Criminal Splatterings

Fans of The Saint will be interested to know that according to Deadline.com Bridgerton start Regé-Jean Page is due to star at the helm of the re-imaging of The Saint. More information can be found here. It is due to be based in part on Leslie Charteris’ 1920s book series and subsequent 1960s UK TV series starring Roger Moore. 

Over on Crimereads.com bestselling author Darynda Jones lists her 13 must read laugh out loud mysteries. A fantastic list which can be read here. Great to see such luminaries as Janet Evanovich, Carl Hiaasen and Donald E Westlake on the list. Who would I add? Sparkle Hayter of course!

Also on Crimereads.com one of my favourite historical crime writers Lindsey Davis considers the enduring appeal of the Roman Empire as a good setting for historical mysteries. The full article can be read here. The latest book by Lindsey Davis is The Comedy of Terrors and is the ninth book in the series to feature Flavia Albia. who longstanding readers will know is the daughter of her famous character Marcus Didius Falco. 

Fans of S A Cosby will enjoy the interview with him in the Guardian. But hey, the Guardian is clearly playing catch up to those of us who having been raving about him since last year when Blacktop Wasteland was published by Headline. The Shots review of Blacktop Wasteland can be read here.

Recently the crime fiction world have been shocked by the death of Mo Hayder from Motor Neurone Disease. The Shots team play tribute to her on the blog.

If you are like me a fan of podcasts – then you will be interested to note that James Ellroy is going to host about Los Angeles crime. Of course Crimereads has the scoop.

Fans of the Grantchester which is based on the novels of James Runcie will be happy to hear that filming on season 7 has begun. More information can be found here.

There are various crime and police procedurals to look out for in the autumn due to be shown on ITV. 

The Long Call which is based on the Anne Cleeves novel of the same name and will feature Juliet Stevenson, Ben Aldridge and Martin Shaw.

Martin Clunes will reprise his role as as the former London Metropolitan Police Detective Chief Inspector Colin Sutton in a new season of Manhunt.

Angela Black an Hitchcockian thriller that follows one woman as she risks everything she holds dear to fight back against the man who has suppressed and tormented her for most of her adult life is due to be shown in the autumn as well.

The exact dates of transmission have yet to be announced for any of these programme.

If you missed the Four Critics, Four Continents live event then you can watch it again here. We discuss our favourite books of the first half of 2021 and cover such countries as Nigeria, The Deep South of America, Japan, Sweden and New Zealand. 

Fans of Matthew Quirk's political thrillers will be pleased to here that according to Deadline.com, Netflix are due to film a conspiracy thriller series that is based on The Night Agent that was published in 2019. More information can be found here.

If you missed Crime Time's books of the decade event then don't worry. You can rewatch it below. Also you can find the list of all the books discussed on the Crime Time site.

Mark Hodder on Sexton Blake

I came to Sexton Blake from two directions. The first was via my teenage enthusiasm for the works of Michael Moorcock, whose debut novel CARIBBEAN CRISIS (which, back then, I'd never read) was a Sexton Blake yarn and whose famous Elric character was inspired by one of Blake's arch enemies, Zenith the Albino.

The second was through a cheerfully British breed of literary hero, which had its genesis with Raffles and reached an apotheosis with Bulldog Drummond, The Saint, The Toff, The Baron, and Norman Conquest before then being supplanted by the rather less jovial James Bond and his imitators.

I loved those yarns and was intrigued when I discovered that Berkeley Gray, the author of the Conquest novels, was actually Edwy Searles Brooks, who was apparently also responsible for a great many Sexton Blake tales. Norman Conquest, I learned, grew out of his Blake character, Waldo the Wonder-man.

Who, though, was this oft-mentioned Sexton Blake?

I found out when I discovered a battered paperback in a used bookstore: THE WITCHES OF NOTTING HILLby W. A. Ballinger, The Sexton Blake Library 5th series, 1965.

Fifth series! How many series had there been, I wondered? (The answer is six, though it’s debatable).

I almost didn't bother to find out. The novel was terrible. Blake was an uninspired Bond knock-off, the plot was risible, and the female characters were treated as little more than "totty."

