Tip-offs and Trifles

• French-Canadian director and screenwriter Denis Villeneuve (Blade Runner 2049, Dune and Dune: Part Two) has been tapped to helm the next, 26th James Bond film. “Some of my earliest movie-going memories are connected to 007,” he is quoted as saying. “I grew up watching James Bond films with my father, ever since Dr. No with Sean Connery. I’m a die-hard Bond fan. To me, he’s sacred territory. I intend to honor the tradition and open the path for many new missions to come. This is a massive responsibility, but also, incredibly exciting for me and a huge honor.” As The Spy Command observes, this will be “the first Bond movie since Amazon gained creative control of the franchise earlier this year.” There’s no word yet on a title for this picture or when it might be released to theaters.

• In Reference to Murder reports that

Rachel Brosnahan (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) will lead Apple’s legal drama Presumed Innocent for Season 2. The series hails from multi-Emmy Award winners David E. Kelley and J.J. Abrams, and executive producers Jake Gyllenhaal, Rachel Rusch Rich, Erica Lipez, and Matthew Tinker. Led by Gyllenhaal, Season 1 was inspired by Scott Turow’s courtroom thriller of the same name and tells the story of a horrific murder that upends the Chicago Prosecuting Attorney's office when one of its own is suspected of the crime. The book was published in 1987 and was turned into a 1990 feature starring Harrison Ford as Rusty Sabich, the same role Gyllenhaal took on. As reimagined by Kelley, Presumed Innocent will explore obsession, sex, politics, and the power and limits of love, as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.

• A hat tip to that same blog for sharing the news that Matthew McConaughey “is in talks to star in Skydance’s feature film based on the iconic private eye, Mike Hammer, from a script by Nic Pizzolatto, who collaborated with the actor in True Detective.” Deadline adds, “Skydance acquired the rights to Mickey Spillane’s and Max Allan Collins’ Mike Hammer franchise with plans to develop and produce the bestselling book series into a feature film. … Collins [who continued the Hammer series after Spillane’s death in 2006], will executive produce with Jane Spillane [Mickey’s widow] serving as co-producer.”

• R.I.P., Terry Louise Fisher, the co-creator of L.A. Law.

• Since May, when I mentioned on this page that host Barry W. Enderwick showcased the Officer Bill Gannon Sandwich (of Dragnet fame) on his YouTube series, Sandwiches of History, I have been checking up on Enderwick’s channel, well, pretty much every day. His latest episode takes us back to Dragnet, this time to sample the Officer Bill Gannon Garlic Nut Butter Sandwich.

• The New York Times asks, “What’s a ‘book boyfriend’?”

• Finally, Lee Child will headline England’s inaugural Whitby Literary Festival, to be held in that North Yorkshire seaside town from November 6 through 9. During a public interview with TV personality and author Rob Rinder, Child plans to talk about Exit Strategy, the 30th Jack Reacher novel (penned with his brother, Andrew Child), set for publication on both sides of the Atlantic come November 4. Also up for discussion will be Child’s “first-ever autobiographical collection,” Reacher: The Stories Behind the Stories, due out on September 9.

Bullet Points: Tariffs-Free Edition

• Who should be the next cinematic Bond? With Daniel Craig having departed the role of James Bond following 2021’s No Time to Die, speculation on which actor might next play Ian Fleming’s famous British superspy has revolved at various times around Henry Cavill, Tom Hardy, Idris Elba, Jack Lowden, and even 21-year-old Louis Partridge. CrimeReads’ Olivia Rutigliano has her own suggestion: “Joshua Bowman, the charming English actor who played Krasko on Doctor Who, and Daniel Grayson on ABC’s Revenge.” While I’m not yet on board with Bowman as Agent 007, I heartily endorse her idea that the next movie should be set in the 1950s, pre-Sean Connery. Remember that the ending of No Time to Die makes it pretty ridiculous to resurrect that protagonist for further feats in the 2020s. So why not return Bond to his roots, at the height of the Cold War? “It could be an origination story of the character,” writes Rutigliano, “rather like how Craig’s era rebooted the franchise with Casino Royale and used the Vesper Lynd love story as a consistent anchor for Bond’s choices, across multiple films. This could do something like that, with a nostalgic temporal re-contextualization that could stand out in a franchise that has historically insisted on contemporaneity.” Hey, everyone over at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios and Amazon (which now owns the intellectual property rights to Bond), are you listening?

• Meanwhile, The Spy Command’s Bill Koenig notes that “This year marks the 60th anniversary of Thunderball, the fourth Bond film and the apex of the 1960s spy craze.” He also alerts us to a Bond fan event, Gatherall at Goldeneye, set to take place in Jamaica this coming fall, and mentions that a new, expanded edition of Joseph Darlington’s 2013 book, Being James Bond: Volume One, is coming in August—though there’s not yet an Amazon “pre-order” link to share.

