Quote of the Week

 

Friday's "Forgotten" Books: The Black Stage

On a paperback copy of The Black Stage by Anthony Gilbert dating from 1955, there was this bit of biographical info regarding Gilbert:  "Little is known about the author except that his books are among the most popular stories written today." In fact, the identify of the author remained a secret for several more years until it was finally revealed that Anthony Gilbert was the creation of Lucy Beatrice Malleson who had already been writing straight Victorian fiction under the pseudonym of Anne Meredith. Ordinarily, I would tend to suspect that Malleson was simply trying to be successful in a traditional masculine field, except that even before she was unmasked, she had a tendency to wear collars and ties.

Malleson was born in London in 1899 and managed to bypass her mother's designs for her daughter to become a schoolteacher, publishing her first book (with the pen name J. Kilmeny Keith) by the age of 26. It was upon seeing a comedy-thriller play by John Willard that she decided to try crime fiction, choosing the name Anthony Gilbert. Her first successes in the genre and with that name came in 1927 with The Tragedy at Freyne which led to ten total novels featuring Scott Egerton, a young British political leader who solved crimes on the side. In 1936 she started a new series with Arthur G. Crook as a protagonist and dropped Egerton. Crook would go on to star in 51 of her some 69 total crime fiction novels (which doesn't take into account her non-genre works; she was nothing, if not prolific).

Her character Arthur G. Crook was, indeed, a character. In an era defined more by Lord Peter Wimsey, Inspector Alleyn, and Albert Campion, Crook is an early prototype of Colombo, a middle-aged beer-drinking Cockney barrister wearing off-the-rack suits with a messy office in a shady part of town. He usually enters into a case after a client has practically already been convicted, then conducts an investigation that ultimately lays a trap for the real culprit. His techniques are at turns brilliant, at turns unorthodox and borderline unethical, and he's not in the slightest afraid to come across as rude.

The Black Stage takes its title from Shakespeare's framing of night as the time of crimes, and surrounds the Vereker family who returns from the second world war to the family home only to find the weak-willed widow owner in the clutches of a younger man, Lewis Bishop, with designs on her diamonds. Thus the stage is set for every member of the household to become a suspect in the unsurprising eventual demise of Bishop. Crook himself doesn't appear until half-way through, when he's hired to defend Anne Verker, the young woman who was found standing over the body with a gun in her hand. There is no courtroom theater here, but a variation of the re-enactment theme with Crook announces he'll stage the murder scene twice, once to show how his client couldn't have done it and another to show how the murder really occurred.

Malleson/Gilbert is known for skillful plotting, which is light on violence, and an engaging supporting cast, characteristics present not only in her novels but in several short stories which appeared in anthologies and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. The omniscient POV can get a bit dizzying to contemporary sensibilities and some of the writing is definitely of its time. Still, it's interesting to read the world today:

And if he put 'em in his pocket, quite apart from ruinin' 'em, there was the chance the police 'ud ask you to turn your pockets out, and just think what an ass you'd look with your pockets weighted down by another fellow's fags. Why, in a country like this one, it's almost enough to hang you out of hand. What you want, when you're looking for diamonds,' he added forcibly, 'is a strip to the buff policy, ladies and gents. And then an X-ray to make sure no one's doin' a swallowing act. If you ask me, I think there's a better explanation about the box bein' full than just that Bishop was feelin' generous. I think those cigarettes were put there to hide something else.'

Gilbert's novel 1941 The Woman in Red, about a secretary whose employer drugs her and tries to drive her mad to cover up a murder, was dramatized on CBS radio and made into two films, My Name is Julia Ross (1945) and Dead of Winter (1987) in which Gilbert was not credited. She was also a founding member of the British Detection Club and received a Queens award for her short story "You Can't Hang Twice."

Mystery Melange

William Kent Krueger was honored with the Founder’s Award at this past weekend's Tucson Festival of Books. The award is given in recognition of an author’s “literary achievements that have captivated our imagination and bodies of work that serve as inspiration to readers, writers and book lovers everywhere.” Previous recipients have included Elmore Leonard, Larry McMurtry, Richard Russo, Billy Collins, and Craig Johnson.


The Lambda Literary Organization announced the finalists for the 38th Lambda Literary Awards, or "Lammys," which celebrate outstanding LGBTQ+ voices in literature. The shortlist for Best LGBTQ+ Mystery include:  A Queer Case by Robert Holtom (Titan Books); Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter by Samantha Crewson (Crooked Lane Books); Girl Falling by Hayley Scrivenor (Flatiron Books); Mirage City by Lev AC Rosen (Minotaur Books); and The Case of the Missing Maid by Rob Osler (Kensington Publishing Corporation).


