B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 148
January 4, 2019
FFB: Emily Dickinson is Dead
In memory of Jane Langton, who passed away last month, I'm re-posting a previous FFB about one of her best-known works, Emily Dickinson in Dead.
Author Jane Langton (1922-2018) didn't come to mystery novels in any traditional sort of way. She studied astronomy at Wellesley College and the University of Michigan and received graduate degrees in art history at the University of Michigan and Radcliffe College. But turn to writing, she did, and in 1962 started penning YA novels (her book The Fledgling is a Newbery Honor book) and 18 adult mysteries which won her Bouchercon's 2000 Lifetime Achievement Award.
All of her mysteries focus on the same two protagonists, Homer Kelly, a distinguished Thoreau scholar and ex-lieutenant detective for Middlesex County, and his wife Mary. As the author herself once said, "Mary is the sensible one, but I confess I like Homer's rhapsodic flights of fancy." Most of the settings are in the author's home state of Massachusetts although she's sent her heroes to more exotic places like Florence, Oxford and Venice.
Langton also illustrated many of her novels with her own drawings, explaining it this way:
One of the greatest pleasures has been illustrating my adult books with drawings of the real places where my fictional events happen. I've loved setting up my folding stool in Harvard Square, or standing on my own back porch trying to get down on paper the look of the pants and shirts on the laundry line, or leaning against cars in Florence with sketchbook in hand to draw some architectural wonder. Conditions have not always been salubrious, as when my feet were submerged while I sketched the house of Tintoretto in Venice during the season of high water.
Her 1984 Homer Kelly novel, Emily Dickinson is Dead was nominated for an Edgar Award and received a Nero Award that year. It was inspired, no doubt, by the author's own interest in Dickinson, having written a text about the poet for the collection Acts of Light. The action in Langton's novel takes place at a symposium celebrating the 100th anniversary of the death of poet Emily Dickinson, where one attendee disappears and another is found murdered in the poet's former bedroom.
Langton's trademarks are all here in the novel, her memorable and descriptive settings, eccentric characters, a sly humor that pokes fun at the pompous academics and Amherst townsfolk alike. As the New York Times Book Review added, "Miss Langton is a sensitive and even elegant writer, one who deals with literate, intelligent people..."
Homer Kelly is more of a peripheral figure in this particular novel, but he sums up the essence of his philosophy—and probably that of the author—and the book quite nicely:
Homer Kelly, too, was enchanted with the afternoon. It wasn't the justice of the women's cause that had diverted him; it was the everlasting melodrama of human souls in conflict. It was the handfuls of gritty sand that were forever being sprinkled into the machinery of daily life, grinding the ill-fitting cogs against each other, warping the sprockets, jamming the mismatched teeth. It was always so fascinating, the way people went right on being so outrageously themselves, and therefore so eternally interesting.
Although not so much a mystery as a wry study of human hubris and self-delusion, the book's character studies, snippets of poetry, Langton's illustrations, and even some details about the workings of dams and reservoirs, make Emily Dickinson is Dead an entertaining read.
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January 1, 2019
December 31, 2018
Media Murder for Monday - Final 2018 Edition
Monday greetings to all! I hope you had a lovely holiday season, and I wish each of you the best for the New Year! Now, on to the latest crime drama news:
THE BIG SCREEN
At the launch of Season 5 of the crime series Luther in London, the show’s star Idris Elba confirmed that a movie version of Luther is moving forward, with writer-creator Neil Cross working on the script. Elba added, "Luther has all the ingredients to echo those classic [neo-noir] films of the 90s like Seven and Along Came a Spider, and I think what we would like to do is use that blueprint to create Luther the film." Season 5 may serve as a "segue" to a movie version, if it all comes together.
Breaking Glass Pictures has acquired North American rights to the mystery thriller and noir feature film Naples in Veils from writer/director Ferzan Ozpetek, which will get a theatrical release in the first half of 2019 in English with Italian subtitles (followed by a DVD/VOD release). The story centers on a woman is at a party who meets a confidant and attractive young man, and they spend the night together. Little does she know, however, that she is about to become involved in a crime that will pull her into the center of the investigation.
British born Guyanese actor Jacob Scipio and Mexican actress Paola Nuñez have been signed for significant roles in Sony’s Bad Boys sequel, Bad Boys for Life, starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. The new installment centers on the Miami PD and its elite AMMO team’s attempt to take down Armando Armas (Scipio), head of a drug cartel. Nuñez will take on the role of Rite, the tough and funny criminal psychologist who is the newly appointed head of AMMO and Mike’s (Smith's) former girlfriend. It was previously announced that Alexander Ludwig, Vanessa Hudgens, and Charles Melton have also joined the project in supporting roles as members of a modern, highly specialized police unit.
