markey’s work for The New Yorker when I was reading up on big New York crimes of the 1920s and ’30s. He covered a lot of them for the magazine. Once I learned that he had died mysteriously—and in the same way as the subject of one of his last pieces—I really wanted to do both stories. As a writer and observer, he’s the natural lead detective. Part of Zelda’s enduring appeal is her divine narcissism. If it wasn’t about her or Scott, well, how fascinating could it be? But she did leave Scott behind to go off on jaunts and adventures with other men, so it seemed credible to have her go off with Markey. And the Elwell case at the center of the plot revealed a lot about people’s anxieties about the freedom of women after the war. And who embodies that better than Zelda Fitzgerald?

JKP: I’m guessing that the greatest part of the research you did for your latest book focused not just on Joseph Elwell’s slaying (which was well-covered by newspapers at the time), but on Zelda’s life as a 20-year-old celeb and new wife. What did it take for you to capture Zelda on the page? Did you read biographies of her as well as watch some of the TV movies and series in which she featured? Did any of the actresses who have portrayed her (Blythe Danner, Natasha Richardson, Alison Pill, Christina Ricci, etc.) become your image of Zelda as you wrote? Or were you able to keep the real woman in mind?

MF: Zelda’s voice really changes over time, to my ear. For her voice in New York, 1920, I relied on pieces she wrote in the early ’20s, especially “Eulogy on the Flapper.” It’s clever, defiant, still a bit shocking. She makes big bold pronouncements that don’t always scan logically, but it’s very entertaining. I read a few of the major biographies of her and of Scott. I read their letters of this time. I have a few images of her: the classic “Elizabeth Arden” shot of her and Scott where she’s heavily made up. Then the softer, very Southern photo of her from a few years before that. There’s also a silent film clip of her—supposedly—sort of hopping in place. It gives you a sense of her incredible energy and fun.

Of all the Zeldas you mentioned, I thought Alison Pill was the best [in Woody Allen’s 2011 film, Midnight in Paris]. I think Jennifer Lawrence will be amazing if that project ever happens. But the actress who conjured her devastating impact best to me was someone who never played her: Jessica Lange.

JKP: I must say, every time Zelda steps onto the page in The Girl in the Green Dress, it’s as if a black-and-white picture suddenly turns to color. She just brings with her so much life! Was it as much fun to write about her as it is to read about her? Or were your feelings about Zelda mixed by the time you’d finished with her?

(Right) Caddish card sharp and murder victim Joseph Elwell.

MF: It was almost too much fun in that you risk reducing her to an enchanting chaos agent. “This scene needs some life, let’s get Zelda in here!” Starting with Fitzgerald, writers have exploited her unique charisma, and I had to fight the easy choice to just use her to tell Markey’s story; she deserves an arc of her own.

Unlike Wharton, Zelda at 20 is not someone I have a natural affinity for. Before starting the book, I only knew the basic mythology: Southern, sexy, crazy. I had to ask why. Why did so many young women embrace an intensely mercenary hedonism? The image I kept coming back to was Madonna’s Material Girl, that vicious 1980s rejection of earnest ’70s feminism. By the end, my feelings were far less mixed. She was quite brave. So young. She fought hard to stay part of life. What she went through in the name of treatment is harrowing—as is her death, obviously. She actually turned down an invitation from Wharton to meet. I wish she hadn’t. The two women might have agreed on many things and Wharton could have given her some very good advice about the importance of friends, the trap of marriage, and how to follow your own creative path. Of course, it’s also possible she would have been imperious and condescending and Zelda was quite right not to go!

JKP: In real life, Morris Markey and Zelda never met, though they did have acquaintances in common. Yet in The Girl in the Green Dress, she sweeps him off his feet! I’m not sure she completely understands what affect she has on Markey, but the reader certainly does. She’s an exemplar of the “new,” post-World War I woman—less inhibited and reserved than their mothers, more prone to speak their minds and seek out pleasures. How important was it to your story, or to your development of their characters, that Markey more of less falls in love with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s missus?

MF: In a way, this is a Fitzgerald story, so someone’s heart has to get broken by a woman they can never have. Markey really wants to be a success. He really wants to fall in love. He really wants to leave the war behind and be part of this gaudy spree of post-war America. Zelda represents all of that. But we know right from the start it ain’t gonna happen. Working out the exact dynamic of how he makes his final, futile bid for her affections, the precise way in which she shatters him, took a lot of time. I wanted their need for each other to have integrity. History dictates they cannot be anything to each other, but there is, I hope, a sense of loss for both of them when it all goes wrong. They should have been pals. I’m sad I never got to write a scene where he visits her at Highland Hospital when they’re middle-aged.

