B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 152

Quote of the Week

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FFB: Nine Coaches Waiting

British author Mary Florence Elinor Stewart was a multi-bestselling author was at the peak of her popularity from the late 1960s through the 1980s. However, her career started back in 1954 with the release of Madam, Will You Talk?, her first foray into romantic suspense. Although best known for her Merlin series, Stewart has legions of fans who appreciate her romantic suspense novels, including This Rough Magic, which I blogged about a few years ago.



Nine Coaches Waiting is a Stewart suspense novel originally published in 1958. It centers on Linda Martin, a young orphaned French expatriate who's been living in England. After ten years in the UK, she returns to Paris to take on the post of governess to the nine-year-old Count Philippe de Valmy. Linda soon forms a fond with Philippe, who is also an orphan living with his Uncle Léon and Aunt Héloïse in the huge Château Valmy situated (of course) far from civilization. From the get-go, an air of foreboding about the place makes Linda decide not to admit that she speaks fluent French. (The de Valmys had insisted that their nephew’s new governess should be an English girl, after all.)



Linda falls in love with the beauty and history of the estate and surrounding countryside and even finds herself falling for the reckless and rakishly handsome Raoul, son of Léon and Héloïse. But then mysterious accidents start to happen, and Linda feels an increasing sense of danger and dread. Little by little she wonders if the accidents are related to the fact that her young charge will inherit the estate when he comes of age. Can she trust the charming but imposing Léon or the cold and aloof Héloïse? Or is the real threat the attractive Raoul? The young governess has to struggle against her fears and suspicions to keep herself and Philippe safe.



As with This Rough Magic, the setting of the story serves as one of the the most impressive characters, as in this passage:

I craned forward to look. The village of Soubirous was set in a wide, green saucer of meadow and orchard serene among the cradling hills. I could see the needle-thin gleam of water, and the lines of willows where two streams threaded the grassland. Where they met stood the village, bright as a toy and sharply-focused in the clear air, with its three bridges and its little watch-making factory and its church of Sainte-Marie-des-Ponts with the sunlight glinting on the weathercock that tips the famous spire.

And as with most of Stewart's protagonists, Linda has to use her wits and deductive reasoning to save the day, rather than any modern kick-ass theatrics. As the author herself once said, "I take conventionally bizarre situations (the car chase, the closed-room murder, the wicked uncle tale) and send real people into them, normal everyday people with normal everyday reactions to violence and fear; people not 'heroic' in the conventional sense, but averagely intelligent men and women who could be shocked or outraged into defending, if necessary with great physical bravery, what they held to be right."

            

Author R&R with Jay A. Gerzman

Jay A. Gertzman is Professor Emeritus of English at Mansfield University, where his specialties included Shakespeare, D.H. Lawrence, noir crime fiction, and literary censorship. He's written books on the editions of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and on the distribution and prosecution of erotic literature in the 1920s and 30s. He's also the author of the seminal study of Samuel Roth, Samuel Roth, Infamous Modernist. Gertzman has published articles on David Goodis in Paperback Parade, Crimespree Magazine, Academia.com, Alan Guthrie’s Noir Originals, and the programs of the Noircon conferences.

His new book is titled Pulp According to David Goodis, which, as the title suggests, focuses on the work of David Loeb Goodis (1917-1967), an American writer of crime fiction noted for his output of short stories and novels in the noir and pulp fiction realm. Gertzman's work starts with six characteristics of 1950s pulp noir and works its way to drawing parallels between Goodis's work and Kafka’s. Other elements covered in this critical analysis of Goodis’s oeuvre include his Hollywood script-writing career; his use of Freud, Arthur Miller, Faulkner and Hemingway; and his "noble loser's" indomitable perseverance. Woody Haut (author of Neon Noir: Contemporary American Crime Fiction), called Gerzman's book "The most comprehensive Goodis study yet. Gertzman culls the files, brings everything together and then some. Not only essential reading for all Goodis obsessives but an excellent introduction to one of noir’s greatest writers."