• Do you know the retro film and TV Web site Modcinema? I’ve ordered low-cost, made-on-demand DVD copies of forgotten small-screen features from that enterprise before, but its latest newsletter alerts me to a wealth of new offerings. Among them: the 1972 teleflick Assignment: Munich, which spawned Robert Conrad’s short-lived show Assignment: Vienna; a three-disc set containing all five episodes of the 1978 series Richie Brockelman, Private Eye starring Dennis Dugan; three episodes (including the pilot) of Cool Million, the James Farentino series that was one spoke of the NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie “wheel series” (two additional eps can be found in this set); and Fame Is the Name of the Game, the 1966 made-for-television picture starring Tony Franciosa, which “served as the pilot episode of the subsequent series The Name of the Game.”

• As a longtime follower of Peter Falk’s NBC Mystery Movie series, I’m surprised this February release didn’t hit my radar before now: Columbo Explains the Seventies: A TV Cop’s Pop Culture Journey, by Glenn Stewart (Bonaventure Press). UPDATE: Stewart tells The Columbophile about what inspired him to write this book.

• My suspicion is there aren’t many people around these days boasting solid memories of the 1980 ABC-TV action series B.A.D. Cats. As Wikipedia recalls, that Douglas S. Cramer/Aaron Spelling production starred Asher Brauner and Steve Hanks as “two former race car drivers who joined the Los Angeles Police Department as part of the ‘B.A.D. C.A.T.’ Squad (a double acronym for ‘Burglary Auto Detail–Commercial Auto Theft’).” Then 21-year-old Michelle Pfeiffer appeared on the program too, playing Officer Samantha “Sunshine” Jensen, who “would occasionally lend a hand when a more feminine approach was called for.” B.A.D. Cats didn’t last long; it was cancelled in February 1980 after a pilot (which you can view here) and five other episodes had been broadcast. But as Vintage Everyday observes, the show was an important stepping stone on Pfeiffer’s path to Hollywood renown. A few days ago, that blog posted almost four dozen promotional photos of her from B.A.D. Cats, which it says demonstrated “Pfeiffer’s youthful charm and emerging star quality.” The actress would go on to play a different breed of bad cat in Batman Returns (1992).

• While I greatly enjoyed Netflix’s first two Enola Holmes movies (in 2020 and 2022), based on the middle-reader mysteries by Nancy Springer, I forgot there was to be another. Variety brings the news that its production is already well underway. “The third instalment,” that publication explains, “sees adventure chase Enola Holmes to Malta, where, according to the description, ‘personal and professional dreams collide on a case more tangled and treacherous than any she has faced before.’” As in the previous pictures, Millie Bobby Brown will play Sherlock Holmes’ teenage sister. There’s no release date yet.

• This item comes from In Reference to Murder:

Wallander, the globally acclaimed Swedish detective drama, is getting “a modernized and reimagined reboot” with Gustaf Skarsgård (Oppenheimer, Vikings) playing the iconic role. The first season of the new Swedish-language adaptation will comprise three 90-minute films and will see Kurt Wallander, now 42, recently separated, after two decades of marriage, and estranged from his daughter. On the edge as his life seemingly unravels, Wallander drinks too much, sleeps too little, and carries the weight of every unsolved case.

Penned by bestselling author Henning Mankell, the Wallander novels have sold over 40 million copies and been translated into more than 40 languages. The original Swedish series and film adaptations, which aired between 1994 and 2013, garnered wide international success and were followed by a British mini-series adaptation starring Kenneth Branagh that earned him a BAFTA for his portrayal of the detective.

• Sunday, June 15, will bring the return of Grantchester to PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! timeslot. Mystery Fanfare has the trailer for Season 10 of that historical whodunit.

• As Saturday Evening Post columnist Bob Sassone writes, “Dragnet’s Officer Bill Gannon (Harry Morgan) was known for the food he ate, which often confused and worried his partner Joe Friday (Jack Webb). Barry Enderwick of the terrific Sandwiches of History decided to try it, at the suggestion of many of his fans.” Watch the video here.

• The small-screen period crime drama Peaky Blinders is coming back! So are the rebooted Bergerac and the Death in Paradise spin-off Return to Paradise (even though I haven’t seen either of their opening seasons yet). And Acorn TV has scheduled the two-episode premiere, on Monday, June 9, of Art Detectives, which “revolves around the Heritage Crime Unit, a [UK] police department hired to solve murders connected to the world of art and antiques.”

• I was a huge fan of Leverage, the 2008-2012 TNT-TV crime caper series starring Timothy Hutton, Gina Bellman, Aldis Hodge, Christian Kane, and Beth Riesgraf. I must have watched every episode four times or more! Yet when that show was revived in 2021 as Leverage: Redemption, with Noah Wyle replacing Hutton, I hesitated tuning in, partly because I wasn’t sure I could believe the “gang” being a decade older and still as active. I think I’ve seen only two episodes of Redemption, and I completely missed the news that it had been renewed for a third season. The first three of 10 new installments aired on April 17, with more to come every Thursday through June 5. I guess it’s time I started catching up! See the trailer below.