JKP: You got to work here with a locked-room puzzle, a mystery-fiction trope that was very popular during the early 20th century. Was that part of your attraction to this story?

MF: Yes. I even gave S.S. Van Dine a cameo because, rumor has it, he based the first Philo Vance novel [1926’s The Benson Murder Case] on the Elwell case. In a way, the locked room is a natural progression from the Lindbergh kidnapping, which has at the heart the weakness in the household that lets the danger in. With a locked room, you’re supposedly safe, but you’ve inadvertently trapped yourself with the very person (or habit or choice) that will end your life.

Given the backdrop of the ’20s, which ends with a crash, and the lives of Markey and the Fitzgeralds—ditto—I saw the locked room as a metaphor for addiction, troubled marriage, fame, even mental illness, although that’s not a choice of course. All the self-destructive ways we trap ourselves. In Elwell’s case, you could say it was arrogance. Choices he made for which he thought others would suffer consequences, but never himself.

JKP: How confident are you of your conclusions regarding who killed Elwell and their motivation in committing that crime?

MF: I came to my vision of the right solution for my version of the story very early and never wavered. There is no evidence that it’s the historical truth. But there’s no evidence that it’s not.

JKP: And I love it that this book contains parallel mysteries: the unsolved murder of Joseph Elwell and the supposed suicide of Morris Markey, who also died by gunshot in 1950, decades after the main events recounted in The Girl in the Green Dress took place. You’ve said that parallel helped convince you to write this novel.

MF: Absolutely. That was the initial hook. I had high hopes of making Markey a series character. A Southerner who becomes one of the first important voices of The New Yorker, who writes about the city and its major crimes—and dies violently after writing about a murder that mirrors his own death—seemed like a natural to me. The mystery surrounding his death would be in the reader’s mind throughout the series, and with each book, you would learn a little more about what really happened. But people haven’t been clamoring for a Markey series. They want Zelda back!

JKP: An author publishes a book and thinks she or he understands everything there is to know about that book. But then readers and reviewers come along, and they often have unique insights into the story and its assorted players. What have you learned about The Girl in the Green Dress that you didn’t know before, after hearing about it from the reading public and interviewers?

MF: One reader pointed out the many echoes of Gatsby in the book, most of which I didn’t actually plan, and which serve as a testament to how deeply that book gets inside your head. On a more frightening note, I came across an AI summary of the book’s plot and themes. Strictly speaking it was accurate and it even picked up on things some readers have missed. But it was so hollow and inorganic. Like Styrofoam thought.

JKP: Did you know, when you were in the process of writing this book, that Canadian popular history author Dean Jobb (A Gentleman and a Thief, The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream) was working on a non-fiction work about Elwell’s death, due to come out in 2027?

MF: I did know! I wrote to him saying how much I enjoyed Murderous Dr. Cream and how excited I was for the Elwell book. I didn’t ask him questions about the actual case, because he doesn’t know me from Eve and there’s a certain sensitivity about using other people’s research for your book when their book hasn’t come out yet. But he very kindly congratulated me when Girl was reviewed in The New York Times. I hope his book tour brings him to New York.

JKP: When I met you at Bouchercon in New Orleans, you told me you were working on a Christmas mystery involving the 1932 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and threats against Santa Claus. Can you say anything more about that book now? Does the story again involve any real-life figures? Does it have a title yet, and when might we read the finished work?

MF: It’s called Murder on 34th Street and it will be out [from Minotaur Books] in October of 2026. It’s a lighter book than my other standalones, more in the Jane Prescott territory, with a smart, spirited assistant named Grace Verlander saving the day. Like Jane, Grace just got into my head and refused to leave until I’d done her story. The Straus brothers and Tony Sarg, balloon genius, have walk-ons. After Lindbergh, Wharton, and Zelda, I was ready to do something fun and funny and romantic. I love the Macy’s Parade. I used to get up at 4 a.m. to get a spot on the curb.

JKP: I think about your evolution from young-adult storyteller to adult novelist. Do you imagine the readers who enjoyed your early works would have themselves evolved to appreciate your more recent efforts?

MF: I hear from readers of my YA work occasionally, but it’s to say how much they loved those books, not the mysteries. I have a sneaking suspicion many of them are reading “romantasy” these days.

JKP: Finally, if you could have written one book that doesn’t already carry your byline, what would it be?

