CyberGumshoe's Mumbling in January/February 2009
Philip Jose Farmer Dies
Philip Jose Farmer died peacefully in his sleep on February 25 in Peoria, Illinois. He may have been famous as a science fiction writer, but he wrote a couple of mystery novels and a number of mystery short stories. THE IMAGE OF THE BEAST (Essex, 1968) is a pornographic novel featuring a private eye. THE ADVENTURE OF THE PEERLESS PEER (Aspen, 1974) is a Sherlockian pastiche. "The Problem of the Sore Bridge -- Among Others," also a Sherlockian pastiche, as by "Harry Manders" was first printed in the September 1975 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and included in RIVERWORLD AND OTHER STORIES (Berkley, 1979). He also contributed a chapter for NAKED CAME THE FARMER (Mayfly, 1998; edited by Bill Knight), a round-robin mystery novel. He was 91. (February 28, 2009)
Agatha Award Nominees Announced
Malice Domestic announced the nominees for the 2009 Agatha Awards. The nominees in the best cozy novel are as follows:
SIX GEESE A-SLAYING, by Donna Andrews (Minotaur Books)
A ROYAL PAIN, by Rhys Bowen (Penguin)
THE CRUELEST MONTH, by Louise Penny (Minotaur Books)
BUCKINGHAM PALACE GARDENS, by Anne Perry (Random House)
I SHALL NOT WANT, by Julia Spencer-Fleming (Minotaur Books)
To see the nominees of the other categories, click here. Anne Perry will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award. The winners will announced on May 2 during Malice Domestic 21 held in Arlington, Virginia. (February 27, 2009)
Chuck Crayne Dies
Charles "Chuck" Crayne died on February 16 of cardiac problems at the Howard Memorial Hospital in Willits, California. He was one of the founders of Boucnercon and a co-chairman (with Bruce Pelz) of the first Bouchercon, which was held during Memorial Day weekkend in 1970 at the Royal Inn in Santa Monica, California, with Robert Bloch as Guest of Honor. He was 71 (February 22, 2009)
Leonard to Receive Owen Wister Award
Elmore Leonard is to receive the Owen Wister Award from the Western Writers of America for lifetime contribution to western literature. His first western short story was "Trail of the Apache," published in the December 1951 issue of Argosy. He was writing western fiction while writing ad copies in Detroit. When the western genre got slowing down, he switched to crime fiction with THE BIG BOUNCE (Gold Medal/Fawcett, 1969), and the rest is history. His next crime novel, ROAD DOG, will be out from William Morrow coming May. He will receive the award on June at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Okalahoma. (February 13, 2009)
Hammett Prize Nominees Announced
The North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers has announced the nominees for the 2009 Hammett Prize. The nominees are as follows:
LEADING LADY, by Heywood Gould (Five Star)
THE FINDER, by Colin Harrison (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
CITY OF THE SUN, by David Levien (Doubleday)
THE TURNAROUND, by George Pelecanos (Little, Brown)
SOUTH BY SOUTH BRONX, by Abraham Rodriguez (Akashic)
To see the press release, click here. The winner will be announced during the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association (NAIBA) Sales Conference in Baltimore, October 4 thru 5. (Februrary 01, 2009)
Paul Anik Dies
Paul S. Anik died of a heart attack on January 27. He was a business transactions attorney by day and a mystery fanatic by night. He was also a co-founder of We're Dying To Meet Your Mystery Book Club in the west San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, and a book reviewer for I Love A Mystery Newsletter. He was organizing Left Coast Crime 2010, to be held in Los Angeles in March 2010. He was 54. (January 30, 2009)
James Brady Dies
James Brady died on January 26 at his home in Manhattan, New York. He was a long-time columnist for Parade, writing celebrity profiles. He was a publisher of Women's Wear Daily, editor/publisher of Harper's Bazaar, creator of "Page Six" in The New York Post among others. The former Marine also wrote novels and non-fiction books, including the four Beecher Stowe mystery novels set in the Hamptons, starting with FURTHER LANE (St. Martin's, 1997) and ending with A HAMPTONS CHRISTMAS (St. Martin's, 2000). He was 80. (January 29, 2009)
John Updike Dies
John Updike died of lung cancer on January 27 at a hospice outside Boston, Massachusetts. He was a prolific writer of more than 50 books of fiction, essays, criticism and poetry. His famous novels are COUPLES (1968), a bestseller, and THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK (1984), a comic fantasy which became the Jack Nicholson movie, among many others. His famous creations were Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, a middle-class man, and Henry Beck, a blocked Jewish writer. He wrote a somewhat crime novel, THE TERRORIST (2006; all of his books have been published by Knopf), and a mystery story, "Beck Noir," first published in the June 8, 1998 issue of The New Yorker, which was included in THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 1999 (Houghton Mifflin, 1999; edited by Ed McBain). His last novel was THE WIDOWS OF EASTWICK (2008). He was 76. (January 28, 2009)
Malcolm MacPherson Dies
Malcolm MacPherson died of a heart attack at his friend's home in Chevy Chase, Maryland on January 17 during a pre-inauguration party for President Barack Obama. The former Newsweek reporter covered conflicts in Africa, Ireland, Cyrus, Iraq among others, and authored a number of non-fiction books such as THE BLOOD OF HIS SERVANTS (1984) and ROBERTS RIDGE (2005). He also wrote several crime novels such as PROTEGE (Dutton, 1980), a neo-Nazi thriller; THE LUCIFER KEY (Dutton, 1981), a computer techno-thriller; IN CAHOOTS (Random, 1994), about a real estate scam; DEADLOCK (Simon & Schuster, 1998), a courtroom thriller; and HOCUS POTUS (Melville, 2007), a political farce about a scam during the Iraq War. He was 65. (January 24, 2009)
Lefty, Bruce, Hawaii Five-O Award Nominees Announced
Left Coast Crime 2009 announces the nominees for the Lefty, Bruce, and Hawaii Five-O Awards.