Jay Gertzman stops by In Reference to Murder to talk about writing and researching his new book:

 

AGING BOOKWORM’S PAPER TRAIL TRACES PULP WRITER

David Goodis became exclusively a writer of crime paperback originals (not previously published in hardback) in 1950. He remained so the rest of his life. The points of sale, the readership, and the selling points of the novels were the same as for the pulp crime magazines. They had the same distributors. People scoped them out on newsstands, in drug stores, super markets, candy stores, cigar stores, hotel lobbies, bus and train stations, and for a while in subway station vending machines.

My first task was to study the pulp market. The Association of National Advertisers recorded magazine circulation and rate trends, from 1937 to 1995. Popular Publications studied the parameters of marketing and distributing the paperback “original.” The “original” was a new and highly significant post-war development in mass market popular entertainment. Publishers like Lion and Fawcett paid writers upon acceptance of the MS. Popular Publications specialized in sports, men’s adventure, romance and western magazines. They recorded the number of copies sold in various parts of the country of each of these genres and the most lucrative points of sale.

The New American Library files include advice to editors about instructing writers how to sell books. Publisher Victor Weybright wanted writers who could combine “sparse sentences, the conscious use of short, punchy words, inexorable movement,” and stories that  “got under the skin of life. He had Mickey Spillane under contract, but much preferred James M. Cain, whom Raymond Chandler dismissed as sleazy.  Two of Cain’s most famous passages describe a wife and her lover making violent love immediately after the killing of her husband; another couple have sex on the altar of an abandoned church. Spillane, anyone?

L Ron Hubbard’s correspondence describe how to create workable pulp story lines and character types. He headed The American Fiction Guild of magazine writers in the 30s. His yarns featured good-guy cops and reckless heroes. Yes, he stated he first learned the ropes by “dragging the story into the muck.” Surprisingly or not, there is no better source for understanding 1930s pulp magazine formulae.

Goodis set many novels in the working class and underclass neighborhoods of his native Philadelphia, where “blight” was the result of political abandonment of what once were proud ethnic enclaves. Loan sharking, alcoholism, prostitution, drug dealing, and gambling addiction were the motivating forces of the “Philly gothic” in which Goodis (“the poet of the losers”) specialized. 

I have gathered census figures of the neighborhoods about which he wrote, as well as newspaper stories and photographic coverage of 1950s urban Philadelphia. The Temple University Urban Archives contain clippings of reporters’ interviews with residents suffering in enclaves of declining population and businesses. They document the elimination of playgrounds, corner stores and other support services for the neighborhoods, and of the odorous and unhealthy rendering factories that zoning commissions did not prevent from existing next to houses and schools. The city’s own archives have stunning photos of this process. Philadelphia police statistics in 1950 show that Philadelphia skid row and river wards ranked highest in the city in arrests. The reason was the racketeering that replaced lawful means of employment when City Hall turned its back instead of helping people in stress. Goodis’ writing is as productive a treatment of this process as any sociological study. This is partly the result of his use of the slang and idiom that people actually spoke. Novels with titles such as Street of No Return and Down There show that he is the master of Philadelphia Gothic.

A Major theme of American 20th century literature is the existence of discontent and isolation because of obligations to family and community. I detected the effects on Goodis’ writings by reading Nathaniel West, Thomas Wolfe, Hemingway and Faulkner. They also write about manic behavioral repetition, familial obligations, and psychic entrapment what Arthur Miller called “The Tragedy of the Common Man.” Reading then-reputable critics who dismissed pulp crime as a form of “masscult” gave me a perspective on the false contrast between the “low” entertainment of pulp stories and the cultural capital of “literature.”

Analogues in Goodis’ writings to Kafka’s occur throughout his career. I can’t say that I took a trip to the Kafka Museum in Prague as research, but the shadowy lighting, the expressionistic background music, and the roomful of art based on Kafka’s work did deepen my feeling about Goodis’ own work.  A construction modeling the killing machine from Kafka’s “Penal Colony” was a revelation: Kafka and Goodis, who wrote less than two generations apart, were brothers under the skin.