My curiosity would have ended there were it not for the advent of the internet—and eBay—on which, one day, I saw advertised a set of UNION JACK magazines, "Sexton Blake's Own Story Paper," dating from 1919. I bid and, remarkably, no one else did, so I got them for next to nothing.

And … wow!

The yarns I discovered in that stack of crumbling, browned old issues were amazing. The Blake of the period was quite different to his later incarnation—a sort of Indiana Jones with the trappings of Sherlock Holmes and a dash of Batman. He, his teenage sidekick, Tinker, and their bloodhound, Pedro, ranged the world, spy-catching and solving locked-room mysteries; tussling with eccentric super-villains and trekking into deepest Africa; they discovered lost cities and caught the Spanish flu; exposed impersonators and lost their memories; threw themselves into punch-ups and somehow survived ferocious gunfights. All this, and much, much more in a single year's-worth of issues!

Blake had been published continuously from 1893 through to 1978, sometimes in multiple magazines per week, written by approximately 200 authors. During the '40s and '50s, his adventures were translated into many different languages, including Gujarati, and were particularly popular in Spain and South America. In general, the stories were aimed at a young adult market, though in the later years they split into a juvenile branch—picture strips and simplistic two-page stories in KNOCKOUT COMIC, for example—and a more adult branch, beginning when W. Howard Baker took over editorship of the Sexton Blake Library in 1956 and “Bondified” Blake. In addition, there were Blake theatre productions, many silent movies, a handful of talkies, a long-player record, two radio serials, a very popular TV series on ITV, and—sounding the death knell—a far less successful show on the BBC. 

All of this sent me on a collecting odyssey that continues to this day. From the outset, I was intrigued by the way Blake basically remained the same while the world transformed around him. While it's true that he was broody Holmes-ish at times and a bit brutal Bond-ish in the later years, essentially, he was always the ultimate, well-mannered, unemotional, stiff upper lipped Britisher; a mouthpiece for the empire when it still was one; a character whose popularity very slowly dwindled as the empire very slowly faded. For modern sensibilities, his unwavering faith in British superiority is sometimes heart-warming, sometimes risible, and sometimes downright racist—it depends on the writer—but it never fails to offer a solid slice of social history. Blake threw himself into all the huge upheavals of the twentieth century. New technologies frequently featured as centrepieces to his adventures: Radio! Telephones! Cars ("Events move pretty rapidly when one is travelling at thirty miles an hour!")! Flight! Television! And during his twilight years: The atom bomb! Computers! 

He also explored all the new industries that arose amid the changes, working undercover in a myriad of different roles, all of them giving his young readers an insight into what were, essentially, new job opportunities. 

I've never encountered history—not in fiction nor in textbooks—that has felt so palpable as it does in the Blake tales. That’s especially true of the war years, where all the attitudes and hardships jump off the pages.

This, though, is just a bonus. The real attraction is that the stories, aside from the occasional and inevitable stinker, are an immense amount of fun. They rattle along at a furious pace, packed with perils and hair-raising escapades, often hilariously implausible but frequently amazingly inventive.

Though every period has something to offer, the 1920s were undoubtedly Sexton Blake's "golden years." With Eric Parker providing outstanding artwork for its covers, and a band of particularly talented writers at work on the stories, the UNION JACK story paper really hit its stride. This was the era of the super-crook, when Blake and Tinker battled what were, essentially, prototype Batman villains, every bit as wild and bizarre as the Joker, Penguin and Riddler but predating them by twenty years and very easily outshining them. Zenith! Doctor Huxton Rymer! The Black Trinity! The Criminals’ Confederation! George Marsden Plummer! The Owl! Miss Death! The Master Mummer! Gunga Dass! The nefarious ne’er-do-wells make for a very long list, yet each of them is unique and memorable.

I've been collecting, reading, and writing about Sexton Blake for more than two decades now and I never grow tired of it. With so much material, there's always something new to discover!

Long live Blake!

Sexton Blake and the Great War Edited by Mark Hodder (Published by Rebellion Publishing) Out 16 April 2020

 Britain and Germany are at war and Sexton Blake is in the thick of it. As the battle for the Western Front rages, adventuring detective Sexton Blake pits his intellect and physical prowess against the machinations of the Kaiser. A band of intrepid allies join Blake to take on the forces of evil in three classic stories, collected here for the first time.  From uncovering secret German naval bases to dangling from Zeppelins, fighting atop moving trains and escaping firing squads, Blake moves through war-torn Europe solving mysteries and fighting against tyranny.  Join him as he enters a war of secrets, soldiers and spies…

The Shots review can be found here.

