B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 223

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

There has been much speculation (and some false reports, alas) of who the director for the next Bond movie will be, but it appears that Skyfall's Sam Mendes may still be in the running, after all. Mendes wanted to do Bond 24, but had prior theater commitments that had seemed to be too much of a conflict.

Katharine McPhee (star of the recently-cancelled Smash) is joining the cast of Depravity, a thriller with a script by Dennis Lehane, and Paul Tamasy on board to direct. The plot follows a  group of roommates who accidentally kill an innocent man they thought was a thrill killer.

Michael C. Hall (who played the serial killer in Dexter) landed the lead role in Cold In July, the adaptation of Joe Lansdale's cult novel. He plays Richard Dane, who shoots and kills an armed burglar in his living room, a move that seems like self defense to everyone but the burglar's father, who vows an eye-for-an-eye justice.

Glenn Close has signed on to play a major role in Guardians Of The Galaxy, potentially as the top cop who heads up Nova Corp, the intergalactic space patrol. In other casting news for the film, Doctor Who's Karen Gillan has been signed to play the lead female villain.

A mere week after it was announced that Tom Cruise was exiting the Man From Uncle film adaptation, it appears that Henry Cavill is the leading candidate to replace him in the role of spy Napoleon Solo.

If you're in San Francisco in mid-June, check out San Francisco's Silent Film Festival, which is airing the first nine films by Alfred Hitchcock with musical accompaniment. The films were recently restored by the British Film Institute and include the film the director considered "the first true Hitchcock picture," The Lodger.

Also in June, the Turner Classic Movies television network is airing Friday Night Noir, with Eddie Muller of the Film Noir Foundation hosting the 16 films scheduled during the month.

Josh Brolin is one of the latest stars to sign on to the cast of Inherent Vice, Paul Thomas Anderson's film adaptation of the Thomas Pynchon detective novel. The other is Katherine Waterson, who will play one of the female leads, a "free-spirited hippie chick." Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson, Martin Short, and Jena Malone are already on board, with Sean Penn also reportedly in talks.

Drafthouse Films has picked up North American rights to the film Borgman, the first Dutch film in the Cannes Film Festival's competition lineup in almost 40 years. The thriller is described as "an allegorical tale exploring the nature of evil in unexpected places. A vagrant enters the lives of an upper-class family, igniting a descent from darkly comic dream to maddening psychological nightmare."

Warner Brothers released a trailer for Prisoners, about two neighborhood girls who go missing.The cast includes Jake Gyllenhaal as a police detective and Hugh Jackman as the father of one of the girls who kidnaps the main suspect  (Paul Dano) with the goal of making him reveal where the girls are.

TV

Welsh actor Matthew Rhys is taking on the role of Jane Austen's Mr. Darcy in a new BBC adaptation of Death Comes to Pemberley, a sequel novel by crime writer PD James.

BBC Two's new crime drama The Fall, starring former X-Files star Gillian Anderson as an FBI agent after a serial killer, premiered earlier this month and has done so well, the network quickly renewed it for a second season.  (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Tracy Letts is being promoted to a regular cast spot on Homeland. The Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning actor/playwright plays the role of Senator Andrew Lockhart, the powerful Committee Chairman.

NBC announced that the serial-killer drama Hannibal is getting a second season on the network.The series is based on characters from Thomas Harris' novel Red Dragon and the working relationship between FBI special investigator Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) and Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen)

British actress Ashley Davenport is leaving ABC's Revenge due to her option not being picked up. She joins fellow regular Connor Paolo, who also won't be returning for the third season.

Skipp Sudduth (The Good Wife) has joined the cast of the Cinemax pilot Quarry, about a Marine marksman who joins a network of contract killers after returning home from Vietnam and being shunned by the public. Sudduth will play the father of Logan Marshall Green's leading man.

THEATER

comes a review of the Agatha Christie-penned play, Go Back For Murder, which began a run at the Regent Theatre in Stoke-on-Trent last week. The production is from the Agatha Christie Theatre Company and continues through June 1st at the theatre before taking the show on the road.

Mystery Melange

Dragon book sculpture


The Crime Writers of Canada handed out the annual Arthur Ellis Awards, recognizing excellence in Canadian crime fiction. The nod for Best Crime Novel went to Until the Night by Giles Blunt, while the Best First Crime Novel was given to The Haunting of Maddy Clare by Simone St. James. For all the categories, check out the CWC website.