Frank Adonis, who appeared in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, Raging Bull, and Casino, has died at the age of 83. Known for his many tough-guy roles, Adonis also guest-starred on TV series including The Sopranos, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, New York Undercover, and The Equalizer.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
Ahead of Ray Donovan’s Season 6 finale, Showtime has ordered a seventh season of the hit drama series starring Liev Schreiber and Jon Voight, with production beginning this spring. Season 6 focused on Ray's (Schrieber) journey to New York where he deals with a new ally in a Staten Island cop named Mac (Domenick Lombardozzi), while also trying to save the mayoral campaign of Anita Novak (Lola Glaudini), and dodge Mickey (Voight) who's on a mission to hunt down Ray and seek revenge.
CBS’s Elementary will come to an end with its upcoming seventh season. Although no premiere date has been set for the Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu-led drama’s final batch of episodes, it was announced that the modern-day take on Sherlock Holmes and Watson is coming to a "predetermined and natural conclusion" with those final installments which have already been filmed. Elementary will be the second long-running series on CBS to conclude in 2019, joining sitcom The Big Bang Theory which wraps after its 12th season in the spring.
Amazon released the trailer for Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders, which Amazon has slotted to premiere February 1 on Prime Video. Written and executive produced by Sarah Phelps (The Casual Vacancy, The Crimson Field), the three-part limited series stars John Malkovich as Hercule Poirot is the second of three dramatic series adaptations from Agatha Christie Limited for Prime Video in the US.
Wondering when your favorite shows will return in 2019? Deadline has a list of all the midseason TV premiere dates.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO
Crimetime Pod celebrated its 100th episode with the latest book reviews and news to ring in the new year.
The latest Writer's Detective Bureau podcast, hosted by Police Detective Adam Richardson, discussed "Privileged Communications, Autopsies in the 1930s, and Law Enforcement Mutual Aid."
On the latest Spybrary podcast, Spybrarian Jason King joined host Shane Whaley to share his 5 favorite spy books for 2018.
Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean and Rincey Abraham ran down their favorite mystery, thriller and true crime books of the year.
On the Crime Cafe, host Debbi Mack interviewed crime writer K'Anne Meinel, who has 100 published works including short stories, novels, and novellas.
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December 30, 2018
Sunday Music Treat
Another new year is upon us, and that means it's time for the Scottish folk classic "Auld Lang Syne" to shine in its many versions. Here's one Scott Drayco might play, only in this recording, it's Evgeny Kissin who's doing the honors at the piano:
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December 29, 2018
December 28, 2018
FFB: The Dancing Man
Philip Maitland Hubbard, better known as P.M. Hubbard (1910-1980) studied at Oxford where he won the Newdigate Prize for English verse in 1933. From Oxford he moved into the Indian Civil Service in northwest India, returning to England in 1947 to work for the British Council. Hubbard then turned to freelance writing — at first, short stories and poetry for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, some articles and, oddly, Parliamentary reports to Punch magazine, before finally focusing on writing novels full time. He penned 16 suspense/mystery titles from 1963 to 1977 with modest success, although one of his novels, High Tide, was adapted for television as part of the ITV network's Armchair Thriller series in 1980.
Hubbard's work is particularly known for his settings, mostly small rural villages or lonely isolated houses in places like secluded woods, along the coast, or in the Highlands. Hubbard once wrote that "As to my planning of a book, the plain answer is that I don't. I have some general theme in my head, and I marry that to a place (always imaginary, but imagined to the last detail and compass-point). The place is generally in fact the principal character in the book, because, again, places mean more to me than people. However, I start with the one or two characters necessary to carry the theme, and then I just start writing and see what happens."
His writing style is direct, minimalist and terse, which Anthony Boucher once noted: "Avoiding clichés as much as possible, interested in people yet devoid of sentimentality, without even any overt physical action, Hubbard can suggest untold horror in a few deft passages." Some may find this type of writing to be slow by today's standards, as Hubbard draws out the suspense quietly and gradually, like slowly playing out a guide rope until it suddenly snaps.
