After the horrific results of this week’s U.S. national elections, I’ve done my best to avoid major news sources. However, as always, I have kept my eyes open for developments in the world of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction. Here are a few items worth sharing.

(Above) Author Paretsky, from her Facebook page.

• Sara Paretsky has been chosen to receive the 2025 Killer Nashville John Seigenthaler Legends Award. As In Reference to Murder notes, that prize—named for an ex-editorial director of USA Today—is “bestowed upon an individual within the publishing industry who has championed First Amendment Rights to ensure that all opinions are given a voice, has exemplified mentorship and example to authors, supporting the new voices of tomorrow, and/or has written an influential canon of work that will continue to influence authors for many years to come.” The Killer Nashville Web site relates some of the reasons Paretsky deserves this commendation:

Sara Paretsky revolutionized the mystery world in 1982 by introducing V.I. Warshawski in Indemnity Only. Paretsky challenged a genre in which women historically were vamps or victims by creating a detective with the grit and smarts to take on the mean streets. V.I. struck a chord with readers and critics; Indemnity Only was followed by twenty more V.I. novels. Her voice and world remain vital to readers; the New York Times calls V.I. “a proper hero for these times,” adding, “To us, V.I. is perfect.”

While Paretsky’s fiction changed the narrative about women, her work also opened doors for other writers. In 1986, she created Sisters in Crime, a worldwide organization that advocates for women crime writers. This organization earned her Ms. Magazine's 1987 Woman of the Year award. More accolades followed: the British Crime Writers awarded her the Cartier Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement; Blacklist won the Gold Dagger from the British Crime Writers for best novel of 2004, and she has received the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from several universities.

Called “"passionate” and “electrifying,” V.I. reflects her creator’s passion for social justice. After chairing the school's first Commission on the Status of Women as a Kansas University undergraduate, Paretsky worked as a community organizer on Chicago's South Side during the turbulent race riots of 1966. Since then, Paretsky’s volunteer work has included advocating for healthcare for the mentally ill homeless, mentoring teens in Chicago's most troubled schools, and working for reproductive rights. Through her Sara & Two C-Dogs foundation, she also helps build STEM and arts programs for young people.

The author will be presented with her award during a special dinner at next year’s Killer Nashville conference, to be held in Nashville, Tennessee, from August 21 to 24.

• The shortlists have been announced of this year’s An Post Irish Book Awards contenders. Categories range from Popular Fiction, Non-fiction, and Cookbook to Poetry, Short Story, Newcomer, and Teen and Young Adult. There are also half a dozen candidates for the 2024 Irish Independent Crime Fiction Book of the Year. They are:

— A Stranger in the Family, by Jane Casey (Hemlock Press)
— Witness 8, by Steve Cavanagh (Headline)
— Where They Lie, by Claire Coughlan (Simon & Schuster)
— Someone in the Attic, by Andrea Mara (Bantam)
— Somebody Knows, by Michelle McDonagh (Hachette Ireland)
— When We Were Silent, by Fiona McPhillips (Bantam)

Winners will be revealed during a ceremony in the Convention Centre Dublin on Wednesday, November 27.

• Elizabeth Foxwell points us toward this fascinating piece in Humanities Magazine, which recalls “how a copyright tussle between author Dashiell Hammett and Warner Bros. over his detective Sam Spade changed copyright law.”

• On this first day of Veterans Day Weekend, blogger-editor Janet Rudolph serves up a substantial list of mystery fiction related to this holiday. You will find works ranging from Rennie Airth’s River of Darkness and Susan Elia MacNeal’s Mr. Churchill's Secretary to Max Allan Collins’ The Million Dollar Wound, Elizabeth Speller’s The Return of Captain John Emmett, and Philip Kerr’s earliest Bernie Gunther yarns (March Violets, The Pale Criminal, and A German Requiem).

• Having himself penned a trio of James Bond continuation novels, it’s understandable that Anthony Horowitz might concoct a character in his own fiction who undertakes that same sort of assignment. And so he does in Marble Hall Murders, the forthcoming third entry in his Susan Ryeland/Atticus Pünd series (Magpie Murders, Moonflower Murders). This new work is due out in the UK in April 2025, and in the States come May. Here’s the plot summary from Amazon:

Editor Susan Ryeland has left her Greek island, her hotel, and her Greek boyfriend Andreas in search of a new life back in England.

Freelancing for Causton Books, she’s working on the manuscript of a novel, Pünd’s Last Case, by a young author named Eliot Crace, a continuation of the popular Alan Conway series. Susan is surprised to learn that Eliot is the grandson of legendary children’s author Marian Crace, who died some fifteen years ago—murdered, Elliot insists, by poison.

As Susan begins to read the manuscript’s opening chapters, the skeptical editor is relieved to find that Pünd’s Last Case is actually very good. Set in the South of France, it revolves around the mysterious death of Lady Margaret Chalfont, who, though mortally ill, is poisoned—perhaps by a member of her own family. But who did it? And why?