 

You can read more about Jay Gerzman and his book via the Down & Out Books website or the book's Facebook page, or follow the author on Twitter and Facebook. American History is now available via Down & Out Books and all major booksellers.

 

           Related StoriesAuthor R&R with J.L. AbramoAuthor R&R with J.J. Hensley 

Mystery Melange

The UK Crime Writers Association announced winners of the annual Dagger Awards for excellence in crime fiction, including:

Diamond Dagger, Lifetime Achievement: Michael Connelly

Gold Dagger: The Liar, by Steve Cavanagh

Ian Fleming Steel Dagger: Bluebird, Bluebird, by Attica Locke

John Creasey Dagger: Lola, by Melissa Scrivner Love

International Dagger: After the Fire, by Henning Mankell, translated by Marlaine Delargy

Historical Dagger: Nucleus, by Rory Clements

Short Story Dagger: “Nemo Me Impune Lacessit,” by Denise Mina (from Bloody Scotland; Historic Environment Scotland)

Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction: Blood on the Page, by Thomas Harding

Dagger in the Library: Martin Edwards

Debut Dagger (unpublished writers): The Eternal Life of Ezra Ben Simeon, by Bill Crotty

The finalists in the AN Post's Irish Independent Crime Fiction Book of the Year were also announced this past weekend. The public are now being asked to cast their votes online for the best books of the year on the Irish Book Awards website - voting runs until Friday, November 23rd. The finalists include:

Skin Deep – Liz Nugent

A House of Ghosts – W. C. Ryan

The Confession – Jo Spain 

One Click – Andrea Mara 

The Ruin – Dervla McTiernan 

Thirteen – Steve Cavanagh

Publishers Weekly announced their "Best Of 2018" lists including mysteries and thrillers. For a slideshow of all 12 of the selected books, follow this link.

Award-winning author Ann Cleeves will be featured in an exhibition launch tonight in North Shields in the UK. Cleeves won crime-writing’s Gold Dagger award for her novel Raven Black in 2006, and has seen her books transformed into hit series with ITV shows Vera and Shetland. She'll kick off the Find Your Voice exhibition, which features pictures of female crime writers taken by local professional photographer Donna-Lisa Healy, as well as excerpts from the authors’ novels. Cleeves will take to the stage to talk about her writing exploits and take questions from crime fans.

The Noir at the Bar series is heading to Boston on Thursday, November 8, at the Trident Booksellers & Cafe. The evening's lineup of readings and signings will be hosted by Rusty Barnes and include doungjai gam, Ed Kurtz, Rick Ollerman, Clea Simon, E.F. Sweetman, and JM Taylor.

Three of Chicago's "Mavens of Crime Fiction," Sara Paretsky (Shell Game), Libby Fischer-Hellman (High Crimes) and Lori Rader-Day (Under a Dark Sky), will read from and discuss their most recent books on Wednesday, November 14, at Women & Children First.

There were two conference headliner news items this past week: It was announced that bestselling writer Jeffery Deaver, author of the popular Lincoln Rhyme series that includes The Bone Collector and The Cutting Edge, will deliver the keynote address at the 2019 Washington Writers Conference. Also, top US thriller writer James Patterson has been signed to headline next year's Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. Patterson has sold more than 375 million books and has been the most-borrowed author of adult fiction in UK libraries for the past 11 years.

The Captivating Criminality Network announced its sixth conference will be held in Abruzzo, Italy, from June 12 to 15, 2019. Metamorphoses of Crime: Facts and Fictions will examine the ways in which Crime Fiction as a genre incorporates elements of real-life cases and, in turn, influences society by conveying thought-provoking ideas of deviance, criminal activity, investigation and punishment. Scholars, practitioners and fans of crime writing are invited to participate in this conference that will address these key elements of crime fiction and real crime, from the early modern to the present day. (HT to Ayo Onatade at Shots)

A crowdfunding campaign by Texas public defender Amalia Beckner has been raising money to buy books for inmates at the Harris County Jail in Houston. For years, Beckner had been bringing her clients books from her own collection but the jail would only allow five books at a time per “pod” of more than two dozen inmates. The Harris County Jail and others have been in the news lately for a crackdown down on access to books, although public outcry and efforts like Beckner's have led to changes in some of those policies.