The Crime Writers Association of the UK announced the shortlists for several of its awards, including the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger; The International Dagger; the Dagger for Non-Fiction; the Dagger in the Library; the Short Story Dagger, and the Debut Dagger.

The inaugural Petrona Award winner, announced at the CrimeFest dinner June 1, went to Last Will by Liza Marklund. The award is handed out for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year and was established in memory of Maxine Clarke, who blogged as Petrona and specialized in Scandinavian crime fiction.

Although Canada's Bloody Words mystery conference is skipping 2013, the conference still presented the Bloody Words Light Mystery Award at the Bony Blithe Gala held in Toronto. The winner was Elizabeth J. Duncan for her fourth Penny Brannigan mystery, A Small Hill To Die On. The full conference will return next year to Toronto and in 2015 to Halifax.

The Audio Publishers Association handed out its 2013 Audie Awards, recognizing distinction in audiobooks and spoken word entertainment. The Audio Book of the Year Awards went to The End of the Affair by Graham Greene, as read by by Colin Firth; the winner in the Mystery category was The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny, read by Ralph Cosham; and the award for Best Thriller went to Red, White, and Blood by Christopher Farnsworth as read by Bronson Pinchot.

Poisoned Pen announced the winner of their second annual Discover Mystery Contest for unpublished novels. The award went to Eileen Brady for her cozy mystery, Dog Shows Are Murder. Finalists included Peggy McKeep Barnhill, Judy L. Murray, and Carmen Will.

Whodunnit?: Murder in Mystery Manor, from CSI creator Anthony E. Zuiker, will hit the airwaves on ABC in June, but Zuiker announced a tie-in novel series based on the show to be released one week before the series premiere. The premise of both is an putting amateur sleuths’ investigative skills to the test in a mystery reality competition, with players employing crime scene investigation techniques to discover who among them is the "killer."

The Q&A roundup this week includes Reed Farrel Coleman joining the Mystery People to talk about their "pick of the month," the author's latest novel Onion Street; and Scandinavian crime writer Jens Lapidus talked with the Wall Street Journal about his Stockholm Noir trilogy and the secret criminal side of Sweden.

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - One Night's Mystery

May Agnes Fleming (1840-1880) was one of the first Canadians to pursue a highly successful career as a writer of popular fiction, reportedly earning $10,000 a year, a princely sum at the time. Her work became so popular that many of her novels were re-issued under different titles, often due to piracy. Her first book was published in her adopted state of New York in 1963, titled Erminie; or The gypsy's Vow: A Tale of Love and Vengeance. Using several pen names, including Cousin May Carleton and M.A. Earlie, she published several serial tales in the New York Mercury, the New York Weekly, the Boston Pilot and the London Journal (and set several of her books in England).

She wrote somewhere around 40 novels and would have written more if she hadn't died prematurely from Bright's Disease at the age of 39. Despite her literary success, she struggled in her personal life, separating from her alcoholic husband and ultimately excluding him from her will and the upbringing of their four children. This misfortune didn't break her but rather may have inspired the many strong female characters in her novels, both good and evil.


One Night's Mystery follows the lives and loves of three young women: Cyrilla Hendrick, the daughter of handsome, penniless, scoundrel; her best friend, Sydney Owenson, a naive heiress; and Dolly De Courcy, a spirited actress. Both Cyrilla and Sydney are engaged, although things aren't as they seem in either case. Sydney's gold-digging fiance is besotted with Dolly, while Cyrilla's is arranged through her aunt, whom Cyrilla calls "the crossest, spitefulest old woman on earth." The one night's mystery of the title refers to the disappearance of Sydney's fiance the day before her wedding, but did he run off with Dolly or was he murdered?

One Night's Mystery was first serialized in New York Weekly and the London Journal before being published in book form by G.W. Carleton in 1876, toward the end of Fleming's life. It is a prime example of the type of work Fleming wrote, romantic suspense with a few Gothic elements thrown in. Her writing style is direct, her characters simple but reasonably well fleshed out, and the complicted relationships between the characters thorny and entertaining, if a tad melodramatic.