The deeper Susan reads, the more it becomes clear that the clues leading to the truth of Marian Crace’s death are hidden within this Atticus Pünd mystery.

While Eliot’s accusation becomes more plausible, his behavior grows increasingly erratic. Then he is suddenly killed in a hit-and-run accident, and Susan finds herself under police scrutiny as a suspect in his killing.

Three mysterious deaths. Multiple motives and possible murderers. If Susan doesn’t solve the mystery of Pund’s Last Case, she may well be the next victim.

I very much enjoyed the first two Ryeland outings, so should be early in line to pick up a copy of this book as well.

• Mystery Fanfare brings word that the latest Death in Paradise Christmas special is coming to UK screens on December 25, courtesy of BBC-TV. That feature-length installment will star Don Gilét, who replaces Ralf Little as the British lead detective on the show. Series 14 of Death in Paradise is expected to debut on the opposite side of the Atlantic early in 2025. There’s no word yet on when it might be available to American viewers.

• Meanwhile, Series 3 of the Death spin-off series Beyond Paradise, featuring Kris Marshall and Sally Bretton, has its own Christmas special planned (the broadcast date will be December 25), with new episodes expected in the spring of next year. And a third spin-off, the Australia-set Return to Paradise, is scheduled to air in the UK beginning on November 22. Six episodes will be on offer this first season.

• Not only has the Prime Video series Reacher received an early fourth-season renewal (Season 3—based on Persuader, Lee Child’s seventh Jack Reacher novel—won’t even debut until 2025), but a spin-off drama is also in the works. As Deadline reports, it will find Danish actress Maria Sten reprising her “fan-favorite” role as Frances Neagley, a corporate security professional in Chicago who served with Reacher in the U.S. Army's 110th Special Investigations Unit. The blog In Reference to Murder says that in this spin-off’s first season, Neagley “learns that a beloved friend from her past has been killed in a suspicious accident, [and] becomes hell bent on justice. Using everything she’s learned from Jack Reacher and her time as a member of the 110th Special Investigators, Neagley puts herself on a dangerous path to uncover a menacing evil.” Look for Alan Ritchson, who plays Reacher in the original series, to guest star in the offshoot.

• They don’t amount to much, but The Killing Times has posted a handful of “first look” images from Series 6 of Strike, which BBC One promises to premiere in the UK next month. These latest episodes are adapted from the 2022 novel The Ink Black Heart, by “Robert Gailbraith” (aka J.K. Rowling), and will star Tom Burke and Holliday Grainger. The Web site TVDrama.com provides this plot synopsis:

In the new season, the co-creator of the popular [YouTube cartoon series] The Ink Black Heart shows up frantic at Cormoran Strike [Burke] and Robin Ellacott’s office because she is being persecuted by a mysterious online figure. Ellacott [Grainger] informs her that the agency is too busy to take on the case, but regrets doing so when, weeks later, she discovers that the cartoon co-creator has been murdered in Highgate Cemetery, the location of The Ink Black Heart.

Ellacott and Strike are drawn into a quest to uncover the anonymous online figure who was tormenting the co-creator and are pulled into a complex web of online aliases, business interests and family conflicts.

Strike has previously aired in the States on HBO-TV, as C.B. Strike. But I have found no news yet of a U.S. debut for Series 6.

• One final boob tube-related item: The eight-episode Apple TV+ series Presumed Innocent is morphing into an anthology drama. Its acclaimed first season was of course based on Scott Turow’s 1987 novel of the same name, But, according to Deadline, the David E. Kelley-run production may take its sophomore-season inspiration from a legal thriller not even due for publication until 2026: Dissection of a Murder, by Jo Murray. It goes on to explain that Murray’s tale “follows Leila Reynolds who has just been handed her first murder case. She’s way out of her depth but the defendant only wants her—and to make matters worse, her husband is the prosecutor. Soon Leila is fighting to keep her own secrets buried too.”

• The British Crime Writers’ Association has brought on two new sponsors. The editorial consultancy Fiction Feedback, founded in 2008 by editor and former CWA secretary Dea Parkin, will support its Emerging Author Dagger prize. Writer/lecturer Morgen Witzel has volunteered to sponsor the Historical Dagger in memory of his wife, Dr Marilyn Livingstone, with whom—under the pseudonyms A.J. MacKenzie and R.L. Graham—he wrote 13 historical crime novels and thrillers. Livingstone passed away in September 2023.