• The Web site Geek Girl Authority (yeah, I’d never heard of it until today either) features a review of Leverage: Redemption, Season 3, plus this tribute to my favorite Leverage team member, Riesgraf’s prodigiously eccentric Parker, “truly the world’s greatest thief.”

• Speaking of TV trailers, CrimeReads has posted one for Season 2 of Poker Face, the crime comedy-drama starring Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale, “a casino worker on the run who entangles herself into several mysterious deaths of strangers along the way.” That show will return to the streaming service Peacock on Thursday, May 8, with 12 new episodes (two more than were broadcast in 2023).

• And while you are at CrimeReads, enjoy these three other posts that went up there recently: Patrick Sauer’s salute to Tony Rome, the South Florida gumshoe introduced in 1960’s Miami Mayhem by Marvin H. Albert, and a character Frank Sinatra played in a couple of “groovy” films; Christopher Chambers’ case for reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (which celebrated its 100th anniversary earlier this month) as noir; and Scott Montgomery’s look back at the first quarter-century of Stark House Press’ efforts to return to print many hard-boiled authors and novels from the 1950s and ’60s.

• Thomas Pynchon has a new private-eye novel coming in October!

• National Public Radio weekend host Scott Simon interviews film historian Jason Bailey about his brand-new biography, Gandolfini: Jim, Tony and the Life of a Legend (Abrams Press). That book is being promoted as “a detailed and nuanced appraisal of an enduring artist,” Jim Gandolfini, who was apparently quite different from the New Jersey Mafia boss he played on HBO’s The Sopranos.

• Why can’t the United States have nice things like this? The British Writers’ Association and the Reading Agency, a UK charity, have jointly organized National Crime Reading Month (NCRM) in June. “This year,” says a press release, “it opens with an exclusive online panel, The Lives of Crime, featuring bestselling crime authors. On 4 June at 6 p.m., the CWA chair and bestselling author, Vaseem Khan, will host authors Fiona Cummins, Adele Parks, and Penny Batchelor in the free online panel event.” They’ll be talking about “the genre’s universal appeal—from psychological thrillers to cozy mysteries—and how it creates accessible pathways to reading for audiences who might otherwise never discover the joy of books.” (Click here to register.) Beyond that presentation, NCRM will offer “over a hundred local author events and talks that run throughout June across the UK and Ireland, which take place in libraries, theatres, bookshops and online.” A page devoted to keeping track of NCRM events is available at this link.

• I am way behind in reading Paperback Warrior’s occasional “primers” on vintage crime novelists and pulp-fiction characters. The latest entry in that series recalls Kendell Foster Crossen (1910-1981), who “wrote crime-fiction novels under the name of M.E. Chaber, a pseudonym he used to construct the wildly successful Milo March series from the mid-1950s through the 1970s.” Fun stuff! UPDATE: Another such primer has just “gone live,” this one relating the background of Charles Williams, who “authored 22 books and was one of the best-selling writers in the Fawcett Gold Medal stable.”

• Historical mystery novelist Jeri Westerson used to produce a blog called Getting Medieval, offering interviews and articles—only to suddenly delete that journal from the Web, leaving links at other sites broken. She says now that “it was too much work and social media was rising.” Recently, though, Westerson decided to return to blogging. She has subsequently posted several author exchanges of interest. Gary Phillips, James R. Benn, and Rebecca Cantrell have all fielded questions from her. I hesitate slightly to link to these conversations, leery of their also disappearing someday, but transience is unfortunately a Web foible.

• Is this creative or creepy? From The Hollywood Reporter:

BBC Studios, the commercial arm of British broadcaster BBC, and the Agatha Christie estate have teamed up to launch a writing course on education-focused streaming service BBC Maestro taught by Christie herself. Well, to be precise, it is taught by the queen of crime, brought to life by actress Vivien Keene and AI, using the author’s own words.

“In a world first, Agatha Christie—best-selling novelist of all time—will be offering aspiring writers an unparalleled opportunity to learn the secrets behind her writing, in her own words,’ the partners said. ‘Using meticulously restored archival interviews, private letters and writings researched by a team of Christie experts, this pioneering course reconstructs Christie’s own voice and insights, guiding you through the art of suspense, plot twists and unforgettable characters.”

James Prichard, Christie’s great-grandson and the CEO of Agatha Christie Limited, is quoted in The Guardian as saying that the educators and researchers behind this subscription-based video series “extracted from a number of her writings an extraordinary array of her views and opinions on how to write. Through this course, you truly will receive a lesson in crafting a masterful mystery, in Agatha’s very own words.” OK, maybe it’s creative, after all.