Sexton Blake Versus the Master Crooks  (Published 25 June 2020

Sexton Blake ‘s Allies (Published 6 August 2020)

Sexton Blake on the Home Front (Published 6 October 2020)

Sexton Blake’s New Order (Published 10 December 2020)

Books to look forward to from Mulholland Books

Gun Machine is by Warren Ellis and is due to be published in January 2013.  This morning Detective John Tallow was bored with his job.  Then there was this naked guy with a shotgun, and his partner getting killed, and now Tallow has a real problem: an apartment full of guns.  Old guns.  Modified guns.  Arranged in rows and spirals on the floor and walls.  Hundreds of them.  Each weapon is tied to a single unsolved murder.  Which means Tallow has uncovered two decades' worth of homicides that no one knew to connect and a killer unlike anything that came before.  Tallow's bosses don't want him to solve the case.  The murderer just wants him to die.  But there's a pattern hiding behind the deaths, and if Tallow can figure it out he might even make it out alive.

 

 To escape her awful life, Luz plans carefully. She quits the drugs. She pretends everything is normal. She takes only the clothes on her back, a gun and the money in her husband's safe. The corpses in the hallway weren't part of the plan. Luz needs to find the daughter she left behind years ago, but she knows she may die trying. Her husband, El Principe, is a key player in a drug cartel, and betrayal will not go unpunished. In this powerful story of revenge and redemption, one woman's desperate break for freedom will change the lives of criminals and cops on both sides of the border.  Angel Baby is by Richard Lange and is due to be published in May 2013

Lexicon is by Max Barry and is due to be published in June 2013. Two years ago, something terrible was unleashed in an Australian mining town called Broken Hill. Thousands died. Few people know what really happened. Emily Rikkard is one of them. She belongs to an elite organisation of 'poets': masters of manipulation who use language to warp others to their will. She was one of their most promising recruits until she made a catastrophic mistake: she fell in love. Wil Jamieson knows the truth too, only he doesn't remember it. And he doesn't know why he's immune to the poets' powers. But he knows he needs to run. As their stories converge, the past is revealed, and the race is on for a deadly weapon: a word. Because the poets know that words can kill...

A series of attacks all over the globe are linked by a single, deadly intent: someone is gathering everything they need to make a dirty bomb.  The terrorists behind it are shadows; their targets unknown.  Navy SEAL Commander Thomas Crocker and his elite team need answers.  They need to go to the source: to track down the material the terrorists are searching for, and stop it falling into the wrong hands.  The hunt takes them through the Yemen, to a hijacked boat off the Somali coast, and into the chaos of post-revolutionary Libya...where their mission becomes terrifyingly personal.  Hunt the Scorpion is by Don Mann and Ralph Pezzullo and is due to be published in February 2013.  It combines his real-life insight with pulse-pounding action and non-stop thrills.

 

At Black Arts, everyone lives and breathes video games.  Including Douglas, who doesn't have much else to talk about.  Then he gets promoted to creative lead on Black Arts's flagship franchise, Realms of Gold, a convoluted fantasy game, and things start going wrong.  Is it corporate espionage?  Internal sabotage?  Can there really be a ghost in the machine?  Douglas has only ever had to worry about on screen danger before, but that is about to change.  You is by Austin Grossman and is due to be published in March 2013.

 This morning, I found a body.  Soon the police will arrest me for murder.  And after that, my life will fall apart.  Who can I trust? Who can I believe? How can I make them see I’m innocent?   Gaby Mortimer is the woman who has it all. But everything changes when she finds a body on the common near her home. Because the evidence keeps leading back to her. And the police seem sure she's guilty...Under Your Skin is an unpredictable, exquisitely twisty story, which proves that there are only three rules in life that mean anything: Assume nothing Believe no one Check everything. Under Your Skin is by Sabine Durrant and is due to be published in April 2013.