• Scotland’s Glencairn Crystal Limited, which manufactures the famous Glencairn whisky glass and has for four years underwritten the McIlvanney and Bloody Scotland Debut crime-writing literary awards, is out with a new anthology, The Last Dram, that “features tales from 16 different authors, all of whom have previously entered the Glencairn Glass Crime Short Story competition over the last three years.” Among those writers, says The Bookseller, are “Allan Gaw (2022/23 runner-up, who has since gone on to win this year’s Bloody Scotland Debut Prize); Phillip Wilson (2023/24 winner); Elisabeth Ingram Wallace (2023/24 runner-up); Brid Cummings (2021/22 winner); Jennifer Harvey (2021/22 runner-up); Judith O’Reilly (2021/22 runner-up).” Funds raised through the sale of this anthology will go to Maggie’s, a network of cancer-care drop-in centers located across the United Kingdom.

• While re-reading The Little Sister, Raymond Chandler’s fifth Philip Marlowe novel, author Dana King finds himself surprised by the author’s “misogynistic tendencies.”

• As the DVD and Blu-ray editions of his latest indie film, Blue Christmas, are being readied for Christmastime sale, crime novelist Max Allan Collins reports that he and his fellow-author spouse, Barbara, recently celebrated the “world premiere” of a second new picture, Death by Fruitcake, with two showings in their home town of Muscatine, Iowa. Fruitcake brings to life the main characters in their almost two-decades-old Trash ’n’ Treasures mystery series, published under the nom de plume Barbara Allan. “The screenings weren’t flawless,” Collins writes. “These were our first showings anywhere other than on our computers, and Death by Fruitcake is primarily intended for television (streaming most likely) and physical media (Blu-ray and DVD). None of that marketing has begun, as the film is intended for a 2025 holiday release. So there were bumps, chiefly of the audio variety (softer image and audio on Friday, and still not ideal audio on Saturday). But they were eminently watchable and got a terrific reaction from both audiences, with lots of laughs and a good deal of fun at the red carpet event before and after …”

• I’m always a reluctant convention-goer, but I have promised to attend next year’s Bouchercon in New Orleans, during which my friend Ali Karim will serve as Fan Guest of Honor. And now I am giving serious thought to attending the Left Coast Crime get-together in late February 2026. It will be held in San Francisco, which is one of my favorite cities in the world, and feature as its Fan Guest of Honor Randal S. Brandt, a librarian at the University of California, Berkeley’s Bancroft Library and an infrequent contributor to The Rap Sheet. For more info or to register for the ’26 LCC, click here.

• Let me wish fond farewells to two lately deceased performers who appeared over the years on many TV programs, including crime dramas: Teri Garr and Alan Rachins.

• And for the many millions of Americans traumatized by the prospect of convicted felon Donald Trump returning to the White House next year, MSNBC-TV’s Rachel Maddow offers this to-do list to defend the nation’s democracy from authoritarian assault.

Is it simply my imagination, or has there been an extraordinary plenitude lately of interesting interviews with authors of crime and mystery noves? Endeavoring to collect them all would be a fool’s errand, but here are a few that caught my eye.

• Don Winslow talked with both National Public Radio’s Scott Simon (my favorite morning host, by the way) and CrimeReads’ Nick Kolakowski about City in Ruins, the final book in his trilogy starring “Danny Ryan, who's been a Rhode Island mobster, dockworker and fugitive from the law, is now a pillar of the community in Las Vegas.”

• In The Girl with All the Crime Books, journalist Louise Fairbairn questions Edinburgh author Philip Miller about The Hollow Tree, his second novel to feature investigative reporter Shona Sandison (following 2022’s The Goldenacre). Meanwhile, Miller tells Crimespree Magazine about “Five Things that Inspired The Hollow Tree.”

• With her 22nd V.I. Warshawski novel, Pay Dirt, due out from William Morrow next week, author Sara Paretsky responds to queries from Robin Agnew of Mystery Scene about that Kansas-set tale.

• For her popular Murder By the Book podcast, Sara DiVello says she “is so excited” to chat with Robert Dugoni about A Killing on the Hill, his Seattle-based historical thriller that recalls “the shooting of a lightweight boxer at the Pom Pom nightclub by a gangster” on Profanity Hill. “The trial that ensued became the trial of the century.”

• Crimespree’s Elise Cooper speaks with Mary Kubica about She’s Not Sorry, a work of suspense that focuses on an intensive care nurse who’s trying to figure out whether attempted suicide or attempted murder was behind a patient’s traumatic brain injury.

• And for The Strand, Andrew McAleer resurrects a conversation he had with Edgar-winning novelist Robert B. Parker back in 2006.