Hubbard didn't create any series characters or detectives, using only three or four main characters in each story, with little dialogue and large chunks of interior monologue narration from the POV character. The Dancing Man, from1971, is what Tom Jenkins of Mystery File noted was the epitome of Hubbard's style: a limited cast of characters, his sparse dialogue, and his plot complexities, all woven into the settings of an isolated Victorian house in Wales, a ruined Cistercian abbey and a Neolithic ring larger than Avebury and older than Stonehenge. 
The lead character of The Dancing Man is Mark Hawkins, engineer, cynic and loner, who has always resented his adventurer-archaeologist brother, Dick. Then Dick vanishes, allegedly dead in a climbing accident. A reluctant Mark starts investigating the site his brother was excavating, a Cistercian monastery, and meets three strange souls who were the last to see his brother alive — gruff professor Roger Merrion, who has more than an academic interest in the ruins, his fearful young wife, and his enigmatic virginal sister, whom Mark starts to fall for. The Dancing Man of the title is a pornographic carving at the ancient ruins that begins to exert an influence on Mark, but is it witchery, as a mysterious old man he meets tells him, or is something altogether real, but equally sinister? And why was his brother working at an 11th-century monastery, when his specialty was Neolithic archaeology?
It's definitely not the type of novel for fans of more modern, fast-paced punchy fiction, but if you're in the mood for a dark psychological story, then you can allow The Dancing Man to reel you in slowly as you become immersed in the almost claustrophobic pull of the protagonist's frame of mind as he gets closer to a murderous secret.
December 27, 2018
Mystery Melange
The Mystery Writers of America noted the loss of Jane Langton, a 2017 MWA Grand Master, who passed away on December 22, 2018 at the age of 95. In a writing career that spanned over four decades, Langton wrote and illustrated multiple mystery series for children and also penned adult mysteries including Emily Dickinson is Dead, which was an Edgar nominee and received a Nero Wolfe award. In addition to her Grand Master status, Langton was also winner of the Bouchercon Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000.
There's a new crime fiction event in the UK next spring. Book Lovers' Supper Club has announced the first Leonardslee Crime Festival celebrating the best of crime writing in the south-east of England, which will be held March 2-3. The Crime Festival will open with a whodunnit Murder Mystery afternoon tea presented by the Killer Women, featuring crime writers presenting an hour-long puzzle for the audience to solve. Melanie Whitehouse, founder of The Book Lovers' Supper Club, added that “Misleading everyone will be authors Elly Griffiths, Colette McBeth, Mel McGrath and Julia Crouch, plus top cop Graham Bartlett."
2018 has seen the rise of the niche independent bookstore including Knights Of, the publisher of minority-centered books that opened a pop-up bookstore which sold out of all its stock in a matter of days, and Troubador (who run self-publishing imprint Matador) and their Festival Bookshop housed in the back of a repurposed van. It only stocks Matador titles, and will tour festivals in the UK throughout the summer. Meanwhile, independent bookstore sales in the U.S. rose by 5% in 2018, according to the American Booksellers Association.
Shelf Awareness, an online organization focused on publishing industry news and trends, also has a newsletter for readers with book reviews, author interviews, quizzes, and more. Right now, they have a giveaway that also supports indie bookstores; if you signup for their twice-weekly reader newsletter, you'll be entered to win a $500 gift card to the indie bookstore of your choice.
Happy 20th anniversary to the world's first spy museum, which opened its doors in Tampere, Finland in 1998 with a vast collection of original and functional artifacts and documentation ranging from the First World War through the end of the Cold War. A sister museum opened in Washington, D.C., two years later, and the most recent member of the "family," the KGB Spy Museum in New York City, just recently opened its doors to the public.
There has been a big push for diversity in crime fiction lately, including Polis Books founder Jason Pinter launching Agora Books, a diversity-focused imprint. Writing for the Canada-based Quill & Quire, Wayne Arthurson focused on how white voices overwhelm Indigenous crime fiction, while author Sam Wiebe (who was the subject of an Author R&R a while back) urged his crime fiction colleagues and the genre at large to reckon with inclusion.
Hat tip to Elizabeth Foxwell for noting the Digital Cartographies of Spanish Detective Fiction at Grinnell College where assistant professor of Spanish Nick Phillips and undergraduate student Margaret Giles have created visual representations of investigations in Spanish detective fiction via the mapmaking program Carto. Authors covered include Carme Riera, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Juan José Millás, and Julio Muñoz Gijón.
Fun for book geeks: the New York Public LIbrary posted an (extremely unscientific) online quiz to determine which of Dewey Decimal System heading you fall under. Are you a 060, a lover of rules and guidelines? Are you an 818 joker? How about an 031 perfectionist or maybe a 629.8, possibly a robot?