Murder As A Fine Art is by David Morrell and is due to be published in May 2013.  43 years after the Ratcliffe Highway murders brought London to a panic in 1811, Thomas De Quincey, the infamous author of Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, wrote a notorious essay about the murders.  That much is historical record.  In the brilliantly suspenseful Murder As A Fine Art De Quincey's essay becomes the blueprint for a new killer's "masterpiece.”  Newly arrived in London, the author becomes the prime suspect.  Soon, however, it becomes clear that De Quincey himself is the murderer's ultimate target.  Aided by his daughter and a young Scotland Yard detective, De Quincey must learn the killer's identity to save them all from a horrible fate.

Killer Ambition is by Marcia Clark and is due to be published in June 2013.  Would you kill to protect your career? Los Angeles DA Rachel Knight is about to find out just how far - and how deadly - Hollywood ambition will go in her latest harrowing case. When the daughter of big-time producer Russell Antonovich is kidnapped and later killed, Rachel is pitted against Hollywood's biggest power players as well as her own boss, who is desperate to stay on the industry's good side. Killer Ambition takes us on a thrilling ride through the darker side of Hollywood and into a court case that could make or break Rachel's career.

The Saint is back! Between January and August 2013 Mulholland Books will be republishing all thirty-five books starring the debonair outlaw.  Simon Templar is the Saint – daring, dazzling, and just a little bit disreputable.  On the side of the law, buts standing just outside it, he dispenses his own brand of justice one criminal at a time, standing up against crooks, swindlers, arms dealers and anyone he considers a worthy opponent…… The Saint books will come with new introductions and extra content.

Crime Fiction News

Excellent article by Ian Rankin who would like the Government to introduce tax incentives to help new authors. The full article can be read in the Guardian.

Lots of viewers must have heaved a massive sigh of relief when the BBC revealed that there will indeed be a third series of Sherlock. On Sunday night there was a dramatic conclusion to the second series which was only belied by the tweet subsequently sent out by the co-creator Steven Moffat on Twitter "Of course there's going to be a third series - it was commissioned at the same time as the second. Gotcha!" Those of you wondering who on earth Professor Moriarty is might want to read the Blagger’s Guide To …. Professor Moriarty in the Independent. An excellent review of the final episode of series 2 can be found at The Arts Desk by Adam Sweeting.

Congratulations go to Peter Temple for winning the 2012 German International Crime Novel (International Deutscher Krimipreis) with his novel 'Truth'. The 28th German Crime Prize 2012 (National Deutscher Krimipreis) was awarded to 'Wer das Schweigen bricht' (Anyone who Breaks the Silence) (Pendragon) by Mechtild Borrmann.

Having just managed to have a look at the Guardian’s bestselling books of 2011, it is pleasing to note that out of the top 100, 34 were crime novels. Out of the 34, Jo Nesbo and James Patterson are joint top with five books each whilst all three of the late Steig Larsson once again made the list and John Grisham, John Le Carre and Harlan Coben round up the list with two each. All the other crime writers out of the 34 had one book each on the list. The full list (top 100) can be read here.

With the award season up and running the BAFTA nominations were announced this morning. It was in my opinion very pleasing to see the brilliant cold war thriller Tinker, Tailor Solider Spy nominated for 11 awards. They include nominations for Best Film, Outstanding British Film, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director for Tomas Alfredson and Best Leading Actor for Gary Oldman. Drive, which starred Ryan Gosling, has received a Best Director nomination for Nicolas Winding Refn as well as Best Film and Best Editing. Philip Seymour Hoffmann has also received a best supporting actor nomination for his turn in the American Political drama thriller The Ides of March. The film also received a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. The Irish Film The Guard starring Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle has been nominated for Original Screenplay. . The Orange British Academy Film Awards take place on February 12. Read the full list of nominations here.

According to the Bookseller, Waterstones have launched a “book club” promotion under the tagline "Books you will love or your money back". All the books bar one are fiction books. The only crime novel to make the list is of course Before I Go to Sleep by S J Watson (Transworld) each week a book will be chosen as a book of the week.

Orion has acquired a debut speculative thriller novel by A K Benedict, called The Beauty of Murder, which features a time-travelling serial killer. Editorial director Genevieve Pegg bought UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, from a partial on submission from Rupert Heath, and said: "Macabre, suspenseful and hugely inventive, I was spellbound from the start. Once I'd met its compelling characters, I knew I couldn't let go of them." Orion plans to publish in late 2012. German rights have been sold to Droemer.