• Season 3 of Van der Valk, the British-made crime drama starring Marc Warren as Nicolas Freeling’s fictional Amsterdam cop, Piet Van der Valk, is set to premiere as part of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece series on Sunday, September 3. As The Killing Times explains, three new 90-minute episodes will find Commissaris Van der Valk facing “a new set of murders to solve, and as with seasons one and two all sorts of unusual angles and strange characters come into play. In the first episode, a European freerunning champion is gunned down by a sniper as he’s about to head to Paris for a competition. The maverick detective and his team uncover a link between the freerunners in the Netherlands and drug trafficking but there’s something more involved … The second case is pertinent if you’ve been following news stories about the British Museum and crimes taking place therein. An employee in an Amsterdam museum is murdered, which links to a case about the return of artefacts to their countries of origin that Van der Valk worked on early in his career. Finally, episode three of season three involves the death of someone taking part in a ritual to … um … summon a demon. Yes. You read that right.” Also starring in Van der Valk are Maimie McCoy as Inspecteur Lucienne Hassell and Darrell D'Silva as police forensic pathologist Hendrik Davie.

• While we’re on the subject of small-screen mysteries, let me tell you that Season 2 of Professor T, the UK adaptation of a popular Belgian program of the same name, will also debut as part of Masterpiece on September 3 (one hour earlier than Van der Valk, at 8 p.m. ET/PT). Ben Miller, formerly of Death in Paradise, stars as Professor Jasper Tempest, “a genius University of Cambridge criminologist with obsessive–compulsive personality disorder,” to quote from Wikipedia. Mystery Fanfare’s Janet Rudolph gives us the scoop on what to expect from this season: “Across six episodes, the Professor and the team untangle a series of knotty crimes ranging from an unexplained fire in a student block to the mystery of an entire family found dead in their home. From the blossoming affair between the two young detectives, Lisa and Dan, to the start of an exciting new liaison for Police chief DCI Christina Brand, nothing is quite what it seems. Meanwhile, Professor T is dominated and perplexed by the women in his life. As he attempts to improve his relationships with everyone from his mother to the love of his life Christina, he takes the monumental step of seeing a therapist. His sessions with Dr. Helena are painful for the Professor and his mother as they delve deep into his past and chip away at the secrets of his childhood.”

• And I’ve never listened to the BBC Radio 4 comedy-mystery series Mrs. Sidhu Investigates, but I may just have to tune in for the Acorn-TV adaptation of that series, which presents the first of four episodes on Monday, September 18. According to a press release, this show features English comedian Meera Syal (The Kumars at No. 42, The Split, The Devil’s Hour), who also voiced Mrs. Sidhu on the radio airwaves, as “a high-end caterer with a taste for crime. Recently widowed, she juggles her new catering business with encouraging her wayward son Tez (Gurjeet Singh, Ackley Bridge) to find his passion, all while serving up justice to those who believe they are above the law. Her forays into sleuthing see her form unofficial partnership with long-suffering divorcee DCI Burton [Craig Parkinson, familiar from Line of Duty and Grace] who reluctantly accepts that together they’re an unbeatable crime-fighting duo, much to the bemusement of his partner, DS Mint (Naana Agyei-Ampadu, Industry).”

• Another interesting note, this one from a recent post of B.V. Lawson’s In Reference to Murder:

Paramount+ released the first teaser trailer for Taylor Sheridan’s Lawmen: Bass Reeves, which stars David Oyelowo as the titular character. Reeves (Oyelowo), a former slave, was known as the greatest frontier hero in American history, working in the post-Reconstruction era as a federal peace officer in the Indian Territory and capturing over 3,000 of the most dangerous criminals without ever being wounded. Future iterations will follow other iconic lawmen and outlaws who have had an impact on history.

Wikipedia offers more of Reeves’s story here.

• Please excuse the tardiness of my mentioning this news, but the recent brutal summer heat here in Seattle seemed to steal away all of my energy. Anyway, I want to note that author Sara Paretsky has been chosen to receive the 2023 David Thompson Special Service Award, a commendation recognizing “extraordinary efforts to develop and promote the crime fiction field.” She will be given that prize during the coming Bouchercon in San Diego (August 30-September 3). Thompson was a “beloved” Houston, Texas, bookseller who passed away in 2010. Previous winners of the award include Les and Leslie Blatt, Janet Rudolph, and The Rap Sheet’s own Ali Karim.

• Paretsky talks about that new award, as well as her overdue return to Bouchercon, in this 11.5-minute YouTube video.

Chicago author Sara Paretsky, creator of the best-selling V.I. Warshawski private-eye series, has been chosen to receive the 2023 David Thompson Special Service Award. Named in honor of Texas bookseller-publisher David Thompson, who died in 2010, this commendation is presented annually by Bouchercon’s board of directors in recognition of “extraordinary efforts to develop and promote the mystery and crime fiction field.”

A news release says that Paretsky is being honored for her “phenomenal” contributions “as a founder of Sisters In Crime; as a leader in helping to lay the publishing groundwork for women authors of mystery and crime fiction; and as an ongoing literacy activist …”

She’ll be presented with her award during the General Members Meeting at this year’s Bouchercon, which is to be held in San Diego, California, from August 30 to September 3.