Despite the melodrama, Fleming does insert moments of poetic descriptions that are especially effective with settings, such as this one about the grim street that houses the dull and respectable Demoiselles Chateauroy school for young ladies (where Cyrilla and Sydney met):

There were no shops, there were no people; the houses looked at you as you passed with a sad, settled, melancholy mildew upon them; the doors rarely opened, the blinds and curtains were never drawn; prim little gardens, with prim little gravel-paths, shut in these sad little houses from the street; now and then a pale, pensive face might gleam at you from some upper window, spectre-like, and vanish.

Mystery Melange

 

Book sculpture by Jodi Harvey-Brown


I'm very happy to point you over to this week's story at Beat to a Pulp, which is from the pen of Patti Abbott and titled "The Big Lug." Patti is a terrific story writer and also hosts the weekly Friday's Forgotten books feature that I'm happy to be a part of.

Shindig will host video chats with fifty authors live from Book Expo America, Thursday, May 30th through Saturday, June 1st. Featured authors will include Mary Higgins Clark, Andrew Gross, C.J. Lyons and many more. (Hat tip to Galley Cat)

This, via Austin S. Camacho: If you're an author who registered for the Creatures, Crimes & Creativity conference, they have moved the deadline to June 15 to submit a short story to be included in the collector's anthology that every attendee will receive in a goody bag when you arrive. Don't miss your chance to have everyone read your story alongside the likes of NY Times bestseller John Gilstrap. If haven't registered yet, it's not too late for you to be included in that special volume - but you have to be registered before you can submit your story. Visit the conference website for more details.

Jeff Pierce, over at The Rap Sheet blog and via his column for Kirkus, lists eight crime, mystery, and thriller works due for release
between now and September 1 that he thinks would be particularly worth
investing your time to read. He also has a long list of other crime fiction books being published this summer that should keep you busy at the beach.

Speaking of Jeff and The Rap Sheet, somehow I missed the blog's recent seventh anniversary celebration. If you aren't familiar with The Rap Sheet (and you should be), hop on over and check out one of the most consistently entertaining and informative crime fiction blogs out there.

Omnimystery News has its monthly list of new hardcover mysteries being published. June's roster ranges from the eighth Cotton Malone novel by Steve Berry to the tenth Lincoln Rhyme book by Jeffery Deaver to the ninth Walt Longmire installment from Craig Johnson. Other authors like Alafair Burke, Meg Gardiner, and Carl Hiaasen introduce new standalone novels this month.

Kobo announced a rise in e-reader sales of 145% in the first quarter of
2013. Its user base grew to 14.5m, with 15% of its new user base coming
from the US. The top-selling e-books (in the UK) included Gillian
Flynn's Gone Girl, Karin Slaughter's The Unremarkable Heart and James
Patterson's Bloody Valentine.

The Q&A roundup this week includes Crime journalist Steve Lillebuen talking with GalleyCat about digital tools for crime writers; Declan Burke grills Chris Allen about his Alex Morgan series; and Mark Pryor joins the Mystery People.

Book Riot lists the best 15 movies starring bookstores.

Which Shakespeare character are you? Try this interactive PBS feature to find your inner Hamlet or Rosalind.

From the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction department, "10 Craziest Disguises Used To Commit a Crime."

 

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Dennis Lehane has signed on to write the screenplay for 20th Century Fox's adaptation of John D. MacDonald's 1964 mystery novel The Deep Blue Good-by. The film will reteam Lehane and actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who also starred in the film version of Lehane's novel Shutter Island and is developing Lehane's short story "Running Out of Dog."

Deadline calls it a shocker, and that's an apt description of the news that Tom Cruise has exited as the star of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., the remake of the classic TV series that Guy Ritchie is directing for Warner Bros. The official reason is that Cruise had a schedule conflict with the filming of Mission Impossible:5.

Paddy Considine (Tyrannosaur, The World’s End) and Swedish actor Fares Fares (Zero Dark Thirty) have been added to the cast of director Daniel Espinosa's adaptation of the Soviet-era novel Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith. Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace and Gary Oldman were already on board.