The latest poem at the 5-2 crime poetry weekly is "Very Secret Santa" by John Kaprielian.
Writing for the LA Review of Books, Robert Allen Papinchak profiled Golden Age author Dorothy B. Hughes’s debut hard-boiled novel, The So Blue Marble (first published in 1940), which is being reissued by Penzler Press as the first in a series of American Mystery Classics.
In the Q&A roundup, Scottish crime author Ian Rankin is the latest "By the Book" interviewee at the New York Times; the LA Review of Books spoke with Erica Wright about The Blue Kingfisher, her latest novel featuring Kathleen Stone, a former NYPD undercover officer turned private investigator; and Irish author Tana French, best known for her Dublin Murder Squad series, also chatted with the LA Review of Books, discussing her latest work, a standalone psychological thriller, The Witch Elm.
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December 24, 2018
December 21, 2018
FFB - Tangle
Meg Elizabeth Atkins (1932-2013) was raised in Manchester in the U.K. and had a variety of careers from stable hand to secretary, before her first novel, The Gemini, was published in 1964. After the debut she published one novel roughly every five years, either standalones or installments in her two series, one featuring Inspector Sheldon Hunter and the other, Manchester C.I. Henry Beaumont. Most of Atkins's books are set in the stereotypical English village, filled with psychological studies spurred by what Tangled Web UK called "the almost demonic undercurrents beneath the polite and genteel surface of English middle-class life." The type of life where repressions tamped down by daily life often lead to violence and murder.
At the start of her novel Tangle, Arnold Peabody visits local medium Madame Lily after his mother dies to see if he can contact her from beyond the grave. Not long afterward, he takes up with a mysterious lady friend and things are looking up — until he drowns himself. Six months later, wealthy widow and "nerve-racking snob," Mildred Hewitt, falls to her death on a snowy night. Hewitt's son Gilbert also decides to visit Madame Lily and soon he, too, has a mysterious lady friend . . . and slowly begins a descent into insanity.
C.I. Henry Beaumont has often visited Avenridge, the town where the deaths take place, ever since he was sent there as a child, a wartime evacuee who stayed with the wealthy Dash family. His knowledge of the area and its people leads him to suspect the deaths weren't accidental. With the assistance of the quirky young Emmeline Dash, Henry starts to piece together the threads of hate that tie the crime together, but not in time to save a lost soul who comes to him for help. With three deaths now to solve, Henry knows he's running out of time before his cunning, malevolent quarry strikes again.
Although a little slow getting started, the prose tends to liven up when we're seeing the world through Henry's eyes instead of the third-person omniscient POV. The characterizations are sound for the most part, with some nice touches regarding setting, such as the following two excerpts:
Here long-vanished men, philoprogenitive, prosperous, had built their houses amongst tree-shaded roads and curving lanes...And the people who could afford to live in the houses could afford to maintain them with discretion: a renovation here, an improvement there, did so little to interrupt he continuity that a century and a half of domestic architecture stood preserved in all its minutely recorded evolutions, in an atmosphere of tender melancholy.
and
After a late breakfast they took the dogs and went out, walking through the rain to the old hotel where Emmeline had her workshop. Henry wore his hooded anorak, Emmeline something that looked like a groundsheet, her hair pushed under a W.A.A.F. officer's cap. Scarcely anyone was about, rivulets rushed along the gutters of the up and down streets and the greyness of Avenridge, its changing textures, came back with love and wonder to Henry. The sky phosphorescent before snow; the chiffon veils of mist; the autumn grey of woodsmoke, and in this downpour, the stone buildings shining like old pewter.
This is the fourth and last of the C.I. Harry Beaumont novels, which is a shame because the character has a lot of room for growth and development. Some of Atkins' other novels start to dip a bit into the horror/supernatural realm, perhaps inspired by the author's nonfiction work, Haunted Warwickshire: A Gazetteer of Ghosts and Legends. Her books were mostly out of print until recently when Endeavour Media reprinted several of her titles, including Tangle. Martin Edwards has a brief remembrance of Atkins .
December 20, 2018
Mystery Melange, Christmas Edition
Over at the Mystery Fanfare blog, Janet Rudolph has compiled her annual - and growing- list of Christmas-themed or Christmas-set crime fiction. The list has grown so long, she's had to split it into several lists. You can find all the various links (by alphabet) to the novels, as well as Christmas mystery short stories and novellas, right here.