Previous winners of this special service accolade include The Rap Sheet’s own British correspondent, Ali Karim, Bouchercon participants Bill and Toby Gottfried, editor and bookseller Otto Penzler, Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine editor George Easter, reviewer and blogger Lesa Holstine, and editor-blogger Janet Rudolph.

Once upon a time only a meager handful of annual awards were available to authors of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction. But as you know if you’ve been reading The Rap Sheet during the last several months, there are now myriad (perhaps too many?) such accolades up for grabs. This week brings a couple more.

First in line: the Pinckley Prizes for Crime Fiction, “sponsored by the Women’s National Book Association of New Orleans and honoring Diana Pinckley, longtime crime-fiction columnist for the New Orleans Times-Picayune.” It has been announced that novelist Sara Paretsky, creator of the V.I. Warshawski private-eye series (Brush Back, etc.), will receive this year’s Pinckley Prize for Distinguished Body of Work. Meanwhile, Christine Carbo’s The Wild Inside (Atria), has been chosen to receive the 2016 Pinckley Prize for Debut Novel.

Second, we have the winners of the 2016 Lambda Literary Awards (“Lammys”), which honor lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) books published during 2015. There were more than two dozen categories of nominees, but the pair of greatest interest to this blog’s readers are probably these:

Lesbian Mystery:
(Tie) Ordinary Mayhem, by Victoria Brownworth (Bold Strokes); and Tarnished Gold, by Ann Aptaker (Bold Strokes)

Also nominated: The Grave Soul, by Ellen Hart (Minotaur); Illicit Artifacts, by Stevie Mikayne (Bold Strokes); No Good Reason, by Cari Hunter (Bold Strokes); The Red Files, by Lee Winter (Ylva); Relatively Rainey, by R.E. Bradshaw (R.E. Bradshaw); and The Tattered Heiress, by Debra Hyde (Riverdale Avenue)

Gay Mystery:
Boystown 7: Bloodlines, by Marshall Thornton (Kenmore)

Also nominated: After the Horses, by Jeffrey Round (Dundurn); The Boys from Eighth and Carpenter, by Tom Mendicino (Kensington); Cheap as Beasts, by Jon Wilson (Bold Strokes); Introducing Sunfish & Starfish: Tropical Drag Queen Detectives, by Wallace Godfrey (Strand Hill); Murder and Mayhem, by Rhys Ford (Dreamspinner Press); Orient, by Christopher Bollen (Harper); and The Swede, by Robert Karjel (Harper)

(Hat tip to Crimespree Magazine.)

• Since tomorrow is Halloween, it seems appropriate to begin here with some ghost-and-ghoul-related links: Author Michael Koryta (Last Words) identifies his “10 Favorite Halloween-Season Reads,” including Ray Bradbury’s The October Country and Stephen King’s Christine; meanwhile, Janet Rudolph has posted a much more comprehensive rundown of Halloween crime and mystery fiction in Mystery Fanfare; a site called Electric Lit picks “Twelve Haunting American Short Stories to Read This Halloween,” only a couple of which I’ve already enjoyed; some additional suggestions of books suitable to Saturday’s celebration, this time from BOLO Books’ Kristopher Zgorski and Bookgasm; for Criminal Element, Poe scholar Chuck Caruso talks with Leslie S. Klinger about this new collection, In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe: Classic Tales of Terror 1816-1914; e-book publisher Open Road recommends “Five Halloween Books You Haven’t Read Yet”; blogger NancyO recommends picking up a classic to go with this celebration--Agatha Christie’s 1969 Hercule Poirot mystery, Hallowe’en Party; Pulp Curry’s Andrew Nette presents a splendid selection of book covers featuring Satanism and witchcraft; in this Mystery*File post from last October, Michael Shonk ignores “TV series with monsters as the villains,” and instead samples “the shows with a monster as a good guy”; in A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence Towles Canote recommends “Ten Classic TV Show Episodes Suitable for Halloween Viewing,” one of which is the 1967 Star Trek installment “Catspaw,” written by “legendary horror writer Robert Bloch”; young adult novelist Sonia Gensler recaps her “spooky movie viewing” over the last year; the Classic Film and TV Café blog chooses the best and worst Dracula films made by Britain’s Hammer Pictures; short-story author Evan Lewis showcases dozens of vintage Halloween masks, while the blog Vintage Everyday hosts this gallery of “Strange and Terrifying Halloween Costumes from Between the 1900s and 1920s”; a magazine called Smart Meetings looks at “10 Famously Haunted Hotels of America”; and the photo above showing lovely Ava Gardner perched on a broomstick (lucky damn broomstick!) comes from a Film Noir Photos display of “Halloween Honeys.” UPDATE: Also check out this Halloween-themed radio episode of The Adventures of Sam Spade, first broadcast on October 31, 1948; Studies in Starrett’s examination of correspondence between fellow lovers of the macabre Vincent Starrett, a Sherlock Holmes expert, and “the man behind the Cthulhu mythos, Howard Phillips Lovecraft”; and the Universal Blogathon’s history of the horror films produced by Universal Pictures.