Magnolia pictures picked up Erik Skjoldbaerg's thriller Pioneer at the recent Cannes film festival. The film stars Aksel Hennie (who also played the lead in the film Headhunters based on Jo Nesbo's novel) as a professional diver working for the oil companies in the 1980s who gets involved in a perilous deep-sea journey.

Universal is developing a remake of Timecop, the 1994 Jean-Claude Van Damme time travel action movie set in the near future where time travel is regulated by a police force.

TV

As Omnimystery News reminds us, the new seasons of Longmire and The Glades premiere tonight back to back on the A&E network, beginning at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

The new King & Maxwell series based on David Baldacci's novels is set to premiere June 10 on TNT. The show was developed by Shane Brennan (NCIS: Los Angeles) with a cast that includes Jon Tenney (The Closer) and Rebecca Romijn (X-Men) as private investigators Sean King and Michelle Maxwell.

FX Networks announced that the premiere of The Bridge will be Wednesday, July 10th. The show is based on the Scandinavian crime drama (but moved to the US/Mexico border) and follows two detectives, one from the United States (Diane Kruger) and one from Mexico (Demián Bichir), who must work together to hunt down a serial killer operating on both sides of the border. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News, which also has a trailer.)

Logan Marshall-Green has been signed to star in the Cinemax pilot Quarry , based on the novel by Max Allan Collins. It follows a Marine sniper who returns home from Vietnam to find that he's been shunned by people he cares about and is recruited into a network of contract killers and corruption along the Mississippi River.

Olivier Assayas (Summer Hours, the miniseries Carlos) has ben tapped to direct the film Hubris, which is inspired by a true story and based on an article by Hillel Levin. It follows a crew of thieves who rob a pawn shop and discover it is a front for the most brutal crime boss in Chicago history.

Detective Olivia Benson fans can breathe easier: actress Mariska Hargitay says she is returning to Law & Order: SVU for Season 15.

CMT has picked up an additional 11 episodes of the reality series Dog And Beth: On The Hunt, starring bounty hunters "Dog" and Beth Chapman.

Friday's "Forgotten" Books - The Albert Gate Mystery

Louis Tracy (1863-1928) was born in Liverpool to an upper middle class family and educated at the French Seminary at Douai. Although he led a relative life of leisure, he also joined the 1st Volunteer Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment and earned a full certificate for a captaincy by the age of 18, an unusual feat for the time. He turned his hand to journalism in 1884, writing for several newspapers and even worked his way up to part-ownership of the The Evening News before selling his share. He is said to have used some of the proceeds to run 23 soup kitchens during the depression-style winter of 1894, using some of those glimpses of poverty first-hand in his later novels.

His first published work of fiction was a patriotic, somewhat propagandistic war-themed title, The Final War, which appeared as a serial from 1895 to August 1896 in Pearson's Weekly. After a visit to America for research, Tracy was due to write another serial for Pearson's, but fell ill. The publication drafted M. P. Shiel to help finish the work, which began a decades-long occasional, and sometimes prickly, collaboration between the two men. Tracy went on to publish prolifically, with some 80 or more books and numerous short stories, essays and articles, under his own name and the pseudonyms Gordon Holmes and Robert Fraser.

Tracy's fiction often featured American characters, a ploy to make it easier to sell his books on both sides of the Atlantic. This led to some head-scratching plotting such as setting The House of Peril in New York, even though it included a number of Tracy's familiar English detectives. In the revised English edition of 1924, (retitled The Park Lane Mystery), he reset the story in London. Tracy's strange love-hate relationship with his own country also led to pronouncements such as his comment to the Sunday Times that "American readers are better educated than the English," leading the reporter to sniff, "at least he writes novels about this country without the usual blunders of foreign writers."


The Albert Gate Mystery from 1904, is actually set in London and features one of Tracy's regular protagonists, amateur detective Barrister Reginald Brett. The plot hinges around priceless imperial diamonds sent by the Sultan of Turkey to London, to be cut in the heavily-guarded Albert Gate mansion by experts under the protection of the British government. However, four Turkish officials are found dead in the house, and the diamonds disappear. The leading culprit is Jack Talbot, a young secretary at the Foreign Office who was overseeing the endeavor and also disappeared without a trace the evening of the murders.

