We will be sending Tough Tender out tomorrow, and I remind those of you receiving copies that you can’t post Amazon reviews until the book has been published, which will be March 15. Same is true of the Quarry’s Blood winners, although that date is sooner – February 22nd.

I am mulling doing a giveaway of No Time to Spy next week. It’s such a big book that postage will be nasty, and I may limit the giveaway to five copies. We shall see.

I am working on the new Nate Heller right now and am about at the half-way point with an April 1st deadline. With luck I will make it, although I have jury duty next week. I actually enjoy jury duty (I’ve served twice in the past) but would rather write Heller.

I’ve talked a lot about the writing process lately, and bitched about reviewers. So for a change I thought I’d write some reviews, or at least reactions, myself to what I’ve been reading and seeing. Probably the question I get asked most – particularly by people who don’t read these updates and don’t already know the answer – is, “What are you reading?”

Again, frequent visitors here know I read very little fiction these days, and almost no crime fiction other than re-reading books by people who influenced me, like Spillane, Cain, Hammett, Chandler, Stout and Christie. (Most of my reading is non-fiction research.) The crime fiction I do absorb tends to be on TV or at the movies…but particularly TV. I’ll talk about what Barb and I have watched and enjoyed lately, but first…what have I been reading?

Poirot: The Greatest Detective in the World by Mark Aldridge is a massive and quite wonderful trip through every Christie novel about the Belgian detective as well as most of the short stories and the various adaptations, including films and TV. Though published with the Christie estate’s blessing, the book is not afraid to criticize (if fondly) the fiction and does not hesitate to find fault with adaptations, though never in a mean-spirited way. Amazingly, the book talks about each novel, intelligently, without revealing the solutions to any of the mysteries. And I was particularly pleased that the author agrees with me that Evil Under the Sun (1982) with Peter Ustinov is “an unmitigated joy” and the best Poirot film.

The Ritz Brothers by Roy Liebman is absolutely the best book on the Ritz Brothers ever written. Also the only one, but it’s damn good if organized in a somewhat head-scratching manner. The Ritz Brothers would be one of my prime guilty pleasures if I considered pleasures found in books and films and TV anything ever to feel guilt about. I say this fully cognizant that their film The Gorilla (1939), despite having a guy in a gorilla suit in it, is truly awful. I’ve seen it half a dozen times.

Sidebar: why do I like the Ritz Brothers? I find their eccentric dancing amazing and their lookalike goonery amusing. The biggest factor is probably Harry Ritz, the “funny” one (think Curly) (or, later, Shemp), without whom we would not have had Danny Kaye, Sid Caesar or Mel Brooks. Oh, and Jerry Lewis. That’s why. Also, their Three Musketeers movie is one of the best versions of one of my favorite stories, with the added benefit of getting Beaver Cleaver into a lot of trouble when he wrote a book report based on that movie.

Blake Edwards: Interviews edited by Gabriella Oldham. The man who gave us Peter Gunn, The Pink Panther and The Great Race, but also gave us some films that make The Gorilla look pretty good, has fascinated me for years. Plus, he wrote and directed the first Mike Hammer TV pilot. And I bet he would have agreed with me about the Ritz Brothers.

Noir City Annual 2020, Eddie Muller publisher, Vince Keenan editor. This publication routinely ignores me and my work, and yet I remain (largely) unoffended because Noir City is so great…and now is publishing as a monthly magazine. This annual covers postwar Japanese noir and actor Jo Shishido (my son Nate and I are fans) as well as Harper and Point Blank, Hubert Cornfield (who directed Bobby Darin in Pressure Point), Christa Faust on older women in noir, and so much more. (Drawback: no Ritz Brothers.) If you haven’t joined the Film Noir Foundation yet, there is still time to save yourself and do so.