The CBC posted a list of "25 things you might not know about Lee Child and his bestselling Jack Reacher series."

The latest poem at the 5-2 crime poetry weekly is "Thank You, Mr. K" by Nancy Scott.

In the Q&A roundup, Craig Sisterson chatted with British-Australian thriller writer LA (Louisa) Larkin, whose storytelling has been likened to Michael Crichton by The Guardian and Alistair MacLean by The Times; the Mysteristas welcomed Mark Stevens, author of the Allison Coil mysteries, the latest of which is The Melancholy Howl; Lynda La Plante spoke with the Irish Independent about her rookie days mixing with gangsters and her four-decade career in crime fiction; and the latest victim of Paul D. Brazill's "Short, Shart Interview" challenge is Tom Pitts, whose new book about the Northern California pot business is titled 101.

           Related StoriesMystery Melange 

Author R&R with J.L. Abramo

If you believe in omens, J. L. Abramo's crime-writing career was launched the day he was born in Brooklyn on Raymond Chandler’s fifty-ninth birthday. Abramo later earned a BA in Sociology at the City College of New York and a Masters Degree in Social Psychology at the University of Cincinnati and is a long-time educator, arts journalist, film and stage actor and theatre director. He is the author of Catching Water in a Net, winner of the St. Martin’s Press/Private Eye Writers of America Award for Best First Private Eye Novel, and the subsequent Jake Diamond private eye mysteries Clutching at Straws, Counting to Infinity, and Circling the Runway, which won the Shamus Award for Best Original Paperback Novel of 2015 presented by the Private Eye Writers of America.

Abramo's latest novel, American History, is both a historical novel and an epic crime novel and a multi-generational saga of loyalty and deceit, law breakers and enforcers, and families torn apart or bound together in a one-hundred-year battle for survival. The book follows the Agnello and Leone families and their stories that parallel the turbulent events of the twentieth century in a nation struggling to find its identity in the wake of two world wars.

Abramo stops by In Reference to Murder today to take some Author R&R about researching and writing American History:

 

WHEN YOU TITLE A NOVEL AMERICAN HISTORY—EXPECT A LOT OF HOMEWORK

During my last visit here, I spoke of the importance of location in my work—and the essential need to be accurate in depicting settings which are critical elements in the narrative.  I also spoke of the importance of being precise in describing time period, particularly with regard to Chasing Charlie Chan where most of the action took place nearly twenty years before I began writing the book, and a good deal of the action concerned historical events going back to the nineteen-forties. 

Rather than cover the same ground, I refer you to the earlier discussion as a prelude to my talking here of the greater challenge—and of the wealth of knowledge gained and enjoyment experienced—in doing the research for American History. 

American History is set in a number of locations in both Europe and the United States, and the story spans a time period of nearly 100 years. 

The saga of the Agnello and Leone families—perennial enemies—begins in Naro, Sicily.  I chose this small town in Agrigento province because my grandfather and father were born there and also because it gave me good reason to explore my heritage.   I had learned, from the memories of family members who emigrated to America, about what life was like for them in the old country—it was a rocky, infertile land with little promise of a better future for their children.  I came to understand the conditions which inspired these and millions of other immigrants to journey across the ocean—by way of western European ports such as Liverpool and Belfast—to an unknown land with alien customs and language.  And I came to appreciate the courage it required.  I complimented this anecdotal knowledge with academic research—reading books such as Sicily by Guy De Maupassant, The Peoples of Sicily by Louis Mendola and Jaqueline Alio, and The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.  Giuseppe Agnello came to America in 1915.  Nearly thirty years later, his son, Louis, served on a U.S. Navy ship during the allied invasion of Sicily.  Fifty years later still, Louis’ grandson visits Naro to learn more about his ancestors.  Same places, different eras. There was more homework to do.