Brett reads about the events in the morning newspaper, detailing the high-ranking Turkish gentry, servants, guards, and fourteen expert Dutch diamond-cutters who have been detained at Scotland Yard, and how "the greatest living authority on toxicology" was among several medical personnel consulted. Brett's interest is piqued, but he doesn't get pulled into the mystery until the arrival of Lord Fairholme. It seems Fairholme's fiancee, Edith Talbot, refuses to marry him until her brother—who also happens to be the suspect Jack Talbot—is found and proved innocent.


Brett's investigation has him chasing diamond thieves through England, France and Sicily with the somewhat-antagonistic help of Scotland Yard detective Winter, as well as royal messenger Captain Gaultier, Lord Fairholme and Edith. Along the way, the sleuth (who is described as brash, fearless, handsome, brilliant, a human dynamo and both "the smartest criminal lawyer in London" and "the cleverest analytical detective of the age") dons disguises and wades through political intrigue, treason among thieves, and a spirited horse-carriage chase scene, before the denouement.

The character of Brett was compared to Sherlock Holmes during Tracy's day, although one reviewer said that "Mr. Reginal Brett is perhaps a trifle too Sherlockian in his rapid conclusions, although unlike the incomparable Holmes, he does not always permit his admiring audience to follow step by step in his course of reasoning." Brett has also been called a precuror of Lord Peter Wimsey, but as entertaining as he is at times, the writing and character aren't quite in the same league as Holmes and Wimsey.

There are some laugh-out-loud dated bits, too, such as "Brett expected to see a young, pretty and clever girl, vain enough to believe she had brains" (although the woman in question, Edith, turns out to be a fierce heroine in her own right). There are also some homages to other detective icons in the book, such as the small bust of Edgar Allan Poe in Brett's home and how he has adopted the French method of "reconstituting" the incidents, no doubt a nod to Vidocq, the founder and first director of the crime-detection Sûreté Nationale as well as the head of the first known private detective agency.

Mystery Melange

Book sculpture lamp by Michael Bom


The International Thriller Writers has added a special FBI pre-conference workshop titled, "Today's FBI: Crime Essentials For Writers." Participants will hear from FBI experts in cyber crime, international terrorism, criminal investigations, and more. The event is scheduled for July 8th and capacity is limited, so contact ThrillerFest Executive Director at kimberleyhowe@me.com if you're interested.

Finalists for the 2013 Benjamin Franklin Awards in the Mystery/Suspense category were announced and include Ripped – A Jack the Ripper Time-Travel Thriller, by Shelly Dickson Carr (New Book Partners); Run To Ground, by D.P. Lyle (Oceanview Publishing); and The Unkindness of Strangers, by Peter S. Fischer (The Grove Point Press). The annual award recognizes excellence in independent publishing.

Pop Culture Nerd is sponsoring the third annual Stalker Awards, in honor of May being Mystery Month and June being International Crime Month. The awards are handed out to crime novels you're obsessed with and the authors who write them. Categories range from Novel You Shoved Most Often in People's Faces to Most Scene-Stealing Supporting Character. Anyone can vote, via the website form.

The annual Crimefest Convention held at Bristol in the UK is coming up next week, from May 30 through June 2. Dozens of bestselling authors will attend including Toastmaster Robert Goddard, Lindsey Davis, Jeffery Deaver, Sophie Hannah, David Hewson, Peter James, Simon Kernick, Denise Mina and Dana Stabenow. Although the event is sold out, you can still take advantage of Non-Attending Registration, which will snag you the delegate goodie bag and conference program sent via mail.

This week's featured story at Beat to a Pulp is "Bid Time Return" by Nik Morton.

The Q&A roundup this week includes Ali Karim at the Rap Sheet chatting with private eye thriller writer Thomas Kaufman about his novels and recently released eBook collection Erased and Other Stories; Declan Burke quizzes Chris Allen; and Mark Pryor joins The Mystery People to talk about his new release, The Crypt Thief.

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

There's always interesting news to come out of the annual Cannes Film Festival. LA-based British filmmaker Trevor Miller is taking on a contemporary film noir project set to a soundtrack of covers by L.A. bands of legendary British group The Smiths. It follows a surveillance contractor who drifts through Los Angeles at night photographing "cheating couples," falls for a jilted wife and unwittingly photographs her husband burying the body of dead girl in the high desert. However, this year, the movie news may well have been upstaged by this.