• The much-anticipated historical episode of Sherlock, titled “The Abominable Bride,” is set to premiere on January 1 as part of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! series. “Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman return as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in the modern retelling of Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic stories,” explains Mystery Fanfare. “But now our heroes find themselves in 1890s London. Beloved characters Mary Morstan (Amanda Abbington), Inspector Lestrade (Rupert Graves) and Mrs. Hudson (Una Stubbs) also turn up at 221B Baker Street.” At the link you will find a short video preview of “The Abominable Bride.”

• Meanwhile, Red Carpet Crash has posted a short trailer for the forthcoming HBO/Cinemax TV series Quarry, based on Max Allan Collins’ continuing book series about a killer-for-hire. “The trailer is getting a very positive response on the Net,” Collins writes in his blog, “and I like it very much myself--great noir-ish mood and a fine evocation of the early ’70s.” It’s still unclear exactly when in 2016 Quarry might reach TV screens, but the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) has six episodes listed so far.

• Ben Affleck’s big-screen adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s 2012 historical crime novel, Live by Night, just commenced shooting this month, and already there’s a first image circulating. The movie is tentatively scheduled for release in 2017.

• David Cole, the Michigan-born author of seven novels set the American Southwest and starring part-Hopi cyber-investigator Laura Winslow (including the 2006 Shamus Award finalist Falling Down), passed away on October 21 at a hospital in Syracuse, New York. He was 79 years old. An online obituary says, “David was a graduate of Michigan Technological University with a degree in electrical engineering; San Diego State University with degrees in English and Creative Writing; and was a doctoral student of Drama at Stanford University. He had a deep love of the Southwest … Tucson [Arizona] was his second home. David lived his life to the fullest, he was a multi-dimensional man. He was a trained engineer, an actor, a technical writer, a teacher of computer software, a musician, as well as a published author. He had an indomitable spirit and his joy of life and living was infectious to all.” In tribute, Janet Rudolph has republished an essay by Cole that appeared originally in the Winter 2000-2001 edition of Mystery Readers Journal.

• I somehow missed hearing this excellent news: J. Robert Janes, creator of the acclaimed World War II-set Jean-Louis St-Cyr/Hermann Kohler mysteries, has a new standalone thriller due out in mid-December. It’s titled The Sleeper. I’ve added this title to my already extensive list of fall-winter 2015 crime-fiction releases.

• Too good to be true? Actor Garret Dillahunt, who played two different roles on the 2004-2006 HBO-TV Western Deadwood, tweeted recently that he’s “hearing credible rumors about a Deadwood movie.”

• With the latest James Bond film, Spectre, having already debuted in Great Britain, and due out in American cinemaplexes early next month, Variety glances back at four Bond flicks that never quite made it into production. Those include a spin-off series of motion pictures starring Halle Berry as Giacinta “Jinx” Johnson, the National Security Agency (NSA) operative she played in 2002’s Die Another Day.

• Speaking of Spectre … The Book Bond cites a report saying there’s a pivotal scene in that flick inspired by events in the first James Bond continuation novel, Colonel Sun (1968), by Kingsley Amis.

• If you haven’t been paying attention to my Killer Covers blog, note that just days ago I posted this piece about the beautiful front of Clyde Allison’s 1962 novel Have Nude, Will Travel, then followed that up with this article about the Robert McGinnis-painted covers of Max Allan Collins’ brand-new Quarry novel reprints and this update of my work to expand an older gallery of Carter Brown paperback façades.

• In association with the early November release of Stephen King’s new short-fiction collection, The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, Britain’s Guardian newspaper has teamed up with King’s UK publisher “to run a short-story competition, in which King himself will pick the winner. … We’re looking for original and gripping stories of not more than 4,000 words” inspired by this vague King prompt: “There’s something to be said for a shorter, more intense experience. It can be invigorating, sometimes even shocking, like a waltz with a stranger you will never see again, or a kiss in the dark, or a beautiful curio for sale at a street bazaar.” Click here for details about how to enter this contest.

• We can now add “author” to the list of Gary Oldman’s occupations. The Bookseller reports that the star of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Child 44 is set to publish, with co-author and film producer Douglas Urbanski, a debut vampire novel called Blood Riders. “We have always wanted to write a story of vampire cowboys, set in the Wild West, the gold rush--and we have had these characters and this story kicking around in our heads for years,” the pair explained in a joint statement. “We hope everyone is drawn to Magnus and we envision a series of books that follow his curse and struggles with the forces of good and evil, and also the ever-present vampire ingredients of blood, and love.” This book should reach stories in the fall of 2016.