Most of the action in American History is set in New York, San Francisco, and Denver.  I set my Jake Diamond series, from Catching Water in a Net through Circling the Runway, primarily in San Francisco, and I have set Gravesend and Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn.  I have lived in those places, and in Denver, and rely on my personal experiences.  But I always need to double-check any specific landmarks, business establishments, and street intersections to avoid glaring geographical errors.  In American History, I had the added responsibility of accurately depicting nine decades of change in these settings.

I also touch upon actual events in the narrative, and did extensive reading about historical figures such as Franklin D. Roosevelt; Fiorello LaGuardia; William Sebold, a German working as a double-agent for the FBI during World War II; organized crime figures like Paul Castellano and John Gotti; and many others.  I also had need to research historical events—the ocean crossings in the 1910s, World War I, the Spanish Flu of 1917, prohibition years, the illegal importation of goods in the 1920s and beyond, early transcontinental railroad travel, World War II in the Mediterranean, and also learned about a number of prisons from coast to coast.

I tried to be as accurate as possible with regard to the changing political and social climate of America over the decades.  I read books, both non-fiction and fiction, illuminating life in America during the twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties.  Last Call by Daniel Okrent, The New Yorker Book of the 40s, and The Fifties by Davis Halberstam were particularly helpful.  I also borrowed from my own reminiscences of the sixties and seventies.

Like much of my work, American History is heavily centered on family.  Family loyalty, family honor, hierarchy and dynamics.  Personal experience, and books including The Italian Americans by Luciano J. Iorizzo and Salvatore Mondello, The Italian Americans: A History by Maria Laurino, and The Urban Villagers by Herbert Gans were equally valuable.

Finally, there was the language.  These immigrants, particularly in their first years in American, would naturally have spoken to each other exclusively in their native tongue—but that would have been impractical.  I did feel, however, that including a sprinkling of foreign words and phrases—primarily in the early portions of the novel—might help the reader imagine that the characters were actually conversing in their native language.  For that purpose, I studied the language and I received invaluable help from my sister Linda, who is a much more proficient translator.

The road I traveled and the research I employed to write American History was—for me—enlightening, surprising, exciting, and a good time.  Hopefully, the reader will enjoy following the epic journey of these two warring families—spanning a continent and a century in America.  

 

American History is available from Down & Out Books and all major booksellers. You can find more about J.L. Abramo via his website or follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads.

           Related StoriesAuthor R&R with J.J. Hensley 

Media Murder for Monday

Monday means it's time for a new week and a new roundup of the latest crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN

Martin Scorsese has been attached to direct and Leonardo DiCaprio to star in the feature adaptation of the New York Times bestselling David Grann book, Killers of the Flower Moon, with Eric Roth writing the script. The project is based on a true story and set in 1920s Oklahoma when the Osage Nation were the richest people per capita in the world, after oil was discovered under their land. And then they were murdered, one by one. As the death toll rose, the newly created FBI took up the case and unraveled a chilling conspiracy and one of the most monstrous crimes in American history.

Chris Pratt is in talks to star in director Taylor Sheridan’s next project, tentatively titled Fast. The plot is mostly under wraps, but it centers on a black ops team that goes after drug dealers who are being protected by the feds.

Jamie Lee Curtis is joining the cast with Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, and Lakeith Stanfield in director Rian Johnson’s Knives Out. The project is still somewhat mysterious but has been described as a modern-day murder mystery in the classic whodunit style.

David Tennant and Emily Watson are set to star in Quicksand, a thriller that will mark the feature directorial debut of Humans and Troy: Fall of a City TV director Mark Brozel. The story centers on British couple Dan (Tennant) and Sarah (Watson) who are living out their dream in the Mediterranean. But their paradise comes to an abrupt end when their visiting son is murdered by a local youth. Dan, grief stricken, is offered a chance at revenge by a dangerous stranger who won’t take no for an answer, but the price of revenge is one more murder.