MF: Last summer, I re-read [George Saunders’] Lincoln in the Bardo for the umpteenth time and I thought, which I almost never do, God, I wish I’d written this. It has all the things I admire in storytelling: theatricality and discipline, a deep sense of history, brilliant characters—from the stars to minor players—and at the heart of it, a “problem” so simple and deep: a parent who has lost a child and cannot move on. But the inventiveness! The language! Saunders puts actual hell on the page in a way that would send the strongest atheist to a house of worship, just to make sure they didn’t end up there. It’s silly to envy anyone their genius or success. But I envy him the experience of writing that book. It had to be glorious.

Roses, Romance, and Wrongdoings

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 15:16:00 +0000

At least some traditions haven’t been swept away by time. When I was in elementary school, my classmates and I all exchanged Valentine’s Day cards on February 14. Everybody was given them—even boys nobody liked, and girls we thought too pretty to actually engage in conversation. It seems such exchanges are still made. My niece’s elder son, Gareth, told me during out monthly breakfast last Saturday that he and his father were cutting out small wooden hearts to dispense among Gareth’s fellow second-graders this week. It was only reluctantly that Gareth said he enjoys this custom.

Whether some people have made it a tradition, as well, to read Valentine’s Day-related crime fiction isn’t proven by any scientific study with which I’m familiar, but blogger-editor Janet Rudolph continues to encourage the practice. She recently posted her updated list of “mysteries that take place on or around Valentine’s Day.” Who but she knew that so many books fit the theme? Everything from Susan Wittig Albert’s Love Lies Bleeding, Laurien Berenson’s Killer Cupid, and Tony Bassett’s Not My Valentine to Rose Deshaw’s Love With the Proper Killer, Dorothy Cannell’s How to Murder the Man of Your Dreams, Jane Haddam’s Bleeding Hearts, and Alastair Gunn’s My Bloody Valentine.

Should you be in the mood tomorrow for some fictional crimes of the heart while munching through your boxed chocolates, keep these whodunits and the others on Rudolph’s roster in mind.

Nothing Will Replace the Original

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 01:58:00 +0000

Do we really need a reboot of that 1974-1980 TV classic, The Rockford Files? No! Yet that’s what NBC is anxious to force down our throats, with 56-year-old David Boreanaz (Angel, Bones, SEAL Team) cast as Los Angeles private eye Jim Rockford, a character synonymous with the significantly more appealing James Garner. From Deadline:

As expected, Rockford was a sought-after role. While broadcast pilots typically go through up to half-dozen offers for the leads until someone engages, there were only two offers in the case of The Rockford Files. Both got interest and led to negotiations, with the reason the first did not pan out being logistical, tied to the series’ filming location, I hear. ...

While The Rockford Files is set in Los Angeles, the pilot will shoot in Atlanta with additional filming in Los Angeles. It has not been determined where production on the potential series would be based should the pilot get picked up; it’s possible that the show applies for a California tax credit.

The Rockford Files, a contemporary update on the classic series of the same name, comes from writer Mike Daniels, producers Sarah Timberman and Carl Beverly and Universal Television.

In it, newly paroled after doing time for a crime he didn’t commit, James Rockford (Boreanaz) returns to his life as a private investigator using his charm and wit to solve cases around Los Angeles, with his charmingly gruff exterior masking a strong moral core. It doesn’t take long for his quest for legitimacy to land him squarely in the crosshairs of both local police and organized crime.

This isn’t the first effort made to remake Rockford for a modern audience. Dermot Mulroney starred in one pilot that bombed back in 2010. A film adaptation of the series was proposed in 2012, with Vince Vaughn (seriously, Vince Vaughn?!!) in the lead, but it was never produced. And now we have NBC intending to serve up David Boreanaz as wisecracking and perennially skint “Jimbo.” Consider me skeptical. Rap Sheet contributor Jim Thomsen put it best when he wrote on Facebook, “The Seventies was the point of The Rockford Files. Absolutely nobody wants to see Jim Rockford doing database searches or being paid in crypto or tracking down missing TikTok personalities. We’re there for plaid jackets and payphones and pay toilets. And answering machines big enough to be used as murder weapons.”

It’s not hard to imagine how Garner would take this news.