• I have given precisely zero thought to what might be the “best crime novels of 2025 … so far.” However, both The Times of London and The Week have already shared their favorites.

• Over at my Killer Covers blog, I’ve written a great deal about the American artist Robert McGinnis this year, both prior to his demise in March (at age 99!), and after. But author Max Allan Collins had his own memories to share, in this post that talks about how he scored an unusual number of McGinnis’ paintings for use on his novels about the hired killer known only as Quarry.

• Can we ever get enough of Belgian author Georges Simenon’s Jules Maigret mysteries? Penguin Books has been publishing paperback versions of them over the last decade, and has brand-new editions set to become available beginning in July. And now the U.S. imprint Picador is joining in the game, launching its own Maigret lineup this month. Over the next three years, Picador says, it too will reissue all 75 Maigrets, plus “thirty of his darker standalone ‘romans durs’ beginning March 2026.” Pietr the Latvian will reach stores on May 6, together with The Late Monsieur Gallet and The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien, all of which originally saw print back in 1931. It may be time to clear some space on your bookshelves!

• This is a terrible loss—at least from my perspective. The annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which celebrated appallingly bad initial sentences to (fortunately) never-to-be-completed books, is no more. Scott Rice, who, as an English professor at California’s San Jose State University, founded the competition in 1982, says he finds it “becoming increasingly burdensome and [I] would like to put myself out to pasture while I still have some vim and vigor!” The Rap Sheet has posted many of the winners over time, and we’re sorry not to be able to keep up that tradition for decades more to come.

• California author J. Sydney Jones produced half a dozen books in his Viennese Mysteries series, beginning with The Empty Mirror (2008) and ending—it was presumed—with The Third Place (2015). They were complicated and propulsive stories of crime in the Austrian capital that took place during the very early 20th century, had as their leads lawyer Karl Werthen and real-life criminologist Doktor Hanns Gross, and seemed to fare well in the marketplace. However, Jones writes in his blog, “The original series stopped after book six. I had originally planned it for another three to four installments. But other projects came up, other publishers.” The author nonetheless returned to that series during the COVID-19 pandemic, penning a “capstone” titled Lilacs of the Dead Land, which he published in February of this year—a novel that somehow managed to avoid my radar. He calls it “a stirring historical thriller set in Austria shortly after the German annexation, or Anschluss, of March 1938.” As one who very much appreciated his Viennese Mysteries, I’ll want to find a copy soon.

• It should be mentioned that one of those “other projects” Jones embarked upon was a new crime series, set on California’s central coast during World War II and adopting as its protagonist a wounded former New York City police detective, Max Byrns. The second Byrns book, Play It in Between (Werthen Press), debuted in April.

• April 17 brought the presentation, at New York City’s New School, of the 37th annual Publishing Triangle Awards celebrating “LGBTQ+ literary excellence.” During that event, Massachusetts author and creative writing professor Margot Douaihy was given the Joseph Hansen Award for LGBTQ+ Crime Writing for her second Sister Holiday novel, 2024’s Blessed Water (Zando/Gillian Flynn Books). Hansen, you will remember, penned a dozen novels in the late 20th century starring gay death claims investigator Dave Brandstetter.

• Just as “authors hitting the best seller list are approaching gender equality for the first time,” a new independent press in Great Britain proposes to center its business on male writers. Reporting on this development, Lit Hub’s James Folta acknowledges that “female authorship is on the rise, especially recently,” but he adds, “to conclude that men therefore need an urgent champion seems naïve and near-sighted. To look at this trend or, perhaps more accurately, to feel the vibes and conclude that male authors are in danger is pushing it. Male authors going from 80% to 50% of the market is far from a crisis in need of another intervening corrective.”

• And here’s one more instance of a blog rising from the dead. The Stiletto Gumshoe debuted back in November 2018, focusing on crime and mystery fiction and the artwork associated with same. But it went dormant just two years later, with its author, C.J. Thomas, apologizing that “some troubling ‘real-life’ issues need to be wrestled with right now, so there’ll be a break from blogging here for a while. Hope to be back soon …” Soon was not soon at all. When The Stiletto Gumshoe finally disappeared altogether from the Internet (forcing me to substitute links to its posts from The Wayback Machine), I struck it from this page’s lengthy blogroll, too. Then, just as abruptly as it was gone, Thomas’ creation returned! This last April 23, Thomas put up a tribute to Sergeant DeeDee McCall, the role Stepfanie Kramer played in the 1980s TV crime drama Hunter. He has followed that with posts about the 1950 film noir Where Danger Lives, J. Robert Lennon’s new Buzz Kill, French 1980s print ads from DIM Paris, and much more. Welcome back, C.J., I hope you can stick around this time.