Lights Out star Holt McCallany has booked a starring role opposite Chris Hemsworth and Viola Davis in the untitled cyber terrorism thriller being directed by Michael Mann. McCallany will play a street-smart U.S. Marshal charged with the custody of Hemsworth’s character.

Hailee Steinfeld has joined Sam Worthington in the cast of For The Dogs, the Phillip Noyce-directed film based on a novel by Paul Leyden. The story follows a solitary assassin (Worthington) who agrees to help a precocious teenager (Steinfeld) exact revenge on those who murdered her parents and younger brother.

Reese Witherspoon has joined stars Joaquin Phoenix, Owen Wilson and Benicio del Toro in Paul Thomas Anderson's adaptation of the novel Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon.

The film adaptation of the TV series The Equalizer, starring Denzel Washington in the title role, has signed its villain, actor Marton Csokas (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, The Lord of the Rings).

The producers of James Bond have finally settled on Christopher Nolan to direct the next film in the franchise.

TV

The crime drama Criminal Justice, written by Richard Price, directed by Oscar winner Steven Zaillian, and starring James Gandolfini, has been ordered by HBO as a seven-part limited series. The show is set in New York and loosely inspired by the acclaimed 2008 BBC series of the same name created by Peter Moffat.

CBS has officially picked up the spy pilot Intelligence to series. The show stars Josh Holloway (Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol) and Marg Helgenberger who called it, "James Bond meets Frankenstein meets Mission: Impossble."

ABC may have decided to cancel Body of Proof, but that may not be the end of the show. TNT, USA and WGN America are all showing some degree of interest in picking up the forensic/police procedural starring Dana Delany. It's a bit of a puzzle as to why ABC dropped it, anyway, considering its ratings were on the uptick, and it ranked as the third-most-watched ABC drama this season, behind only Castle and Grey’s Anatomy.

The UK's Channel 4 announced a new an eight-part series titled Shameless set in a "crumbling Victorian cop shop on the wrong side of Manchester." Creator Paul Abbott calls it a "jet black" comedy drama that promises to be a police procedural with a difference.

Fox released a trailer for the J.J. Abrams and J.H. Wyman show Almost Human, a futuristic buddy cop drama set a few decades into the future when cops are partnered with humanoid robots.

NBC unveiled a trailer for its new police drama Ironside, a remake of the Raymond Burr series, with the reboot featuring Blair Underwood in the role of the wheelchair detective, as well as the new James Spader spy series, The Blacklist. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Amazon has landed streaming rights to NBC Universal shows, including Grimm, Covert Affairs, Hannibal, and Warehouse 13.

The USA Network announced its scripted drama projects last week, including the political/financial thriller The Edge; Bank, about a young FBI agent who works in the bank crimes division in Los Angeles; Blanco County, based on a series of mysteries by Ben Rehder; and Shadow Counsel, a legal thriller about a former Army JAG attorney now working as a criminal lawyer in NY who's recruited by the FBI to crack an ongoing investigation. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

Confused about what made the fall schedule and what didn't? The Hollywood Reporter has the full schedule at a glance, as well as trailers for new shows on the CW Network; NBC; Fox; ABC; and CBS.

Friday's Forgotten Books - Exeunt Murderers

In honor of the recently-announced Anthony Award nominations, with winners to be honored at the annual Bouchercon convention, I'm reposting this FFB. It's fitting to feature a book of short stories penned by Anthony Boucher since the mystery convention is named after the writer, reviewer, and
editor. Born William Anthony Parker White in 1911, he at first seemed
headed into the sciences until he was bitten by the literature bug,
selling his first story when he was 15, "Ye Goode Olde Ghoste Storie,"
published in Weird Tales in January 1927. He would later add
that in retrospect the story was so bad, the editor must have had a
"sadistic grudge against the readers."

After his college career,
he turned his hand to detective fiction in 1937, with a standalone
followed by one series with amateur criminologist Fergus O'Breen and the
other Sister Ursula of the Order of Martha of Bethany (published under
the pen name H.H. Holmes). Although a moderate success as a novelist, he
found his true calling when he started reviewing mysteries and science
fiction for the San Francisco Chronicle (another node of
connection with this year's conference), followed by editing anthologies
and translating other books. He landed a job as the regular mystery
fiction critic for the New York Times in 1951, a job he held for close to 17 years.