Gittes’ Unfinished Adventures

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 19:50:00 +0000

Here’s an interesting bit of trivia to come out of blogger Scott Montgomery’s recent interview with Max Allan Collins, in The Hard Word. Amid their discussion about the still-new Return of the Maltese Falcon, Montgomery mentions that Collins and film historian Heath Holland provided the audio commentary for last fall’s Blu-ray release of 1990’s The Two Jakes, Jack Nicholson’s oft-derided sequel to Chinatown (1974). In response to Montgomery asking him what he admires about The Two Jakes, Collins says:

Everybody goes into The Two Jakes with a Chinatown chip on their shoulder and [they] don’t drink in the great Nicholson performance, the Robert Towne dialogue, the terrific cinematography and the resonance with the original. I love Chinatown and I love The Two Jakes. After Chinatown’s success, [screenwriter] Towne announced he was doing a trilogy about water, oil, and air. I tried, unsuccessfully, to get the rights to finish the [private eye] Jake Gittes trilogy as a prose novel, Gittes vs. Gittes, in part about divorce but mostly about pollution and the building of the freeways. Not sure whether Towne ever took it to the script stage. Jack Nicholson should be proud, and a lot of people are wrong.

Wanting to know more Towne’s prospective third Gittes story (of course!), I fired off an e-mail note to Collins, asking for details about his pursuit of the rights to the trilogy. His response:

About 10 years ago, I told my Hard Case Crime editor, Charles Ardai, I wanted to see if I could do Gittes vs. Gittes as a novel. My idea was simply to get whatever Towne had worked up on it and go from there—with his input and guidance, of course. How much he might have put together was uncertain—interviews with him indicated everything from a script to just an idea or even merely a title.

Charles thought we should go after the entire Gittes trilogy, including Chinatown, but I thought it was pointless to do Chinatown. Obviously, I’ve [written] plenty of movie novelizations, but I didn’t see any purpose in writing a novel version of a movie that perfect. I was in favor of doing The Two Jakes, however, because I knew Towne's several scripts differed in some ways from the film, and I thought The Two Jakes could use some attention that a novel might spark. I love that movie.

All I know is, Charles made some calls and they were somewhat serious, but ultimately nothing came of it. I’d still like to do it.

I guess we must add this to the “what might have been” file.

End of a Splendid Pairing

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 21:21:00 +0000

This is very sad news. I learned from Facebook earlier this week that Michael G. Jacob, who with his wife, Daniela De Gregorio (and under their joint pen name, Michael Gregorio), wrote the excellent Hanno Stiffeniis and Sebastiano Cangio series, “died suddenly back in November,” just a month after his 77th birthday. I haven’t found an obituary published anywhere that cites his cause of death.

What little I can easily piece together of Michael’s backstory is this: He was born in Liverpool, England, on October 8, 1948, and eventually graduated from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne before moving to Italy. He and Daniela lived in Spoleto, a small town in that country’s Umbria region. At one point he taught English and the history of photography. But both Michael and Daniela wished to publish novels. He recounted during a 2010 interview with The Rap Sheet how they finally made that dream come true:

Back in 2000, we were working separately on novels, but neither of us seemed to be going anywhere. Daniela was teaching philosophy, and she was fascinated by something she had read about the Prussian philosopher, Immanuel Kant. Indeed, she had plans to write a short story about the great thinker, and the rough ex-soldier, Martin Lampe, who was his personal valet. The two men had been living under the same roof for almost 30 years when, one day, the servant was sacked on the spot. What had Lampe done to give offense? And why did the “most rational man in the world” paste notices around his house, reminding himself to “Forget Martin Lampe”? Kant’s biographers had little to say on the subject, so we began working together on a possible explanation. The result in 2006 was A Critique of Criminal Reason.

Although Kant plays a role in the serial-murder investigation central to that novel, set in 1804 in the then-Prussian town of Königsberg (now part of Russia), the protagonist is actually a young magistrate and reluctant investigator, Hanno Stiffeniis. Michael and Daniela later produced another three tales starring Stiffeniis, the last of which was Unholy Awakening (2010). After announcing it was “time for Hanno to take a break,” they created another mystery series, this one set in modern times and led by Sebastiano Cangio, a park ranger in central Italy’s “stunning” Sybilline Mountains National Park. The first of those three works was Cry Wolf, which appeared in 2014. At least one other work of historical fiction carries the Michael Gregorio byline: Your Money or Your Life, published in France in 2013 and featuring Renaissance-era fresco artists traveling through Italy.

Although we never met, Michael was a fine and thoughtful correspondent. He contributed a variety of posts to The Rap Sheet over the years, on subjects ranging from the 2008 Italian Mafia movie Gomorra to Mike Ripley’s 2017 study of British thrillers, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. I read and greatly enjoyed all four of the Stiffeniis novels he penned with Daniela, and I still look at them fondly on my bookcases. He will be greatly and truly missed.

I wish Daniela the best in the face of this loss.

READ MORE: “Michael Gregorio on the Mafia, Pseudonyms and More” (Publishers Weekly).