The Independent’s Invisible Ink: No 106 is on Leslie Charteris the author of the Saint novels and is by Christopher Fowler. The full article can be read here.

Now that we have lost what was essentially Sunday night viewing on television with the last episode of the current series of Sherlock being shown how are we to replace it? BBC 1 have adapted Sebastian Faulks novel Birdsong into a 2 part drama and it is set to be shown on BBC1 on Sunday 22 January. An article in the Guardian can be found here. One of the very first reviews (a preview of it was apparently shown at the BAFTA’s can be found here.

Crimefest Day 1 Part 3

L-R Caroline Todd, Peter Guttridge, Martin Edwards, Adrian Magson & Sarah Rayne
(Picture Ayo Onatade)

Day one of Crimefest hasn't finished yet. The final panel that I attended was the one on Forgotten Authors which as I pointed out in my previous post was moderated by Martin Edwards. The panelists on Forgotten Authors in addition to Martin who was a participating moderator were Peter Guttridge, Sarah Rayne, Adrian Magson and Caroline Todd (who writes books with her son as Charles Todd). Each of the panelists spoke about two authors that were in their opinion forgotten authors. Some of them were in fact rather obscure but it was interesting to learn about them and understand why the panelists consider them to be forgotten authors.

Each of the authors after talking a bit about themselves spoke briefly about the authors that they considered to be forgotten. Peter Guttridge spoke about John Franklin Bardin a British author whose book The Last of Phillip Banter was made into a film in 1986 and featured Tony Curtis. Peter's second author was Adam Hall who is best known for the book The Quiller Memorandum. Caroline Todd spoke about George Shipway whose book The Chilian Club (aka The Yellow Room in the US) was seen not only as a political satire but considered to be too close and real to what was happening in the world at the time. The second author that she considered to be "forgotten" was William Barrett an American author whose second book The Edge of Things (1938) drew her to the author. His 1951 novel The Left Hand of God was made into a movie featuring Humphrey Bogart and was set in Chile, whilst Sidney Poitier featured in 1962 novel Lillies of the Field which was also turned into a film. Sarah Rayne's first forgotten author was Peter Van Greenway who is best known for the 1973 novel The Medusa Touch which featured Inspector Cherry and was filmed in 1978 staring Richard Burton. Her second author was Patricia Wentworth is is best known for the Miss Maud Silver series.

Adrian Magson's two authors were Adam Diment and one of my favourites Leslie Charteris who is best known as the author of the Staint novels. As Adrian explained, it was because of Adam Diment he wrote spy novels. Diment did not write many spy novels and as a result of this there is a rather mythical status about him. He wrote his first novel in 1967 - The Dolly, Dolly Spy and his last novel Think, Inc in 1971. Adrian indicated that he felt that the main protagonist in the Adam Diment novels were in fact better than Ian Fleming's James Bond. He also felt that he was ahead of his times. Not much could be said about the Saint books. As Adrian indicated, "he spent his life biffing the baddies".

Martin Edwards two authors were Charles Warren Adam also known as Charles Felix and Canon Victor L Whitechurch. Canon Whitechurch was the author of a series of railway detective novels featuring a character known as Thorpe Hazell. It was an interesting discussion and if anything it made me want to go back home and hunt down all my Saint books to re-read!

So what happened at the quiz! The quiz once again took place in The Greenhouse the pub opposite the conference hotel! Peter Guttridge who was once again quiz master produced his usual set of esoteric questions. The team I was in consisted of Maxim Jakubowski and his lovely wife Dolores, Paul Johnston, Lauren Henderson, Andrew Taylor and a lovely lady called Sarah whose surname I did not catch. The Shots team consisted of Ali Karim, Mike Stotter, Kirstie Long and Ilaria Meliconi from the independent publishers of Italian Crime novels Hersilia Press. The name of our team was The Beauty and the Beasts and we did not do too badly. We actually came second with 33 points. The winners were the International Bloggers who won with 37 1/2. I am certain that what did us in were the anagrams. But such is life. It was good fun.

More people have started to arrive and these include Matt Hilton, Priscilla Masters and Sheila Quigley. More tomorrow! The first panel is at 9:00am so I need to get my beauty sleep!