Once again, some sort of massive technical difficulties with our e-mail service did not allow us to send out today's newzine. Needless to say this has been a frustrating week. Starbucks leaked on us again, though not a massively as last time. The weather was been so warm! There has been a frightening uptick in papercuts. We tell you it has been rough!!!!!
BOLO:
A true biblio mystery: New Fifty Shades of Grey book stolen ahead of publication
Gift Certificates:
They’re available in Whatever Denomination You Want.
They Don’t Expire.
You can Order Them by Phone, e-mail or through the Website, and we can Mail them directly to the recipient if you’d like.
FATHER’S DAY* FATHER’S DAY* FATHER’S DAY* FATHER’S DAY* FATHER’S DAY* FATHER’S DAY
Rest In Peace:
The events of August 9, 1969 would affect many people personally – the vicitms, the families, the killers – and it launched one unknown civil servant into the limelight. Assistant District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi became the public face of a battle against evil and madness as the stormy 60s came to a close. The prosecution of Charles Manson and his “family” was just one of the strings of successful prosecutions Bugliosi had while serving the county of Los Angeles. When he retired in ’72, he’d amassed a record of winning 105 out of 106 felony jury trials. Of those, 21 were murder trials and he won convictions in all of them.
Vincent Bugliosi died on June 6th after a fight with cancer. He was born on Aug 18, 1934 in Hibbing, MN. After undergraduate school at the University of Miami on a tennis scholorship, he got his law degree from UCLA. He had been with the LA County District Attorney’s office five years when he was put in charge of the Tate-LaBianca case after the original lawyer assigned to the case was removed.
He twice ran for the office of LA County DA but lost narrowly both times. He went into private practice but took few clients.
In 1974, with co-author Curt Gentry (himself a true crime Edgar winner in 1968), Bugliosi published the Edgar-winning account of the case, Helter Skelter. It is reputed to be the highest-selling true crime book of all time. (In Cold Blood is said to be #2.) Bugliosi would continue to write on various subjects – other criminal cases such as the OJ Simpson case where he faulted the prosecution for the verdict, that George W. Bush should have been tried for murder for the death of US soldiers in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the Kennedy assassination. In 1978, he won a second Edgar Award for his second book, Till Death Us Do Part.
He knew when he took the Manson case that it would define his life and he was correct. In the LATimes’ obituary, they wrote:
“But he often said that inevitably, most conversations with him turned to the Manson case.
“Years ago, I spoke at a book convention in Richmond, Va.,” Bugliosi told a Newsweek interviewer in 2009. “I arrived at the station at the same time as William Manchester and Arthur Schlesinger, both Pulitzer Prize winners. The whole cab ride, Manchester and Schlesinger are tossing me questions about Charles Manson: That’s all they wanted to talk about.”
He was often asked to explain the enduring interest.
“The very name Manson has become a metaphor for evil… ,” Bugliosi told the Times in 1994. “He has come to represent the dark and malignant side of humanity, and for whatever reason, there is a side of human nature that is fascinated with ultimate evil.”
Vincent Bugliosi was 80 when he died. We’re just sorry Charlie survived him.
Then we come to Sir Christoper Frank Carandini Lee whose career as an actor, singer, and author spanned nearly seven decades. He died last Sunday at the age of 93. Boiling down his life’s accomplishments to some sort of brief list is impossible. To get the full pagentry of his life, we suggest you visit his wikipedia page.
So let’s stick to his crime and mystery highlights:
- Traveling in France, on June 17, 1939, he witnessed the last public execution by guillotine in that country.
- In the 50s and 60s, he would appear in many small roles in various crime, mystery and espionage TV series. (JB remembers one memorable episode of “The Avengers” in which he starred, in 1967 – probably the first time he saw Lee.)
- 1959’s The Hound of the Baskervilles had him as Sir Henry Baskerville to his friend Peter Cushing’s Sherlock Holmes.
- 1962’s Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace had him playing Holmes.
- He played the evil genius Dr. Fu Manchu five times (we might’ve miscounted as the list of his acting credits is LONG…).