Academy Award winner Geena Davis and Joan Chen have joined Jessica Chastain’s drama Eve, with Tate Taylor directing. Colin Farrell, Common, John Malkovich, and Diana Silvers are also set to star in the project. Although plot details are murky, Chastain is portraying the title character, who works for a black ops organization led by Farrell’s character. Common will portray her ex-fiance.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Blackbox Multimedia is developing The Last Cop and also Murder in Time, the latter of which is based on a series of time-traveling crime thrillers by U.S. writer Julie McElwain. McElwain’s three "Murder in Time” books, published by Pegasus, revolve around tough FBI agent Kendra Donovan who goes rogue in London in an effort to assassinate the man who killed her team, only to end up in England in the 1800s. The Last Cop is described as a crime procedural set in an alternative present/near future in which there is no crime due to implanted crime inhibitor chips that detect violent impulses in the brain. Against this backdrop, a reluctant former police detective is taken out of retirement to solve a murder, the first in 17 years.

Broadchurch star Elen Rhys and Pagan Peak's Julian Looman will star in the BBC drama The Mallorca Files. The ten-part series is created by Dan Sefton and is set among the expat community on the sunny Spanish island that features a British and German detective clashing over their very different approaches to policing the island.

Henry Lloyd-Hughes and Shannon Tarbet have been cast in Season 2 of BBC America’s breakout drama series Killing Eve, joining previously announced new cast members Nina Sosanya, Edward Bluemel and Julian Barratt and series stars Sandra Oh, Jodie Comer and Fiona Shaw. Killing Eve centers on two women; Eve (Oh) is a bored, whip-smart, pay-grade security services operative whose desk-bound job doesn’t fulfill her fantasies of being a spy, and Villanelle (Comer), an elegant, talented killer who clings to the luxuries her violent job affords her. These two fiercely intelligent women, equally obsessed with each other, go head to head in an epic game of cat and mouse.

True-crime hub Investigation Discovery (ID) has renewed Breaking Homicide for Season 2, and production is already underway. Breaking Homicide follows veteran police detective and private investigator Derrick Levasseur in his pursuit of cold cases around the nation.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO

Author Novoneel Chakraborty's thriller novel Black Suits You is to be developed into a web series by Ekta Kapoor's OTT platform. The story of Black Suits You follows Kiyan Roy, a reclusive author of a bestselling erotica trilogy, who is stalked by obsessed fan. Soon, he falls for her charms and gets sucked deeper and deeper into a dark and twisted love affair until his life and career slowly begin to unravel.

Crime Cafe host Debbi Mack welcomed author David Malcolm to discuss his novel, The German Messenger, a historical espionage story.

Suspense Radio Inside Edition chatted with authors Tasha Alexander (Uneasy Lies The Crown), JJ Hensley (Record Scratch), and Daniella Bernett (A Checkered Past).

Beyond the Cover's latest special guests were Jeff Abbott (The Three Beths) and Julie Hyzy (Vitural Sabotage).

Writer Types' Halloween episode featured horror writers Paul Tremblay (The Cabin At The End of the World) and Amy Lukavics (Nightingale). Plus, some scary book recommendations from the Malmons.

Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean and Rincey Abraham talked about a very cool program Stephen King runs and some of the upcoming releases that they are very excited about.

THEATER



La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts is staging a production of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, as adapted by Ken Ludwig, through November 11. Directed by Sheldon Epps, the cast features Tony Amendola as Christie's iconic detective, Hercule Poirot. 

           Related StoriesMedia Murder for Monday 

Sunday Music Treat

This is the third in my Halloween-themed music selections for the month; the first two used the "Dies Irae" chant (Liszt's Totentanz and Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique). Here's a different piece but still spooky enough for Halloween, the Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saëns. It's based on a literary poem by Henri Cazalis and deals with the French superstition that says Death comes out at the stroke of midnight each Halloween, summoning the dead to join in a dance.

           Related StoriesSunday Music Treat 

Quote of the Week

            

FFB: She Shall Have Murder

Delano Ames (1906-1987) was born in Ohio to a newspaperman father. In 1929 Ames married Maysie Grieg, who later became a highly successful author of lighthearted romances, and the duo settled in Greenwich Village where Ames published his first novel, a philosophical look at the Greek gods entitled A Double Bed on Olympus. When the couple divorced, Ames moved to England where he remarried and worked for British intelligence during the second World War.



