In Reference to Murder

Friday's Forgotten Books - Is Skin Deep, Is Fatal

On the surface, Valentine's Day may appear to be all about love and relationships, chocolate and flowers, but I suspect there are equal amounts of angst, heartbreak and even violence underneath the crepe paper hearts and pink-ribboned candy boxes. Likewise, there's a lot of faux comaraderie and back-stabbing involved with another type of manufactured social event that's really all about shallow displays and profit-motives—namely, beauty pageants. Put the two together and you have Is Skin Deep, Is Fatal, by H.R.F. Keating.

In Keating's standalone police procedural from 1965, night club queen Fay Curtis seemingly commits suicide shortly after passing along a note to beauty pageant impresario Teddy Pariss, who's in the middle of rehearsing the Miss Valentine contest at the Star Bowl ballroom. When Pariss also winds up dead, with a golden-handled paper knife in the shape of a naked female sticking in his back, it's clear his death was anything but suicide.

Soho Police Constable Peter Lassington and CID Detective-Constable Jack Spratt are in on both cases from the outset. But when Scotland Yard Superintendent Ironside's right-hand man is knocked out of commission, Ironside corrals Lassington and Spratt into assisting his own investigation. The Miss Valentine contest provides a gaggle of beauty contestants and various other associates of the murdered Pariss as suspects, and also affords Keating literary bon mots like the following:

The overwhelming impression at the door was of a mass of bits of the feminine, at their most blatant. Mouths, lipstick-shaped in screaming red, unlikely pink, heavy  magenta, darted here, there and everywhere, pouting, smiling, sulking. Legs in shimmering nylon and tight-stretched ski pants waved and flaunted. Blouses and hugging jerseys, A cup, B cup, C cup, advanced and flirted. Fingernails in every shade and circumstance of red flickered, pointed, lured and beckoned. Guaranteed personal freshness from spray, bottle and tube clashed and mingled all around. From the chaos, Ironside brought order like a sedulous botanist in a wild garden.

 

Lassington may be the POV character, but Superintendent Ironside is the star of the show, stage-managing the suspects, clues and histrionics with his unflappable, disarming presence. He would have been an interesting choice for his own series, a la Keating's other popular protagonist, Inspector Ghote of the Bombay CID, except for the fact this is Ironside's last case before retiring to the countryside to tend his domestic rabbits, far from the seamy Soho nightlife.

It's rather easy to guess the culprit due to a giant in-your-face clue toward the start of the book, but perhaps that was Keating's way of preventing the reader from feeling cheated or sucker-punched by the ultimate resolution. It might not be one of Keating's best, but contains his characteristic humor and, as he once said, the manner in which he tries "to convey character through dialogue and forward the story through descriptions of place and situation, but it can only be a snapshot of the particular moment I have reached in the story."

By the way, if you're a fan of Inspector Ghote, on April 7, 2011, according to the author's web site, Penguin Classics will be reprinting four Inspector Ghote titles (with a new introduction by Alexander McCall Smith):

The Perfect Murder
Inspector Ghote Breaks an Egg
Inspector Ghote Trusts the Heart
Under a Monsoon Cloud

and Audiogo, formerly BBCAudio, is preparing new recordings of all four books.

This week's Friday's Forgotten Books feature is being hosted by George Kelley while Patti Abbott is taking a breather, although she'll be back corralling books next week.

Villainous Valentines

You still have a few more days to get your special someone a gift for V-Day. But why settle for boring old candy and flowers? Here's a few suggestions for a gift that will make them remember, if not adore, you:


 
2.5 lbs of delicious Gummi Heart candy. The perfect gift for your mystery-loving sweetheart. Available with and without yummy sour cherry candy blood!

An Edible Candy G-String and Bra , composed of 300 fruit-flavored candy pieces. Just 60 calories! (Minus those calories you might work off engaging in a certain activity where said clothing is consumed.)

No more UR Kind, Hot Stuff or B Mine candy hearts. Try Curse Word Symbols instead! 

Want to give somone you love a little boost? Try the Voodoo Pop. It's shaped like voodoo doll and just like those areas that express your intentions toward your victim sweetheart.

For your P.I. wannabe, it's the Love Gun: fire little cupids across the room, up to 15 feet.

For the fan of police procedurals, how about a Life-Sized Policeman cardboard cutout?

There's even something for fans of Alfred Hitchcock—a Blood Bath Shower Curtain. Take that, Janet Leigh.