- 1970’s The Private Live of Sherlock Holmes from Billy Wilder had him as Mycroft Holmes
- in the 70’s, he was a memorable Rochfort in Richard Lester’s Musketeer movies (if you’ve never seen these, do so – they’re terrific), the gleefully nasty knee-breaker to Charlton Heston’s Cardinal Richelieu and pal of the deadly Milady played by Faye Dunaway.
- 1974 he played the Bond villain Scaramanga, the hitman with the golden gun (he was Ian Fleming’s step-cousin and was offered the role of Dr. No by Fleming but the film’s producer’s had already hired Wiseman).
- 1979 found him in the film adaptation of Alistair MacLean’s Bear Island
- 1991 saw him return to Baker Street in Incident at Victoria Falls and 1992’s Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady
Can’t really wrap up without mentioning the roles for which youngest generations knew him:
- 2001 (at the age of 79) he appeared at Saruman in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowhip of the Ring. And in 2002 as Count Dooku in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones. He’d reprise his role ast Dooku three years later in Episode III, and he’d continue giving voice to Saruman through video games into 2014.
In the trivia we couldn’t pass up – his two acting regrets were not accepting the role of Dr. Loomis in Halloween and Dr. Rumack in Airplane. He once hosted “Saturday Night Live”. He was considered for role of Magneto in the X-Men movies. It was a life-time dream of his to play Gandalf but he was too old by the time the movies were made – he was the only person involved with those movies to have actually met Tolkein. An accomplished singer with a bass voice, he released a number of heavy metal songs, he was officially the oldest person to ever enter the Billboard Charts (91 years and 6 months) with “Jingle Hell”, a cut from his heavy metal covers of Christmas songs titled “A Heavy Metal Christmas” in 2012. He was a distant cousin of Robert E. Lee. He was married to his wife Birgit for over 54 years.
WOW.
R.I.P. Gentlemen
Links of Interest:
[Mytstery Writer] Georgette Heyer, Queen of Regency Romance, Honoured with Blue Plaque
British Authors: From plitter to drabbletail: the words we love
Elaine Viets on going back to the “Dark Side” after writing “Cozies” for so long
The Anti-Gone Girl: Mary Higgins Clark’s Likeable Heroines are Key to Her Longevity
From Jenny Milchman (who will be here to sign on Thurs, July 30): A Writer's Bucket List
And, finally, our present to all the dad’s out there for Father’s Day:
Here’s How to Get Your Tie to Look Exactly Like James Bond’s
While we specialize in mystery and crime books, we can order virtually any new book that you might want, no matter what its topic.
Signed Copies to Reserve
(the authors will not be here for a formal signing or we’ll be getting the copies from other sources):
Jason Matthews, Palace of Treason (May, Scribner hc, $26.99). Sequel to his Edgar-winning debut, Red Sparrow (Pocket, 17.00), by a retired CIA veteran. Dominika Egorova of Russian Intelligence Service faces many threats, most of the worst come from her secretly working for the US. Others come from her being the lover of her CIA handler, Nate Nash.
[We had no warning that he was coming to town but his driver called us on Monday the 8th and gave us time to get copies signed. He will have been and gone by the time you read this. But we ordered up extra stock for him to sign. Let us know if you’d like one.]
See the calendar of all currently-scheduled events on our website. The website calendar contains plot synopses. At the bottom of it is the updated, complete list of signed copies that we’ll be getting from other sources. Click Here.
Jon Talton, June 17
Craig Johnson, June 20
Carola Dunn, June 27
Ingrid Thoft, June 30
Roger Hobbs, July 7
Don Winslow, July 9
Yasmine Galenorn, July 11 Drop-by!
Mike Lawson, July 11
Christine Carbo, July 18
Jenny Milchman, July 30
Kevin O’Brien, Aug 1
Richard Kadrey, Aug 25
J.A. Jance, Sept 8
Yasmine Galenorn, Oct 31
And there are always more on the way!
Remember, too, that while it is always fun to come in and meet the author in person, that isn’t always possible. So reserve a signed copy to be mailed to you or for you to pick up later. Those who reserve in advance get the copies in the best condition!