Several authors, including crime writer Laura Lippman, are auctioning the chance to name a character in an upcoming book. Proceeds benefit Immigrant Families Together. But you'd better hurry since the auction ends tonight at 11 eastern time.
Many of us in the crime community are still mourning the death of Bill Crider, author of the Sheriff Dan Rhodes series and many short stories, as well as being a longtime supporter and promoter of the genre. Next year, the 50th Boucheron conference, to be held in Dallas, will be celebrating that anniversary with a commemoration of Crider via the Bill Crider Prize for Short Fiction. They're looking for short mystery/crime stories of 3500 to 5000 words using the theme Deep in the Heart (relating to Texas with an element of mystery or crime), with a deadline of March 1. (Hat tip to Sandra Seamans.)
As part of his Holiday Bookstore Bonus Program, James Patterson is once again partnering with the American Booksellers Association to distribute grants of $750 to 333 booksellers. The winners were nominated by customers, booksellers, publishing industry colleagues and others, who were invited to answer the grant application's one question: "Why does this bookseller deserve a holiday bonus?" To see if your local bookstore was a lucky recipient, you can check out the list from ABA.
In a Christmas present of sorts for crime fiction readers, Sourcebooks announced it has acquired most of the assets of award-winning crime and mystery publisher Poisoned Pen Press that will become Sourcebooks' mystery imprint. Sourcebooks senior editor Anna Michels will oversee the new Poisoned Press imprint and acquire some of its titles, while Poisoned Pen editor-in-chief Barbara Peters will continue in that role and acquire front list titles for the new Poisoned Pen Press imprint.
The latest issue of Black Mama is out with lots of "holiday noir" stories to act as an antidote to all those sugary treats you're having and the syrupy Christmas muzak in the stores. In a reprint of Mark David Kevlock’s Spinetingler award-nominated “The Present,” suspected incest drives a teen crazy on the year’s holiest night. In Morgan Boyd’s “Red Christmas,” crooks learn that the mob never takes a day off. Luke Walters’ “Christmas Eve Blow and Doll Houses” features a thief who is forced to play Santa. Mandi Rose’s “Holly, Jolly” gives us a pedophile Kris Kringle. BAM’s “Samurai Santa” carries a big sword. And in Kenneth James Crist’s futuristic “Badass Ted’s Christmas Adventure,” a notorious serial killer gets whacked before he reaches his prime.
King's River Life magazine has a couple of holiday-themed short stories online for your holiday reading pleasure, including "The Engagement Ring Miracle" by Elaine Faber and "Snowdog" by Maryetta Ackenbom.
Classic Mysteries offered up The Twelve Reading Days of Christmas, with "a list of twelve mysteries that may help instill a bit of the Christmas spirit into the stoutest Grinch."
It's hard to imagine Christmases past and present without Charles Dickens' beloved and iconic Christmas Carol, but the author was apparently never quite happy with it, revising it over and over through the years.
Mystery Lovers Kitchen had several holiday offerings of both books and recipes, including Christmas Cinnamon Wreath Bread from Daryl Wood Gerber; Pecan Praline Sauce from Peg Cochran; and festive Layered Holiday Drinks from Cleo Coyle to make your "spirits" even brighter. Daryl Wood Gerber even has a Raspberry Coffee Cake for folks who have to eat gluten-free.
The end of the year lists continue with The Boston Globe out with its "Best Books of 2018" choices, including the paper’s 16 crime fiction favorites.
If you're looking for more good gift books ideas, Bustle rounded up eleven mystery and thriller authors to recommend their best reads of 2018.
Wondering how to get your family to read this holiday season? Here are some tips.
Kittling: Books has some favorite "Cozy Holiday Cover Love."
Former police officer turned author, conference organizer, and writing consultant Lee Lofland, offered up his humorous holiday tradition of "The Twelve Knights of Graveyard."
Writer's Digest took advantage of the holiday to propose "4 Writing Techniques to Borrow from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol."
The Write Practice has regular writing prompts for authors to hone their skills. This week's is "Build Your Own Alien Holiday."
Sue Coletta posted her "Crime Writer’s Version of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.'"
The latest poem at the 5-2 crime poetry weekly is "Ice Cream Uber Alles" by Jeff Bagato.
In the Q&A roundup, Deborah Kalb spoke with author J. Lee about his new novel The Hubley Case; and the American Booksellers Association spoke with Lisa Jewell, author the murder mystery Watching You, January’s ABA #1 Indie Next List Pick.
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