Speaking of Willaim Kent Krueger, he and three other authors are in the running for the Minnesota Book Awards, Genre Fiction this year. The finalists include:  Apostle's Cove by William Kent Krueger (Atria Books/Simon & Schuster); Broken Fields by Marcie Rendon (Soho Press/Penguin Random House); The Codebreaker's Daughter by Amy Lynn Green (Bethany House Publishers/Baker Publishing Group); and The Quiet Librarian by Allen Eskens (Mulholland Books/Little, Brown and Company/Hachette Book Group). The four authors will take part in a "Meet the Author" panel on March 21 at 2pm at the George Latimer Central Library in St. Paul. Winners in all categories will be revealed on May 6 at the Annual Minnesota Book Awards Ceremony.


Len Deighton, the British author whose subversive spy novels helped redefine the genre in the 1960s, has died at the age of 97. Best known for his debut, The Ipcress File, Deighton went on to write more than 30 books over a career spanning four decades, and was often compared to John le Carré. Published in 1962, The Ipcress File was an immediate success, selling millions of copies worldwide. It introduced readers to an unnamed sardonic, working-class intelligence officer who stood in stark contrast to the glamorous archetype embodied by Ian Fleming’s James Bond (Dr No, the first in the Bond film series, was released in the same year). The novel’s success led to a film adaptation in 1965, starring Michael Caine, and decades later, the story was revisited in a 2022 television adaptation starring Peaky Blinders’s Joe Cole.


Author Lauren Milne Henderson also passed away this week, at the age of 59. Also known by her pen name Rebecca Chance, she was an English freelance journalist and novelist, whose books ran the gamut from thrillers and mysteries, to romance and young adult. In the crime fiction realm, she was best knowm for the seven novels in her Sam Jones mystery series and the Scarlett Wakefield Young Adult mystery series, under the Henderson name, while under the Chance name, she published several thrillers and "bonkbusters." Tributes were posted online via Ayo Onatade at Shots Magazine, Janet Rudolph at Mystery Fanfare, and from Greg Herren.


Storm Publishing is launching Notorious Press, a true crime imprint to be led by Claire Bord, Deputy Managing Director at Storm Publishing, who previously published Gregg Olsen’s bestselling Detective Megan Carpenter series and acclaimed titles American Mother and Starvation Heights at Bookouture. Olsen, a two-time Edgar Award-nominated author widely recognized as a defining voice in true crime, will spearhead the list. Notorious Press will launch in October 2026 with Ordinary Wife, which tells the chilling story of American serial killer Lyda Trueblood. The book is co-authored by Gregg Olsen and his daughter, Morgan Olsen, marking the first collaboration between the father-daughter duo.


IDW Publishing has announced it will launch a new imprint for crime genre comics in May. IDW Crime will kick off with three new series, beginning in May with Seven Wives #1, created by Zoe Tunnell and artists V Gagnon and Tesslyn Bergin. Eisner Award–nominated writer Joey Esposito and artist Valeria Burzo’s Killer Influences #1, about a murderer who partners with an aspiring true crime influencer, will follow in July. Another new series of the serial-killer variety will arrive in September, with Amy Chase and artist Savanna Mayer’s Fixation #1, which "blends true crime tension and thrills with razor-sharp commentary on fandom and toxic addictions."


The folks over at Writers Who Kill contributed their "Favorite Crime or Writing Reference Book(s)."


In the Q&A roundup, Crime Fiction Lover interviewed Alex Gerlis, author of espionage novels set during World War II, including his latest, The Second Traitor. Crime Fiction Lover also chatted with Sarah Yarwood-Lovett, an ecologist-turned-author, who brings her experience to bear in her latest novel, The Pledge, featuring her ecologist protagonist, Dr. Nell Ward.

Author R&R with Michael Jacobs

Originally from Long Island, New York, Michael A. Jacobs moved to California to attend Occidental College. Upon graduating from Loyola University School of Law, he was employed as an associate attorney with a Los Angeles civil litigation firm. In 1975, he began his career with the Orange County District Attorney’s Office. During his time in the DA’s Office, he spent a total of 25 years working in nearly every vertical trial unit including 13 years in the Homicide Division, which he supervised for three years. After leaving the Office in 2006, he commenced a private civil law practice in Orange County and began work on Trackrs (Task Force Review Aimed at Catching Killers, Rapists, and Serial Offenders). He is presently working on a second nonfiction book about his experience working in our criminal justice system.