Bruce Alexander Memorial Historical Mystery Award:
Nox Dormienda, A Long Night Sleeping, by Kelli Stanley (Five Star)
Touchstone, by Laurie R. King (Bantam)
Tell Me Pretty Maiden, by Rhys Bowen (St. Martin's)
A Royal Pain, by Rhys Bowen (Berkeley Prime Crime)
A Fatal Waltz, by Tasha Alexander (HarperCollins)
Hawaii Five-O Award: (best police procedural)
Angel Falls, by Baron Birtcher (Iota)
Fractured, by Karin Slaughter (Delacorte Press)
The Black Pat, by Asa Larsson (Delta)
The Angel of Knowlton Place, by Kate Floral (Five Star)
Mahu Fire, by Neil S. Placky (Alyson Books)
Death of a Cozy Writer, by G.M. Malliet (Midnight Ink)
Lefty Award: (funniest mystery)
Thugs and Kisses, by Sue Ann Jaffarian (Midnight Ink)
Six Geese a Slaying, by Donna Andrews (St. Martin's)
Murder at the Bad Girl's Bar and Grill, by N.M. Kelby (Shaye Areheart Books)
Greasing the Pinata, by Tim Maleeny (Poisoned Pen Press)
Getting Old is to Die For, by Rita Lakin (Dell/Bantam)
It Happened One Knife, by Jeffrey Cohen (Berkeley Prime Crime)
The winners will be announced at the Awards Brunch on March 11 in Hawaii. (January 22, 2009)
Dilys Award Nominees Announced
The Independent Mystery Booksellers Associations (IMBA) announced the nominees for the 2009 Dilys Award as follows:
TRIGGER CITY, by Sean Chercover (William Morrow)
THE VICTORIA VANISHES, by Christopher Fowler (Bantam)
SILENT IN THE SANCTUARY, by Deanna Raybourn (MIRA)
CHILD 44, by Tom Rob Smith (Grand Central)
DAWN PATROL, by Don Winslow (Knopf)
The Dilys Award has been given to the mystery book which member booksellers most enjoyed selling in the previous year. The winner will be announced during the Left Coast Crime convention in Hawaii this March. (January 19, 2009)
John Mortimer Dies
John Mortimer died on January 16 after a long illness at his home in Oxfordshire, England. The self-styled "champagne socialist" defended Linda Lovelace and Penguin (the publisher of LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER) among others in obscenity trials as a famed barrister. He wrote a number of screenplays and TV plays such as "The Innocents (1961, with Truman Capote and William Archibald), "The Running Man" (1963, based on the novel by Shelley Smith), "Bunny Lake Is Missing" (1964, with his first wife Penelope Mortimer, based on the novel by Evelyn Piper), "John and Mary" (1969, starring Dustin Hoffman), "Brideshead Revisited" (1981, based on the novel by Evelyn Waugh), and "Tea with Mussolini" (1999, directed by Franco Zeffirelli). He also wrote a number of novels and short stories, and was most famous as the author of the Horace Rumpole of the Old Bailey series, starting with THE RUMPOLE OF THE BAILEY (Penguin, 1978), a collection, and ending with THE ANTI-SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR OF HORACE RUMPOLE (Penguin, 2007; US title being RUMPOLE MISBEHAVES). He was to receive the first Strand Critics Lifetime Achievement Award coming July in New York. He was 85. (January 17, 2009)
Edgar Award Nominees Announced
The Mystery Writers of America announced the nominees for the 2009 Edgar Awards. The nominees in the best novel category are as follows:
MISSING, by Karin Alvtegen (Felony & Mayhem Press)
BLUE HEAVEN, by C. J. Box (St. Martin's Minotaur)
SINS OF THE ASSASSIN, by Robert Ferrigno (Scribner)
THE PRICE OF BLOOD, by Declan Hughes (William Morrow)
THE NIGHT FOLLOWING, by Morag Joss (Delacorte Press)
CURSE OF THE SPELLMANS, by Lisa Lutz (Simon & Schuster)
To see the nominees in the other categories, click here. The winners will be announced on April 30 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York. (January 17, 2009)
Hortense Calisher Dies
Hortense Calisher died on January 13, 2009 in New York, NY. She was an author of lilterary novels (such as FALSE ENTRY, 1961 and SUNDAY JEWS, 2002) and short stories (such as "Heartburn" in 1951). She wrote one mystery novel under the Jack Fenno pseudonym: THE SMALL BANG (Random House, 1992). She was 97. (January 15, 2009)
Philip Broadley Dies