After the war, according to his tongue-in-cheek autobiography, he "translated an erudite history of keyboard instruments from the French, and believes that at least 100 copies were sold." Fortunately, his later efforts were more successful, beginning with in 1948 with She Shall Have Murder, the first in what was to become a 12-book series featuring the British husband-and-wife sleuthing team of Jane and Dagobert Brown. Ames produced a Brown book every year until 1959 when he moved to Spain and switched to writing a four-book

series featuring Juan Llorca of the Spanish Civil Guard.



She Shall Have Murder, made into a movie on British television in 1950, introduces Jane Hamish, a pretty young executive in the law firm Daniel Playfair and Son, and Dagobert Brown, Jane's lover and a researcher/writer who is so absorbed in the thriller he and Jane are concocting around the law firm's staff, that he is astonished when the wrong victim dies. Said victim is Mrs. Robjohn, the least favorite client of the firm, thanks to her frequent calls, letters and visits and unwavering paranoid belief that the mysterious "they" are out to get her.



She Shall Have Murder was labeled as "Detection with Wit" when first published in 1948, an apt description of the characters of Jane, always the common-sense, down-to-earth narrator, and her other half Dagobert, whose eccentricities and passing fads often leave Jane alternatively delighted and driven to despair ("Dagobert is my hero, but he persistently refuses to behave like one.") One of Dagobert's primary pursuits is amateur sleuthing that he puts to good use as he resorts to bluffs, disguises, charm and insightful detection in his efforts to prove Mrs. Robjohn was murdered.



Jane makes a delightful narrator, as in this bit about her thoughts on her potential novel-writing career at the start of the story:

"On the other hand, thrillers have nowadays become an accepted art-forom; bishops and minor poets read practically nothing else, and the New Statesman reviews them....The beginning of a book is always the tricky part. It should arrest. A shot should ring out in the night, or if you prefer, a rod should cough or a Roscoe belch forth destruction. Personally, I like to meeet my corpse on page one, and I like him (or her) to be very dead."

            

Mystery Melange

University of East Anglia creative writing student Femi Kayode has won the £3,000 Little, Brown Award for crime fiction for his "shocking and emotional story, Lightseekers. It’s the second year the publisher has run the award in partnership with the UEA Creative Writing crime fiction MA. Last year's winner, Merle Nygate, won the award with the novel, A Righteous Spy.

The International Crime Fiction Association has announced a new annual book prize to recognize ingenuity, innovation, and scholarship in the academic study of crime fiction and crime writing in its widest sense. Monographs and edited collections can be nominated by publishers, members of the association, and authors. There will be one winner who will receive £100 plus a write-up from the independent judges which can be used for publicity purposes. (HT to Ayo Onatade at Shots Magazine)

For a very Halloween-y literary conference, try the Bram Stoker festival in Dublin, Ireland, from October 26-29. Stoker, the author who gave us Dracula, is celebrated through performances, workshops, theater, live music, podcasts, audio tours, film screenings, and parades. One of the most inventive events of the weekend may be the festival’s NYsferatu: Symphony of a Century. Taking place at St. Anne’s Church – the Church where Stoker married Florence Balcombe in 1878 – this reimagining of the classic 1922 horror film Nosferatu is instead an animated interpretation, accompanied by a live score that was specially composed for the festival by Irish musician Matthew Nolan.

The deadline for the William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grants Program for Unpublished Writers is fast approaching, on November 1. Writers must not have published a book, short story, or dramatic work in the mystery field, either in print, electronic, or audio form. Candidates must submit a letter of application, short bio and short synopsis and three consecutive chapters of the writer’s Malice Domestic genre work-in-progress. Each grant may be used to offset registration, travel, or other expenses related to attendance at a writers' conference or workshop within a year of the date of the award. You can read all the details here.