His
contributions to the genre didn't end there—he was a founding member of
the Mystery Writers of America, a charter member of the Baker Street
Irregulars in San Francisco and wrote scripts for "Sherlock Holmes" and
"Ellery Queen" radio programs, co-edited the True Crime Detective magazine, wrote a monthly review column for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, and created a regular mystery-review show for the public radio station KPFA.



His dozens of short stories reflect his multi-faced interests outside
literature, with one of the editors to the Boucher collection Exeunt Murderers,
Francis M. Nevins, Jr., adding that Boucher wrote mysteries delving
into "religion, opera, football, politics, movies, true crime, record
collecting and an abundance of good food and wine along with clues and
puzzles and detection." (Nevin's co-editor for this collection was the
prolific Martin H. Greenberg.)

Many Boucher stories pivot around talented and brilliant amateur sleuths, although the first third of Exeunt
consists of nine stories featuring former police Lieutenant Nick Noble,
once a rising star in the force until he took the rap for a bad cop.
The second part is a series of Sister Ursula stories grouped under the
title "Conundrums for the Cloister." Although technically an amateur,
Sister Ursula is the daughter of a police chief who'd once planned on
entering the field herself until poor health changed her plans. These
stories mirror Boucher's own life in two ways—he was a devout Catholic
who also struggled with poor health his entire life, ultimately dying of
lung cancer at the age of 56. Part Three of Exunt is "Jeux de Meurtre,"
narrated by both cops and amateurs, and in one case, the murderer.

These are thoroughly enjoyable stories, and as a former Friday's Forgotten Books feature by Jeffrey Marks on Boucher's novel Nine Tmes Nine
for the Rap Sheet attests, it's almost a shame that he spent so much of
his time on other projects. But it is that very legacy of support to
the crime fiction community which Bouchercon celebrates, and so we'll
just have to be content with the body of work we have (see George Kelley's FFB feature about the Anthony Boucher Chronicles) from someone who managed to pack more into a half-century than most people do with decades more.

Mystery Melange

 

Book sculpture by Brian Dettmer

Four independent publishers—Grove Atlantic, Akashic Books, Melville House, and Europa Editions—have joined forces to create what they're calling "International Crime Month." It's actually a little longer than a month, since events start in late May and continue through June. The initiative kicks off in New York with events at Bookcourt and
Mysterious Bookshop during the final week of May and a panel discussion
at Book Expo America on Friday May 31.

More award news to report: this time, it's nominations for the Anthony Awards, handed out each year at the Boucheron crime fiction festival, which were recently announced. They include nods for Best Novel to Dare Me by Megan Abbott; The Trinity Game by Sean Chercover; Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn; The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny; and The Other Woman by Hank Phillippi Ryan. For all the nominees, check out the Bouchercon 2013 website.

Speaking of Bouchercon, if you're an unpublished author, the conference has a great opportunity in the form of a short story contest.
There are three categories including high school students, college
students and general attendees, with submissions capped at 200 per
category. To submit, send along your mystery story of 8,000 words or
less by June 15.

Noir at the Bar is returning to the Philadelphia area, Thursday, May 23 at John & Peter's at 96 South Main St. in New Hope, PA. Special guests are authors Wallace Stroby, Dennis Tafoya and a few more TBA.

Madison, Wisconsin's Booked for Murder indie bookstore, which was put up for sale in February, has found a new owner. Joanne Berg, a former vice-provost at the University of Wisconsin, Madison is moving the former store's inventory to Berg's new bookshop, Mystery to Me, scheduled to open on June 15.

Lukcy Issue #13 of Crime Factory is out, with a cover design by Eric Beetner, a interview with Dwayne Epstein, author of the new Lee Marvin biography, a chat with creators of the new anthology, Black Pulp, and more interviews and reviews. There is a Kindle version for only 99 cents, although there are print and free PDF versions also available.

There's a new market for short crime fiction, The Hard-Boiled Dimension, with a mission of being "a place for speculative fiction and gritty crime stories." They are seeking stories in either or both genres, with a word limit of 2,500. (Hat tip to Sandra Seamans via her blog.)