That’s it for books lately (25 others are stacked and waiting by my bedside) but there’s been lots of TV. When I write all day, which is most days, I spend the evening with Barb (also writing most days) watching TV and enjoying stories other people have come up with. We binged (well, over two evenings) on the first part of the fourth season of Ozark, in which no one was safe (nor should they have been). I may discuss the series in depth when the second half of this last season appears later this year; but I will say it strikes me as the only true rival to Breaking Bad, with the exception of Better Call Saul.

We watch far more British mystery and crime series, however, than stateside stuff. I had to buy from an e-bay seller of current British (legal) DVDs to see season eight of Endeavour and season 6 of Shetland. (Amazon UK, where I used to do a lot of business, has hiked their shipping fees to the sky since Brexit and Covid, both of which are nasty diseases.)

The sixth season of Endeavour is three movie-length (90-minute) episodes linked by the increasing emotional isolation and drinking problem of its hero. Actor Shaun Evans, who has done the impossible by following the legendary John Thaw into the role of Morse (the young Morse admittedly), is a master at conveying little through his dialogue while conveying much through an understated yet absolutely readable performance. He is matched by another master of understatement, Roger Allam, as DI Thursday (his surrogate father), whose approach recalls Michael Caine at his best. The final episode of the three stumbles a bit, as writer Russell Lewis discovers how difficult it is to do an Agatha Christie-style closed-environment mystery – it entertains, but you will likely (as did Barb and I) glaze over during the convoluted solution. A season nine has yet to be confirmed, but there’s certainly more story to tell.

Shetland’s sixth series is one six-episode, six-hour story, rich in character and plot. Often locales are cited as characters in stories, and mostly that’s an exaggeration, but the austere beauty of the Scottish archipelago here rises to that. The storytelling approach is unique – long shots of cars on a narrow highway go on longer than might seem necessary, cliffs and oceans and fields stretch forever, cars pull up to lonely houses and people get out and walk slowly up to the door; but the leisureliness of that (normally a negative) is offset by crime stories that have twists and turns and characters who suffer one small (and occasionally large) crisis after another. The protagonist, Jimmy Perez (Douglas Henshall), is always on the move, making a steady progression through crime scenes and the police station itself, even his own kitchen at home, a presence knifing through the quiet. This is one of the best of the UK shows, and that’s saying something. A season 7 has been announced.

Netflix has two mystery-oriented shows that provide very different comic takes on crime.

The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window is, as its title tells you, a parody of the current female-dominated psychological thriller – everything from Hallmark movies to books (and movies) with titles like The Girl on the Train or, well, The Girl Most Likely. The star is Kristin Bell, Veronica Mars herself, and I guarantee that any working mystery writer will be uncomfortable at times, as the series nails the cliches all of us occasionally fall into.

I’m not sure whether Bell is the woman in the house or the girl in the window – depends on your perspective – but the series is just a good enough mystery to stay compelling despite the wonderful silliness (like the dim-witted handyman who is repairing the same mailbox throughout all eight episodes). Mostly it’s just amusing, but from time to time some truly outrageous moment – right out of Airplane! – will blindside you with hilarity. A few episodes in, the woman (or the girl?) played by Bell turns amateur detective; seeing Bell in Veronica Mars mode again, even in a spoofing way, is a pleasure…as I say this as one of the producers of the Veronica Mars film (well, as someone who gave enough to the KickStarter campaign to get a t-shirt). We watched one episode and wound up bingeing on the entire eight.

Or, as the girl (or woman?) would say, “Bingo!”

The other Netflix mystery series, derived from a UK source, is Murderville, which is essentially Police Squad Meets Whose Line Is It Anyway. A demented Will Arnett, making his Arrested Development role look grounded in reality, is Detective Terry Seattle in an unnamed big city. In each episode he is confronted by a murder to solve, and burdened with a new homicide department trainee – played by a celebrity with no script, who must muddle through the plot and the indignities with no one to help but Arnett, who basically is there to make their lives miserable. Every guest star did well, but Conan O’Brien, Kumail Ali Nanjiani and Ken Jeong are the standout trainees. We found it hilarious.

You know – like the Ritz Brothers.

M.A.C.