• Who says that reading novels won’t make you a better citizen of the world? Certainly not President Barack Obama.

• I was honored to have been “friended” not long ago on Facebook by author Sara Paretsky (Brush Back). Shortly afterward, in late October, she posted this short, humorous item on that social network site, recalling the birth of her series sleuth, V.I. Warshawski:

A gloomy late-fall day in Chicago, cool, drizzle, dying leaves. It was on a day much like this that V.I. Warshawski was conceived. Some of you have heard this tale before, but I was working for CNA Insurance in Chicago, part of the wave of young women entering management and the professions in large numbers in the 1970s. We had male bosses who were great mentors, some who were ordinary average managers, and a handful of pills who liked to throw boulders in front of us so they could laugh when we tripped and fell. I was working for one of those, Fred, I call him, at a meeting in his office, looking down on Grant Park in the dreary drizzly day. For about 8 years I’d been imagining writing a crime novel with a woman P.I., someone to turn the tables on Chandler, et al, but I wasn’t getting traction. And suddenly in that meeting, my lips [were] saying, “Gosh, Fred, heck of an idea,” while the balloon over my head was saying, “you expletive-deleted turkey bird,” [and] V.I. came to me. Not Philip Marlowe in drag, but a woman like me and my friends, doing a job that hadn’t existed for women when we were growing up, but saying what was in the balloon over her head because she dealt with the turkey birds without fear or favor. I guess I should send Fred a thank-you note (although at the rate he ate eggs Benedict when I had to travel with him and see him at breakfast may mean he’s sunk beneath his cholesterol by now. Although, of course, only the good die young.).

• I only just became aware that e-book publisher Open Road Media and the Mysterious Press have gotten together to resurrect Howard Engel’s Benny Cooperman series. So far, nine Cooperman tales are available for Kindle e-readers, including the Canadian gumshoe’s first outing, The Suicide Murders (1980).

• “The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colo., where Stephen King was inspired to create his 1977 bestseller The Shining, wants to go one step closer to the dark side,” according to the Los Angeles Times. “Last week, the landmark hotel near the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park released plans to create a building that would house a horror-themed museum, film production studio and film archive.” The Stanley is certainly not the first movie location hoping to capitalize on its Hollywood connections.

• Editor-blogger Elizabeth Foxwell notes that “Intellect Books in the UK will launch a new non-fiction series, Crime Uncovered, in November, which seeks to ‘explor[e the] genre in an intelligent, critical and accessible manner.’ Its first two volumes will be on the antihero (ed. Bath Spa University's Fiona Peters and Rebecca Stewart) and the detective (ed. Crime Time’s Barry Forshaw). In March will be a volume on the private investigator (ed. University of Newcastle’s Alistair Rolls and Rachel Franks).”

• Happy anniversary to BOLO Books, which celebrated the beginning of its third year in business on October 24.

• New Zealand critic-blogger Craig Sisterson has finally posted both parts of his rundown of the 10 Kiwi scribes he’d most like to see “chained up until they write another crime novel.” Click here to see his first five choices, and here to consider the remainder.

• Guaranteed to delight fans of the British TV detective drama Foyle’s War is news that a 29-DVD complete series set will be released on November 3. “Priced at $199.99 SRP, you’ll get 28 mysteries plus over 6 hours of bonus features,” says the blog TV Shows on DVD.

• Finally, here are a few interviews to check out around the Web: Editor Otto Penzler talks with Paste about the new Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories; Matthew V. Clemens is quizzed by Ava Black of Crimespree Magazine about Fate of the Union, the sequel to last year’s Supreme Justice, co-authored with Max Allan Collins; Bonnie MacBird chats with Nancie Clare at Speaking of Mysteries about her Sherlock Holmes adventure, Art in the Blood; Jason Starr answers questions at Crime Fiction Lover about his new novel, Savage Lane; S.W. Lauden conducts an e-mail interrogation of the mysterious St. Louis writer Jedidiah Ayres, author of Peckerwood; Sarah Weinman takes questions about her new work, Women Crime Writers, from both Cullen Gallagher (writing in The Paris Review) and Nancie Clare (again in Speaking of Mysteries); and National Public Radio’s Scott Simon carries on a delightful exchange with Stanford University professors Adrian Daub and Charles Kronengold, authors of The James Bond Songs: Pop Anthems of Late Capitalism (Oxford University Press).

In association with the Windy City’s “One Book, One Chicago” program--which has chosen Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye as its April citywide read--the contributors to the blogging collective The Outfit today begin opining about different aspects of Chandler’s 1953 novel. First up to the plate is Sara Paretsky, who provides a synopsis of the author’s life, along with part of a note Chandler scribbled to his agent, Bernice Baumgarten, after she’d delivered to him some negative feedback on the first draft of his novel:

I knew the character of Marlowe had changed and I thought it had to, because the hardboiled stuff was too much of a pose after all this time. But I did not realize [he] had become Christlike, and sentimental, and that he ought to be deriding his own emotions.