A "Mystery Author Extravaganza" rolls into Maryland's Howard County Library (Miller Branch) on Saturday, November 3rd, where sixteen authors from the Sisters in Crime Chessie Chapter will be speaking about their new books and short stories published this year. Those scheduled to appear include Donna Andrews, Mary Ann Corrigan (Maya Corrigan), Barb Goffman, Sherry Harris, Mary Ellen Hughes, Maureen Klovers, Sujata Massey, Alan S. Orloff, Susan Reiss, Colleen Shogan, Shawn Reilly Simmons, Karen Neary, Lane Stone, Robin Templeton, Cathy Wiley Stegmaier, and Rebecca York.

The Bible in Crime Fiction and Drama one-day conference heads to the University of Edinburgh on January 8, 2019. This conference brings together multi-disciplinary scholarship from the fields of biblical interpretation, literary criticism, criminology, and studies in film and television to discuss international texts and media spanning the beginning of the 20th century to the present day. The Keynote Speaker is Professor Liam McIlvanney, University of Otago and author of The Quaker, winner of the Bloody Scotland McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year 2018.

The Morgan Library and Museum in NYC is commemorating all things Frankenstein on this 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley's classic tale. Exhibits include a digital interactive version of Shelley’s annotated book, as well as the actual physical manuscript; Gothic artifacts that inspired the horror elements, including paintings and illustrations; movie and theater posters; comic books; and even what are possibly fragments of P. B. Shelley’s skull. If you can't make it in time for Halloween, don't despair - the exhibit runs through January 27, 2019. (HT to Book Riot)

Criminal Element is sponsoring a Halloween sweepstakes to enter for a chance to win a copy of The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris, plus a bookplate signed by the author. Entries will be accepted through October 31st.

Continuing a long tradition begun with the publication of Ian Fleming's short story, "The Hildebrand Rarity," in the March 1960 issue, James Bond will again appear in the pages of Playboy Magazine this fall. The brand new short story—in comic book form—is written by Jeff Parker and drawn by Bob Q. It takes place in March 1941 when "James is dropped off the coast of Belgium to help a Resistance cell take out a supply train that's important to the Nazis."

We marked another passing this week, as the Rap Sheet noted: author Tom Kakonis, who published six crime novels before retiring for over a decade, then resumed fiction writing with the novel Treasure Coast, has died. He was often called the heir-apparent to Elmore Leonard and the “master of the low-life novel," and Kirkus Reviews lauded his "exhilaratingly tough yet deeply humane storytelling."

As the Express notes, Agatha Christie learned about the properties of everything from cyanide to strychnine by working in a hospital dispensary in wartime, as her newly released volunteer service card reveals.

Writing for the Daily Beast, Allison McNearney looked at the "haunting mystery" of Edwin Drood that Charles Dickens left behind, and how various authors and productions have tackled the unfinished novel through the years.

Speak of the Dickens, here are some "Spooky Charles Dickens Quotes for Halloween."

Erica Wickerson delves into the reasons people still love a good whodunnit.

Kings River Life ezine has a couple of online Halloween mystery short story for you, "The House of Screams" by Guy Belleranti, and "The Yard Police Meet Their End."

Although I mentioned it last work, Mystery Fanfare's list of Halloween-themed crime fiction bears repeating, because have you seriously been able to read all of those books in just one week?

Mystery Lovers Kitchen has holiday-themed recipes for you, including Spider Donuts, via author Daryl Wood Gerber, and Pumpkin Apple Cake from Krista Davis.

The latest poem at the 5-2 crime poetry weekly is "He Likes His Beer" by Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozabal.

In the Q&A roundup, The Daily Mail profiled John Grisham and got his take on the death penalty, Hollywood, and writing in the era of Trump; Deborah Kalb interviewed Webb Hubbell about the latest in his Jack Patterson thriller series, The Eighteenth Green; Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Lyndsay Faye discussed Arthur Conan Doyle, Mycroft, and the world of Holmes pastiches for Crimereads; and Karin Slaughter spoke with Molly Odnitz of Crimereads on the evolution of the thriller genre and its treatment of women.

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