Mystery Melange

Registration for the 2011 Writers' Police Academy is officially open. This annual hands-on conference is held at an actual police academy with law enforcement instructors and includes a patrol car/fire truck/ambulance driving simulator, FATS (Firearms Training Simulator) and more. Organizer/author Lee Lofland says "It's Disneyland for writers."

For a bit of research to help with your next historical novel or just for fun, check out these "Ten Most Infamous Failed Assassins" over on the Online Degree site.

Europa Editions is currently sponsoring a daily Trivia Contest on their Facebook page. Winners can receive free books from their catalog, which includes authors Alicia Gimenez-Bartlett and Carlo Lucarelli.

Lee Goldberg has a thoughtful interview at Spinetingler about e-books and what he thinks authors should and should not be doing. With the drumbeat to jump on the Kindle bandwagon, you might be surprised by his conclusions.

Beat the Dust's latest edition focuses on crime and noir stories from the likes of Cathi Unsworth, Mark SaFranko, Gary McMahon, Matthew Stokoe, Gary Carson and more.

In other magazine news, check out the redesigned Shots Magazine web site, as well as the latest Getting Away with Murder column by Mike Ripley.

Mysterical-E just released its Winter edition, featuring fiction by B.J. Bourg, Victor Banis, Libby Cudmore and more, as well as the usual fine columns and an interview with author Peggy Ehrhart.

Speaking of interviews, the Book Slut interviewed Brad Meltzer about his new book The Inner Circle and how he got the idea following a call from The Department of Homeland Security asking him to brainstorm different ways for terrorists to attack the U.S.

The news group Dorothy-L compiles a yearly "Best Mysteries" books listing from members. Although only four percent of the 3,000+ members participated, and the membership is heavily skewed toward female readers, it's still a fun list and a good snapshot of some of the more popular books people actually read last year (and in years prior), not just the best-sellers.

If you missed Publishers Weekly's overview of the Spring Season of book publications, you can read the Top 10 mystery/thrillers they're looking forward to, as well as scan through all the various upcoming book titles by publisher.

At the Bijou is holding its "annual Fab*Feb*Film*Fest" this month and has scheduled a Rat Pack Revue involving an interview and a spotlight on Robert J. Randisi and his Rat Pack mystery series. Kate Pilarcik, Paul Brazill, Eric Beetner and Sean Patrick Reardon "are taking on some Rat Pack personnas for the last two weeks of February ... any / all of youse cool guys are welcome to toss out a far-from-the-norm interview query for the Randisi interview and jump in with our jiving lot somethin' criminal along RatPack lines."

Erratum Somniculosus

One error to point out in today's Media Murder for Monday post:  The Reagan's Law tidbit somehow managed to slip through a wormhole backward in time. Reagan's Law is actually already in the CBS lineup, although you know it as Blue Bloods. Since we're on the subject of that particular show, fans should note Paige Turco (The Good Wife, Damages) will be guest-starring in the February 9th episode as detective Patricia Ryan, who is working on a robbery case that could result in a wrongful arrest when Tom Selleck's Frank Reagan character gets involved. (A big thank-you to J. Kingston Pierce of the Rap Sheet blog, who apparently gets a lot more coffee—or better coffee—than I do.)

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES

Director-screenwriter-producer Tyler Perry has signed on to star as psychologist Alex Cross in a new film adaptation based on the James Patterson novels. 

Several tidbits from Omnimystery News: Summit Entertainment has picked up the film rights to This Dark Endeavor, by Kenneth Oppel, a thriller that's not being released until August of this year. It's subtitled "The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein", which gives you a hint of what the book and movie are about; more film rights, too, as projects are in the works based on Three Seconds, the fifth mystery in the Sundkvist and Grens series by Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström; and also a new version of the Fletch series of mysteries by Gregory Mcdonald, first adapted as a vehicle for actor Chevy Chase in the 1980s.

A mystery untitled-mystery-film has been acquired by Paramount Insurge, about a young woman accused in the mysterious murders of three religious figures (the mystery is in the details...). William Brent Bell (Stay Alive) is directing the film and cast, which includes Fernanda Andrade (Fallen), Simon Quarterman (Perfect Strangers), Evan Helmuth (Ready or Not) and Suzan Crowley (Christabel) will star.

George Clooney and Grant Heslov are producing a political thriller titled Argo, based on an article written in Wired magazine about how the CIA fooled the Iranian government in 1979 as an effort to rescue six U.S. diplomats who were being held hostage. Rumors are that Ben Affleck (Gone Baby Gone and The Town) is in negotiations to direct.