It would be interesting to hear more about that first draft of The Long Goodbye. Let’s hope one of Paretsky’s partners in crime picks up this thread in later posts. According to Marshal Zeringue, The Outfit’s Chandler-related posts will run “through the next two weeks. They’ll have a different blog up almost every weekday.”

Keep up with them here.

You can read the entirety of The Times’ talk with Sara Paretsky here.

“What do basketball, a discount superstore, two runaway teenagers and an explosion that screams of foul play have in common? They are just a sampling of the twists and turns found in the latest mystery thriller by Sara Paretsky, who discussed her most recent book, Fire Sale [2005].”

So says the Library of Congress Web site about a Webcast featuring Paretsky. The event was taped February 27, on the 25th anniversary (no, really) since the appearance of her fictional P.I., V.I. Warshawski, as well as the 20th anniversary of Sisters in Crime, an organization Paretsky helped found.

The Webcast was made as part of the Books & Beyond author series sponsored by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. It can be found here.

(Hat tip to Elizabeth Foxwell.)

We’ve often celebrated the birthdays of authors here at The Rap Sheet, but today we commemorate the birthday of a character: Chicago private eye V.I. (Victoria Iphigenia) Warshawski. As her creator, Sara Paretsky, reminds us at The Outfit:

On January 22, 1982, V.I. Warshawski was born: Indemnity Only, the first book in the series, was published by the Dial Press. V.I. started small, but she started a revolution in the way women are perceived in fiction. V.I. broke down walls around detecting women. Neither scheming vamp nor helpless victim, she’s a woman like most of the ones we all know, tackling life’s problems and solving them as best she can.

Nowadays all kinds of women are doing all kinds of things to find their voices, and to be taken seriously as readers and writers, but 25 years ago it was a lonely kind of place to be.

Sue Grafton’s own “gal gumshoe,” Kinsey Millhone, also debuted in 1982, in A Is for Alibi. I read both that and Indemnity Only, and went on to read other Grafton novels, but found eventually that I preferred V.I.’s tougher nature and her passionate resistance to compromising on matters of justice. Paretsky’s Italian-Polish detective has won over myriad others, as well. Despite failing at a transfer to the big screen (Kathleen Turner’s portrayal of her in 1991’s V.I. Warshawski was pretty damn awful), V.I.’s 12th novel-length appearance, in Fire Sale (2005), found her more popular than ever. Her fictional career is justly celebrated in the latest issue of Clues, and Paretsky reports that “on February 27, Sara will speak at the Library of Congress on V.I.’s birth and growth.”

Read Paretsky’s short tribute to her character here.

After previously interviewing such fascinating players in the crime-fiction field as George Pelecanos, Newton Thornburg, Lee Child, Henning Mankell, and Michael Malone, Tangled Web contributor Bob Cornwell now turns his attention to Sara Paretsky, the author most recently of Fire Sale.

In a profile marked by its thoughtful assessment of this Chicago author’s literary evolution, Paretsky talks about the necessary (and longstanding) political content of her private detective V.I. Warshawski books, “rage” as a plot propeller, how language can “date” fiction, and her next novel, a non-Warshawski yarn titled Bleeding Kansas, which “will utilise diaries from the 1850’s when Kansas was at the centre of one of the bloodiest battles over slavery the [United States] experienced before the Civil War.”

Look for Cornwell’s full Paretsky profile here.

Composing tributes to the recently departed has to be one of the most difficult, but satisfying exercises. It not only invites the obituary writer to learn considerably more about the deceased, but provokes him or her to re-evaluate aspects of their own life. Which is precisely what makes Sara Paretsky’s eulogy to the late police-procedural author Dorothy Uhnak, posted earlier this week at The Outfit, so noteworthy.

After explaining that Uhnak “died last month, by her own hand, at the age of seventy-six,” Paretsky recalls that another mystery writer, Carolyn Heilbrun (who composed 14 Kate Fansler novels under the nom de plume “Amanda Cross”), “also committed suicide” two years ago at age 77. Remarking on Heilbrun’s death, Paretsky concludes:

I know she was deeply concerned about the invisibility of older women, a topic she explored in Writing a Woman’s Life. She resigned her named chair at Columbia University because she was frustrated at the impossibility of her male colleagues attending to her views. But I still can’t make sense of her death.

I never met Dorothy Uhnak. I don’t know if she, too, felt invisible, unattended to, as she got older. I don’t know if she felt a dwindling of her powers, or if the market had left her behind.

I’ll be sixty next year. I struggle constantly with depression, with a sense of being out of step with the times, the market, with my own voice. When my literary godmothers give up the struggle, I’m terrified about what lies ahead.

With any luck, that fear will only make you stronger, Sara.