Bullet Points: Kicking Off Autumn Edition

• Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and country singer Dolly Parton have all claimed authorship of crime or thriller novels over the last few years, so why not James Comey? The ex-U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and onetime FBI director was bluntly fired from that latter post in 2017 by Donald Trump amid the worsening scandal over Russian influence on Trump’s 2016 presidential bid. Comey has since delivered speeches and written op-ed pieces for newspapers, but those endeavors were apparently not satisfying enough. So now he has signed with The Mysterious Press, an imprint of Penzler Publishers, to produce a pair of crime novels. As explained this week in a press release,

Central Park West, the first book of a planned series, features an assistant U.S. Attorney whose case against a high-profile mobster is derailed when a shocking turn of events reveals possible ties between the Mafia and the headline-making murder of a local politician. Drawing from the author’s personal experience, this high-stakes legal thriller reveals the detective work, backdoor dealings, and tradecraft involved as the FBI and Department of Justice attempt to build a case against an elusive member of one of the oldest criminal organizations in the world.

“I’m excited to take readers inside fascinating worlds I’ve come to know from my time in government and the private sector,” Comey is quoted as saying. “These stories are fiction, but, inspired by real work I’ve done, they will offer a rarely-seen view of interesting people and institutions. And I’m honored to be doing it with a legendary publisher.” Central Park West is scheduled for release in late spring 2023. There’s no word yet on the plot of book two.

• Literary Hub managing editor Emily Temple surveyed 25 reading lists for this fall season from 22 notable outlets (newspapers, magazines, and some Web sites) in order to come up with a tally of the 72 most-recommended books, fiction and non-fiction. Of those dozens of choices, I believe only two novels—Deanna Raybourn’s Killers of a Certain Age and Richard Osman’s The Bullet That Missed—can unquestionably be defined as crime or mystery fiction.

• The annual Irish crime-writing festival Murder One was launched only in 2018, and for the last two years—ever since the COVID-19 pandemic struck—it has had to be presented exclusively online. Not this year, though. From October 4 to 9, Murder One is scheduling events to take place at the DLR LexIcon Library and Cultural Centre in Dún Laoghaire, just south of Dublin. Among 2022’s scheduled guests will be U.S. novelists Laura Lippman and Jean Hanff Korelitz, English fictionists Ann Cleeves and Mick Herron, Irish writers Catherine Ryan Howard and Brian McGilloway, and Agatha Christie biographer/TV presenter Lucy Worsley. Many of the in-person events will also be live-streamed online. For booking details, click here.

• In Reference to Murder reports that actor Shaun Sipos (Outer Range) “has been tapped as a major lead opposite Alan Ritchson in the upcoming second season of Reacher. From writer and showrunner Nick Santora and based on the novels by Lee Child, the series follows Jack Reacher (Ritchson), a veteran military police investigator who has just recently entered civilian life. In a one-year deal, Sipos will play David O’Donnell, who served with Reacher in the Army’s unit of special investigators and is like a brother to Reacher. While Season 1 was based on the first book in Child’s Jack Reacher series, Ritchson revealed in May on Instagram that Season 2 will follow the eleventh book in Child’s series, Bad Luck and Trouble. David O’Donnell is a prominent character in that book, the only novel in the series he is featured in, which explains Sipos’ one-season deal.”

• Congratulations to the Sisters in Crime organization for 35 years spent “fighting the patriarchy.”

• How does Peter Falk’s Lieutenant Columbo compare with the great Sherlock Holmes? “Despite being a very different character, and harking from an entirely different time and space,” The Columbophile blog opines, “Columbo may be the closest to Holmes of all their peers in terms of mental dexterity. But how much do these men really have in common when making a detailed comparison? Well, despite one being an upper-crust, cynical and occasionally drug-dependent Victorian-era Brit, and the other being from humble Italian-American stock, a grafter who has worked harder than others to get ahead, there is much to connect the two detectives—and those similarities expand way beyond a mutual love of tobacco.” Enjoy the whole story here.

• So much for that dream... In answer to the question, “At what point in human history were there too many (English) books to be able to read them all in one lifetime?,” Randall Munroe, the author of What If? 2, estimates the threshold was passed “sometime before the population of active English writers reached a few hundred,” which would have been right around the year 1500.

• Sadly, my book radar sometimes fails me. For instance, I entirely missed noticing this last July’s release of The Blood Ogre, the latest novel from Craig McDonald, best known for his pulpish Hector Lassiter series. Steven Powell offers this description:

The story revolves around the reputation of two remarkably prolific writers, Lester Dent and Walter B. Gibson. Dent suffered a nervous breakdown and early death in 1959, perhaps brought on by the impossible schedule of churning out Doc Savage novels by the dozen and averaging two million words a year on his typewriter. In his final days, Dent had hallucinations in which he would see and interact with Doc Savage characters. In 1965, Doc Savage and The Shadow novels are enjoying renewed popularity. The Shadow author Walter B. Gibson has a knack for publicity rooted in his parallel career as a magician. People start witnessing a black-clad figure looming around the Greenwich Village house where Gibson penned the final Shadow novel in 1949. Gibson claims it is a ‘living mind-projection’ of The Shadow. But if a hero can rise from the pages of an authors literary output, then what other, more sinister, characters will follow him?