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Word of the Week:
kipe: verb. (Also, kype) To steal, pilfer, or swipe something of small value, e.g. a candy bar or some other commonly shop-lifted item. If fading use. Primarily regional to the American Paific Northwest. From the Old English "kip", menaing "to snatch" or "to take hold of". Probably originally from the Old Norse "kippa", meaning to "to snatch", "to tug on", or "to pull on". A trivial theft. The act of taking another person's possessions without asking with the intent to give them back eventually. (thanks to urbandictionary.com)
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What We’ve Been Reading:
Fran Recommends:
I was looking for something fun, fast-paced, a little light-hearted, and entertaining.
The White Magic Five and Dime (Midnight Ink tpo, $14.99) by Steve Hockensmith and Lisa Falco was just the thing!
Alanis McLachlan gets a serious surprise. Her mother, from whom she has been estranged for over 20 years, left her an inheritance - a tiny, New Agey shop in Berdache, Arizona. Alanis doesn't trust this gift from her mother with good reason - Athena was a master con artist. There's always a catch, there's always a mark, and Alanis is pretty sure her mother is setting her up as payback for her desertion, but Alanis is baffled as to how this last con is going to play out.
Further complications arise when Athena's death is called into question by the local sheriff, who has a disturbingly distracting effect on Alanis, and then there's the small matter of the teenager living in Athena's apartment. Alanis has to figure out who might want Athena (if that's her real name anyway) dead, and unsurprisingly, there are lots of suspects. After all, using tarot decks is a con, isn't it?
The White Magic Five and Dime is completely delightful, and I do hope Steve Hockensmith and Lisa Falco come back to this place and these people. Alanis is smart and funny and wistfully hopeful for one as cynical as she was raised to be. I like her a lot. And the other characters that populate Berdache are wonderfully diverse and quirky in the way you only get from small towns. For those of you who don't like "woo-woo" aspects to stories, there's really very little of the metaphysical going on here, although the possibility is certainly out there. But this tale is all about the people and how they do or don't play nicely with each other. And I have to say, there are some brilliant and glorious twists that I absolutely did not see coming, which made The White Magic Five and Dime even more wonderful!
JB Recommends:
“From the moment I first saw her, Angela looked like she could talk her way out of the rain.”
Angela is the woman who taught Ghostman Jack to do what he does and to do it as well as he does. They were so close they could be thought of as family. Certainly, they felt like family. But six years ago, as that job in Kuala Lumpur went south, they split up and though he’s searched for signs of her around the planet he’s not known what happened to her. Well, after all – that’s what people like Jack and Angela do: they vanish – they’re ghosts.
After 40 tense pages of Roger Hobbs’ second book, Vanishing Games, he receives a message from her.
And we’re off.
Macau, sapphires, nameless assassins, schemes, plots, scams, fast boats, smugglers and Triad dragons. As with his debut, Hobbs provides a walking tour through crime and cons. Did you know that wet, shredded newspaper in an empty quart pop bottle can make a handy, improvised silencer for your handgun? Learn something new every day.
The action is non-stop as various actors maneuver to get the load of stolen sapphires, unaware until they have them that there is a second treasure that comes with them, one that ups the danger and rewards considerably. There’s plenty of blood and gunsmoke. There’s plenty of desperation and destruction, as well as gamesmanship and guile. Who’s got the stones? Who is who working for or with, whom? Who knows what? Who is going to get away with it? Will anyone get out alive?
Vanishing Games (Knopf hc, $24.95 – signing on Tues, July 7 – noon) is a worthy addition to his debut, Ghostman (Vintage, $14.95) and proves that his first book was no fluke. Roger Hobbs is the real deal, spinning a tight and thrilling story that seems both seasoned and fresh.
We have two Tumblr blogs, in addition to our regular shop blog:
Hardboiled, maintained by JB – pulp covers, film noir and other images of crime and mystery, and
Reviews and Events – just what it sounds like!
And Have a Relaxing and Book-Filled Weekend!
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