TV

The USA Network has announced May 1 as the premiere date of the 10th season of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Vincent D'Onofrio and Kathryn Erbe are rejoining the cast.

Looks like the remake of the hit British series Prime Suspect (starring Helen Mirren) is back on again, after being shelved for awhile. NBC has ordered a pilot that changes the setting to New York and follows "an iconoclastic female detective (who) has to make her bones in a tough New York precinct that is dominated by men."

The CW has given a pilot order to Cooper & Stone, a drama about two Chicago female detectives who specialize in pop culture knowledge and solving homicides.   

A&E is developing Overload, a crime drama from writer John E. Pogue and film producer Irwin Winkler (Rocky) about a female detective blessed and cursed with hyper-acute senses who balances her work and personal life in Boston.

Kyle Killen (Lone Star) is producing a pilot for NBC titled REM, about the simultaneous and parallel lives of a detective who cannot let go of any aspect of his fractured family after a horrible car accident.


PODCASTS/RADIO

Elizabeth Foxwell's Bunburyist blog notes that Montana Public Radio's "The Write Question" program featured C. J. Box discussing his mystery Nowhere to Run.

Raymond Chandler fans will want to tune in as BBC Radio 4 airs four radio plays from Chandler's novels this month. Paul Davis has more info.

Friday's Forgotten Books - Monkey Puzzle

Paula Gosling was born Paula Osius in 1939, the daughter of an inventor in Detroit, Michigan. She tried her hand at poetry at Wayne State University and later at a Detroit advertising agency, but wasn't happy. In 1964, she headed to England in search of romance, intrigue and adventure, eventually meeting her husband, Christopher Gosling, whom she married in 1968.

Although divorced after only nine years of marriage, she kept the Gosling surname as she started writing her books. Perhaps she felt she owed him her literary start, because it was loneliness when he was away working that led her to start writing to pass the time. The result was A Running Duck in 1974, which won the CWA's John Creasey Award for the best first novel of the year and was named in 1990 as one of the CWA's Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time.

Many books followed, mostly standalones at first, including one paranormal book penned under the name Ainslie Skinner. Eventually she created her first series, with Detective Chief Inspector Luke Abbot, and another, the Blackwater Bay series, she set near the Great Lakes with Sheriff Matt Gabriel as protagonist. A third series, which she also set in the U.S., was launched in 1985 with Monkey Puzzle, a police procedural centered around homicide Lieutenant Jack Stryker, which won the 1985 CWA Gold Dagger Award.

Money Puzzle takes place primarily around Grantham University in Ohio, when one of the English professors, Aiken Adamson, is murdered and his tongue cut out. The professor was despised by all of his colleagues for collecting and hoarding secrets about them like the human equivalent of a thieving magpie. Hours before his death, all of the department members were with Adamson at a sherry reception, giving each of them opportunity for murder, in addition to the various motives they had—personal and professional rivalries, envy, sexual intrigue and blackmail.

As Detective Stryker digs deeper into the case, he realizes he has secret ties of his own to one of the professors, Kate Trevorne and starts to fall for her, despite the fact her boyfriend and fellow English prof is the prime suspect. Although at first, the murder is considered a crime of passion (the victim was a homosexual), the case soon takes a different turn when the Chairman of the Department is attacked and his ear cut off. Stryker, recovering from pneumonia, is doggedly determined to nail the culprit no matter what it takes, but when Kate is attacked and the murderer attempts to gouge out one of her eyes, the case becomes personal.

Gosling does a good job of portraying the sometimes cut-throat world of academia with its petty squabbles, jockeying for position and inter-departmental feuds. The characters are also relatively well drawn, although some might find a few cliches that date the book, i.e., the sleazy homosexual (complete with mirrors on the ceiling), an alcoholic Vietnam vet and a cop-hating young professor who participated in campus riots in the 70s. The writing carries you along at a suspenseful clip, but it can also show hints of Gosling's poetry background, like this excerpt following a snowfall that is appropriate for the recent winter weather we've been having:

He loved the city like this, hushed and briefly upended in it headlong run to destruction, mantled with a transient beauty that hid all the dirt and slowed all the hate. In two miles he passed only four cars, and the drivers smiled as they edged past one another in the rutted, twinkling streets. The snow made them momentary partners in adversity, witnesses of that fleeting moment in time when nobody had spoiled anything. Yet.