Powell calls The Blood Ogre “devilishly good” and “an affectionate tribute to a bygone era.” Frankly, it’s meta-fictional conceit reminds me rather too much of Paul Malmont’s The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril (2006), a novel I was unable to finish. Nonetheless, I’ve enjoyed McDonald’s books in the past, so will likely look this one up, too.

• Not long before he starred in the high-tech NBC-TV private eye drama Search, actor Tony Franciosa appeared in an unsold pilot for the same network called The Catcher. The weekly program would’ve starred Michael Witney as Noah Hendrix, a former agent with the Seattle Bureau of Missing Persons, who now operates as an investigator chasing runaways and fugitives. I’ve never seen the full pilot, but I did discover a four-minute clip on YouTube that features Franciosa, Witney, Jan-Michael Vincent as Hendrix’s associate Sam Callende, and blues musician Piano Red. See it while you can!

• My, how times—and budgets—have changed! Back in 1968, it was considered extravagant for NBC to fork out $400,000 for every 90-minute episode of the crime-drama “wheel series” The Name of the Game. Compare that with some of today’s most expensive small-screen shows. According to the Internet research company VPN Overview, the Amazon Prime production Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power costs $60 million per installment. The Disney+ programs Hawkeye (2021), The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021), WandaVision (2021), Loki (2021), and Obi Wan Kenobi (2022) each budgeted $25,000,000 per episode, while Netflix spends $13,000,000 per episode on The Crown (2016-).

• Have you ever wanted to watch the first, black-and-white, half-hour episode of Jack Webb’s police drama, Dragnet, dating back to December 14, 1951? Well, here’s your chance.

• I didn’t realize, when I applauded the recent revival of The Washington Post’s Sunday Book World section after a dozen years, that its return would coincide with the end of another Sunday Post component I have come to appreciate immensely: the nearly 68-year-old Outlook section of commentary and news analysis. “The decision to retire the Outlook section,” Robert G. Kaiser and Steve Luxenberg explained in its last edition, on September 16, “and to consolidate the paper’s opinion journalism in the editorial department, is a measure of how dramatically the newspaper business has changed in its march from print to digital publication.” Outlook was one of the models I used when I created a four-page editorials section for my college newspaper, and I’ve enjoyed reading it whenever I have been in D.C. since, or have picked up the Sunday Post from a newsstand. Rolling its variety of contents into the Opinions pages is not an unreasonable solution, but it’s also not a happy one for those of us who once traveled directly from the front section of the Post to Outlook.

Bullet Points: Christmas Rushed Edition

• A fitting tribute to Ian Fleming: Jamaica’s present Boscobel Airstrip, located in the northeastern parish of Saint Mary and used principally by private jets, will soon be upgraded, expanded, and renamed after the creator of super-spy James Bond. Fleming lived in Saint Mary Parish during his retirement in the late 1950s and early ’60s.

• Patti Abbott has pulled something of a surprise on the followers of her recent round-robin short-fiction challenge. As she explains, “I was originally going to end this challenge myself next week,” but after receiving the 11th installment, from blogger Dan Fleming, “it seemed like the perfect ending. My piece would be redundant at best.” You can catch up on the full run of that progressive story here.

• A very special Christmas episode ... of The Avengers?

• Dragnet pays its own tribute to the holiday.

• I missed this post when it was put up last month, but I think author Ed Gorman’s distinction between detective novelists Ross Macdonald and John D. MacDonald is right on. And judging by the comments attached to his remarks, I’m not alone.

• Have you ever wanted to listen to an interview with acclaimed California writer Don Winslow (The Dawn Patrol, Savages)? Well, this is your chance, as he answers questions from Jeff Rutherford. Listen here.

• Scottish novelist Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting) chooses “five great crime novels,” all but one of which I’ve read. (Hat tip to Campaign for the American Reader.)

• Anyone up for a David Goodis memorial? It is scheduled to be held on January 11, 2001--the 40th anniversary of that author’s death--at his graveside in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania?

• From today’s edition of Salon: “Stieg Larsson and Dan Brown novels are riddled with clichés, but for many readers, that’s a feature not a bug.” Really? More here.

• New England author William G. Tapply died of leukemia in July 2009, but Skyhorse Publishing still has one more posthumous novel of his to release. It’s called The Nomination and will reach bookstores in late January of next year.