It was found out that Philip Broadley died of cancer on November 30, 2008. He was a British television script writer, who wrote for "Danger Man" ("Secret Agent" in US featuring the late Patrick McGoohan), "The Saint" (featuring Roger Moore), "Man in a Suitcase," "Jason King," "Van der Valk" (with the main character created by Nicholals Freeling), "The Return of the Saint" (featuring Ian Ogilvy), "Gaudy Night" (based on the novel by Dorothy L. Sayers) among others. His first (and probably his only) novel was IN THE KEY OF BLACK (Hodder & Stoughton, 1963), which is a crime novel, accordig to Allen J. Hubin's CRIME FICTION. He was 86. (January 15, 2009)
Andrew Taylor to Receive Diamond Dagger
The Crime Writers' Association of Britain has announced that Andrew Taylor will receive the 2009 CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger on May 6 in London "for sustained excellence in crime writing." Taylor won the CWA John Creasey Memorial Award (now New Blood Dagger) for his first novel, CAROLINE MINUSCULE (Gollantz, 1982), and the Ellis Peters Historical Award twice, for THE OFFICE OF THE DEAD (Collins, 2000) and for THE AMERICAN BOY (Flamingo/HarperCollins, 2003; US title: AN UNPARDONABLE CRIME, Hyperion, 2004). (January 14, 2009)
Charlotte Hough Dies
Charlotte Hough (pronounced "how") died on December 31, 2008. She was a famous children's book illustrator who was arrested and jailed for assisting the suicide of a disabled woman in Kent, UK. She wrote about 30 children's books and one single adult book, THE BASSINGTON MURDER (Elek, 1980; St. Martin's, 1980), which is a crime novel. She was 84. (January 09, 2009)
Murder One to Close Down
Murder One is to close down at the end of January, co-owner Maxim Jakubowski said. Opened on Charing Cross Road in London in August 1988, the bookshop may or may not be "Europe's Foremost Crime & Mystery Bookshop" but surely it has been the oldest crime (or mystery) bookshop in England. (January 06, 2009)
Karen Spengler Dies
Karen Spengler died on January 01, 2009 at her home in Kansas City, Missouri after a long battle with breast cancer. The ex-certified public accountant was the owner of I Love A Mystery Bookstore, located in Mission, Kansas. She was 56. (January 05, 2009)
Johannes Mario Simmel Dies
Johannes Mario Simmel died of January 01, 2009 in a retirement home in Zug, Switzerland. The ex-journalist was a best-seller writer in Germany. He wrote many spy thrillers and some of them were translated into English such as IT CAN'T ALWAYS BE CAVIAR (Doubleday, 1965; originally published in German in 1960) and CAIN (McGraw, 1971; retitled as THE CAIN CONSPIRACY; originally published in German in 1967). He was 84. (Januaray 04, 2009)
Donald E. Westlake Dies
Donald E. Westlake (also known as Richard Stark, Tucker Coe, Samuel Holt, J. Morgan Cunningham, Judson Jack Carmichael, Alan Marshall, Timothy J. Culver, Edwin West and some more) died of a heart attack on December 31, 2008 while on vacation in Mexico. He wrote the unlucky thief Dortmunder series starting THE HOT ROCK (Simon & Schuster, 1970), the professional thief Parker series under the Stark pen-name starting with THE HUNTER (Pocket 1962), the unlicensed gumshoe Mitch Tobin series under the Coe pseudonym starting with KIND OF LOVE, KIND OF DEATH (Random House, 1966) and many many more. He won three Edgars for GOD SAVE THE MARK (Random House, 1967) in the best novel category, for "Too Many Crooks" (Playboy, August 1989) in the best story categofy, and for "The Grifters" (1991; based on the novel by Jim Thompson) in the best screenplay category. He also received the MWA Grand Master Award in 1993.
Personally, I translated a number of his novels and short stories, interviewed him a couple of times, and corresponded with him via e-mail once in a while. He was, of course, one of my literary heroes. His forthcoming novel is GET REAL, a Dortmunder caper one, to be out in July (not April, as the New York Times obit says) from Grand Central Publishing. He was 75. (January 02, 2009; revised January 04)
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