As a side note, Gosling's novel A Running Duck, written in 1974 (also published as Fair Game), was adapted into two separate films, one starring Sylvester Stallone, titled Cobra, and the second starring Cindy Crawford, titled Fair Game. Unfortunately, like a lot of books-to-film, the results were less than Oscar-worthy; the Stallone version was nominated for a Razzie in 1986 for worst screenplay and Metacritic listed the Cindy Crawford flick as one of its five worst movies based on a novel.

Not that Gosling was particularly worried. In a People interview, she noted she had optioned the film to Warner Bros, for a "mid-five-figure" sum and almost forgotten about it when a friend of her son's alerted her to the fact Gosling's name was in the Stallone film' credits. At the time, she said "I haven't really taken it in yet. It's all very exciting."

You're the Top

The Independent Mystery Booksellers Association continues its new look at bestsellers from a rotating list of member stores, and from January, we have the top sellers at Murder on the Beach Bookstore in Delray Beach, Florida:

Hardcovers

1. The Sentry by Robert Crais, Putnam
2. Midnight Guardians by Jonathon King, Open Road
3. Secrets to the Grave by Tami Hoag, Putnam
4. Mr. Hooligan by Ian Vasquez, St. Martin's
5. Don't Sweat the Small Stuff by Don Bruns, Oceanview
6. Emporor's Tomb by Steve Berry, Random
7. Crescent Dawn by Clive Cussler, Putnam
8. Confession by John Grisham, Random House,
9. Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane, Harper Collins
10. Indulgence in Death by JD Robb, Putnam

Trade/Mass Market

1. First Rule by Robert Crais, Berkley
2. Deeper than the Dead by Tami Hoag, Berkley
3. Florida Roadkill by Tim Dorsey, Storm Surge
4. Slight Mourning by Catherine Aird, Rue Morgue
5. Mortar and Murder by Jennie Bentley, Berkley
6. Dive Cooks a Goose by Krista Davis, Berkley
7. Buffalo West Wing by Julie Hyzy, Berkley
8. Stay Tuned for Murder by Mary Kennedy, Berkley
9. Buttercream Bump Off by Jenn McKinlay, Berkley
10. Impact by Douglas Preston, St. Martin's

Debut(antes)

I've never been able to find a web site reference that specifically lists crime fiction books by debut authors for any given month (if you know of one, please pass it along), although Omnimystery News has a nice feature called Firsts on the First—books with new series characters being released during the upcoming month (some by established authors, too). The site also has some terrific lists of all upcoming hardcover and paperback books. In addition to the series debuts this month, check out debut standalone novels by authors such as Sara J Henry (Learning to Swim), A.D. Miller (Snowdrops), p.g. sturges (Shortcut Man) and  Urban Waite (The Terror of Living).

For more sites with information about all new releases (paperback, hardcover, e-books and re-issue, check out the following:

Bloodstained Bookshelf
Books N Bytes
Cozy Mysteries
Fantastic Fiction
Murder, Mystery and Mayhem
Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore
Powells Books
Stop, You're Killing Me

PBS Double-Header

Tonight on most PBS stations, tune in as the latest intallment of "Pioneers of Television" takes a look at crime dramas, including Jack Webb (Dragnet), Desi Arnaz (The Untouchables), Bruce Geller (Mannix and Mission: Impossible), Bill Cosby, Angie Dickinson, Barbara Bain, Martin Landau and James Garner. From the show's blurb:

Pioneering television crime dramas established new rules for viewers, amping up the violence and the flash-quick dialogue; and delivering reluctant, but likeable, heroes who solve complex crimes in an hour of delicious television. Today, the genre has never been more popular, but it owes much of its winning formula to industry innovations developed in the 1950s and 1960s. For instance, the invention of the teleprompter helped actors deliver dialogue in quick, clipped sentences. New ways of shooting scenes, including the close-up and quick edits, ushered in new and exciting storytelling elements. Unlike Western, which tended to shoot panoramic scenes using wide shots that took in an entire landscape, crime dramas began to produce scenes that drew viewers close into an actor’s face, thus increasing the dramatic arc of the story. Several groundbreaking crime dramas also challenged stereotypes of the day, casting women and minorities in key roles.

That's followed by Frontline, an episode titled "Post Mortem," which looks into the dysfunctional system of forensic death investigation in the U.S. where "there are few standards, little oversight and the mistakes are literally buried."

We Have a Winner (or 5)

Congratulations to the following fine folks who win a copy of The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly and a movie poster from the upcoming film starring Matthew McConaughey, which opens on March 18:

• Aldo Calcagno
• Joyce Delaney
• Stephen D. Rogers
• George Sparling
• Deanna Stillings

Stay tuned for more such giveaway opportunities throughout the year!