• It’s not crime fiction, but since the mastermind behind it is crime-fiction blogger Cullen Gallagher (Pulp Serenade), his marathon tribute to the Gold Medal western novels deserves a mention on this page. Authors whose work has so far been considered include Harry Whittington, Donald Hamilton, and Jonas Ward (aka William Ard).

• Another book cover to admire.

• South African writer Roger Smith has been draped in bouquets by international crime fiction authority Peter Rozovsky for his novel Wake Up Dead. I still haven’t gotten around to reading that book (the U.S. paperback version isn’t due out till next month), but we can all get a sense of Smith’s literary style by reading his short story, “Ishmael Toffee,” which has just been posted here.

• No wonder Americans think Republicans are obstructionists and out of touch with current economic realities ...

• A remarkable recap: Do the Math presents an annotated rundown of “all of Donald E. Westlake’s major fiction, his lone book of reportage, and three important essays.”

• Remaindered, the short independent film directed by author-screenwriter Lee Goldberg, which I wrote about in October, “has been chosen as an official selection of the 2011 Derby City Film Festival in Louisville, Kentucky,” according to Goldberg’s blog.

• Roger “R.J. Ellory, author of The Anniversary Man and Saints of New York, answers Declan Burke’s questions about which crime novel he would most like to have written, his most satisfying writing moment, his present reading, and more here.

• The prolific Max Allan Collins is pushing to finish work on another unpublished Mickey Spillane novel, The Consummata, at the same time as he polishes off the preliminary research on Ask Not, his latest Nate Heller detective novel, this one based around the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Find out more here.

• Steve Holland offers a two-part gallery of Ngaio Marsh book covers.

• R.I.P., Richard Holbrooke. The skilled and veteran diplomat, who oversaw negotiations to end the war in Bosnia, was often mentioned as the leading candidate to become Secretary of State under a President Al Gore, and who President Obama appointed as his special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, died Monday night after surgery to repair a tear to his aorta. He was 69 and will be much missed.

“M*A*S*H,” Murder, and Morgan

I failed to make note of what would’ve been actor-producer Jack Webb’s 87th birthday, on April 2. But I’ll not miss commemorating his Dragnet co-star, Harry Morgan’s 92nd birthday today.

Morgan (born Henry Bratsburg in Detroit, Michigan, in 1915) is probably associated by anyone under 30 years of age with the long-running medical comedy M*A*S*H, on which he played stern but warm-hearted Colonel Sherman T. Potter. However, Morgan’s creds in the crime fiction department are long-standing. In 1947, he hosted the NBC radio series Mystery in the Air. Fourteen years later, he began appearing in Dragnet episodes, playing Officer Bill Gannon--a gig that became regular when he signed on as Webb’s partner in a revival of the series, Dragnet 1967 (1967-1970). A piece on the Norwegian American Hall of Fame Web site (Morgan’s father was Norwegian) highlights his contribution to that show:

Few reprisals succeed. This one did, and the casting of Morgan as Officer Bill Gannon might be a significant reason for that. The light-hearted interplay between Morgan, as Gannon, and Jack Webb, as Sgt. Joe Friday, was priceless. Gannon was constantly advising and lecturing Friday. “I’m telling you, Joe ...” he would begin, and a nonplused Friday would listen, then utter a noncommittal response such as “Is that so?” In the final season, Gannon made frequent references to boning up for the sergeant’s exam and, in the end, got his promotion; Friday, who spoken [sic] nary a word about studying for the lieutenant’s exam, was promoted at the same time.

In 1971, Morgan co-starred with British actor (and Kennedy relative) Peter Lawford in Ellery Queen: Don’t Look Behind You, an NBC-TV movie adaptation of the 1949 Ellery Queen novel, Cat of Many Tails. Lawford, of course played Ellery, though his interpretation was a bit odd, at best. The Harvard-educated crime novelist became, in Lawford’s hands, some sort of British hipster, while Morgan served as his uncle, New York Police Inspector Richard Queen. (In the books, Inspector Queen had been Ellery’s father, but that wouldn’t have made much sense here, since Morgan had no British accent, and probably didn’t wish to affect one.) This teleflick’s original script came from William Link and Richard Levinson, the pair who created Mannix, Columbo, Tenafly, and other well-regarded mystery series of that time. But the finished product was mediocre, with Lawford an unconvincing Ellery. Link and Levinson disagreed so greatly with the changes made to their script, that they were jointly billed simply, and pseudonymously, as “Ted Leighton.” In the end, NBC passed on the Lawford/Morgan series. (However, Link and Levinson, both lifelong Queen fans, got another shot at bringing their bookish hero to the small screen in 1975, with the NBC series Ellery Queen, starring Jim Hutton and David Wayne. It lasted one year.)

Morgan went on to co-star with Robert Conrad in The D.A., a half-hour legal drama described in Wikipedia rather succinctly:

The D.A. starred Robert Conrad as Deputy District Attorney Paul Ryan, a tough-minded, hard-hitting prosecutor who conducted his own investigations, assisted by Bob Ramirez (Ned Romero). He then prosecuted the case, under the watchful eye of his supervisor, Chief Deputy District Attorney “Staff” Stafford (Harry Morgan). His opponent was usually Public Defender Katherine Benson (Julie Cobb). During the courtroom segments, Ryan also provided a voice-over narration, which brought the audience in on legal jargon and court procedures and allowed there to be less exposition in the dialogue, which was necessary due to the program's length. This program, however, is probably less known for its own storylines than for the fact that it was canceled at midseason in order to make way for one of the 1970s biggest comedy hits, Sanford and Son.

Just a year later, in 1972, Morgan returned to television in another Mystery Movie segment, Hec Ramsey. It starred Richard Boone (formerly of Have Gun--Will Travel) as an aging former Wild West gunfighter who, as the 19th century becomes the 20th, assumes the job of deputy sheriff in an ambitious Oklahoma town and tries to employ newfangled forensic techniques to solve crimes. Morgan co-starred as the dusty burg’s unflappable doctor, Amos Coogan, who befriends Ramsey and provides him with medical expertise. The series, which was executive-produced by Morgan’s old Dragnet cohort, Jack Webb, showcased Boone well as a crusty, cussing, and altogether short-tempered lawman trying to turn over a new leaf, and it was an excellent complement to Columbo, McMillan & Wife, and Dennis Weaver’s McCloud. Unfortunately, Hec Ramsey was canceled after just a couple of years.

Over the next decade and a half, Harry Morgan split his acting commitments between small- and large-screen roles. He appeared in several episodes of Gunsmoke, played a Nevada marshal in John Wayne’s last movie, The Shootist (1976), and appeared in a pair of teleflicks based on the popular 1965-1969 TV series The Wild Wild West (which put him back together with Robert Conrad). He then spent eight years on M*A*S*H (winning an Emmy Award in 1980 for his brilliantly controlled but heartfelt performances), before signing on with yet another NBC mystery series, this one titled Blacke’s Magic. I remember liking that 1986 series (another Link and Levinson creation), though not so much as I had enjoyed an earlier show concocted of crime-solving and legerdemain, Bill Bixby’s The Magician. Undoubtedly, the best thing about Blacke’s Magic was its two leads: Hal Linden (previously of Barney Miller), who played a renowned American magician, Alexander Blacke; and Morgan as Blacke’s dad, Leonard, an unreconstructed con man whose, er, unique skills and mastery of disguises, combined with his son’s sleight of hand--and more than a soupçon of logic--made them a formidable and frequently funny duo when it came to solving impossible robberies, explaining incredible phenomena, and helping people in deep trouble.

Morgan went on to guest star on Murder, She Wrote and 3rd Rock from the Sun, and to revive his role as Los Angeles cop Bill Gannon (now promoted to captain) in the horrendous, 1987 big-screen adaptation of Dragnet. (He also voiced his Gannon character on an episode of The Simpsons.) But he made a final, worthy contribution to the field of televised mysteries during the early 1990s, when he was pushing 80 years old, working beside Walter Matthau in a trio of made-for-TV courtroom dramas (The Incident, Against Her Will: An Incident in Baltimore, and Incident in a Small Town), portraying a World War II-era judge to Matthau’s small-town lawyer. These productions weren’t great fare, but they were certainly worth watching, especially for Matthau’s performances.

So, on this, his 92nd birthday, let us all raise our glasses to Harry Morgan for a career that has brought both mirth and mystery into our lives. And what more appropriate musical accompaniment could there be for the occasion, than this clip?

READ MORE: “Webb of Suspicion,” by Ivan G. Shreve Jr. (Thrilling Days of Yesteryear).

“An Endless, Glamourless, Thankless Job”

I’m rather too young to have appreciated--or even seen--every episode of Jack Webb’s original Dragnet TV series (1951-1959; 1967-1970). What I remember best from that show, unfortunately, are the scenes in which Webb and co-star Harry Morgan ran like a couple of stiffs, arms down at their sides, leaning forward as if into a strong headwind.

However, after screening the DVD set Dragnet 1967, Season 1, Quick Study’s Scott McLemee proclaims that “Jack Webb was so square that he comes out the other side as the coolest hipster ever to appear on network TV.” To prove his point, McLemee links to a scene from that season’s fourth episode, “The Interrogation,” in which Webb’s Sergeant Joe Friday lays out, for a young rookie, the costs and benefits of being a cop. (Click here to watch that scene for yourself; start at the 16:03 mark.) I admit, Webb’s monologue is both powerful and heartfelt, though someone else with law-enforcement experience will have to judge its basis in fact.

Maybe it’s time for me to revisit Dragnet as a rental.