His first book, TRACKRS: On the Cold Trail of a Serial Killer is the true account of the modern-day pursuit of a serial killer who terrorized Orange County, California in the late 1970s. The victims were young females living alone in apartments, who were sexually assaulted and brutally murdered. Beginning in October of 1995, Orange County deputy district attorneys Michael Jacobs and Mel Jensen focused on a review of other homicide cases that took place in three cities in Orange County and were strikingly similar. 

There had already been a conviction in one of the cases, with the defendant in state prison but always maintaining his innocence. Jacobs and Jensen doubted he was a serial killer and finally obtained a DNA profile after months of delay caused by the Orange County Sheriff's DNA Laboratory's refusal to process evidence from four of the crime scenes. Based on that updated evidence, a potential new suspect was named—a former United States Marine sergeant convicted in 1980 of the kidnapping and rape of a thirteen-year-old girl. On June 14, 1996, three detectives from the Costa Mesa and Tustin police departments traveled to Avenal State Prison to interview the suspect.

Michael stops by In Reference to Murder today to talk about writing the book:

The primary challenge in writing TRACKRS was to take a case, or, as in this situation, a series of cases, that were very fact intensive and then to write a book having it read like a fiction action thriller, as in creative nonfiction. Easier said than done.

TRACKRS is about six sexual assault murders that occurred in Orange County, California in the late 1970s. The cases were finally resolved and the actual perpetrator caught in 1996. An innocent man had been wrongly convicted of one of the murders in 1981. As a result of the renewed investigation, he was finally freed after serving nearly sixteen years in prison.

As one would expect in most cases about six serial killings, I had a wealth of information to utilize, all of which I deemed necessary. I not only had the contents of my original trial “murder book” but also had the complete jury trial transcript, law enforcement reports from six different agencies, the defendant’s complete Marine Corps records, transcripts of the defendant’s recorded statements, numerous interoffice memorandums and communications with government agencies and laboratories, as well as the new investigation reports done by the Orange County TRACKRS (Task Force Review Aimed at Catching Killers and Serial Offenders) project.

In addition to the documentation of the six cases, I also had a complete record of the defendant’s extensive legal history, the defendant’s complete “C” file from state prison as well as the reports and records from a prior rape and kidnapping (for which he had already been convicted) another rape that could not be charged because of the statute of limitations, and an assault with a deadly weapon on another inmate committed during a previous state prison commitment.

Because of this wealth of documentation and data, there were difficult decisions that needed to be made—especially with verbatim passages from the trial transcript. I found each chapter needed to be edited (I had a terrific editor) and this often involved shortening and sometimes deleting and rewriting entire passages. I still ended up with an over 500-page first draft but found it difficult to cut out anymore. What makes TRACKRS different from other of the true crime genre is its high degree of authenticity and “in the trenches” details which I believed a true crime reader would appreciate.

While searching out and compiling the necessary ingredients for TRACKRS, inevitably I was finding that much of my initial draft was reading too much like the police reports or coroner’s files I was relying upon. This seemed especially true when reading certain passages out loud. I knew that writing a story that read like creative nonfiction would be a challenge. I ended up relying to some extent upon the writings and style of four of my favorite authors.

John Grisham, Joseph Wambaugh, Vincent Bugliosi, and Martin Cruz Smith are writers I admire but never try to emulate. A common denominator of all four? They write “page turners.” That's what I wanted TRACKRS to be, but I knew I couldn’t copy their style of writing. I needed to develop my own. So, instead I observed how they would set a scene, how they would relate important circumstances, and how they would describe key characters in the story.

The only workable remedy for the issue of learning how to write creative nonfiction was rewriting, and a lot of it. I ended up writing 19 drafts of a 520-page manuscript before my editor and I were satisfied that TRACKRS was ready for publication.

Since the case of People vs. Parker was a death penalty case, under California law, relatives of the next of kin to the six victims were allowed to testify during the second stage of the trial: the Penalty Phase. Emotionally, this was the most difficult part of the trial to write about. The victims were all young and attractive females. They had been brutally murdered. Their relatives had a difficult time testifying, sometimes reading from notes, sometimes crying. At times I was certain there weren’t any dry eyes in the courtroom. I remember telling the trial judge before their testimony, “We’re in for two difficult days.” He replied, “I know. I know." Since I was there, from start to finish, writing and reading TRACKRS certainly brought those moments back to me. 

You can learn more about Michael Jacobs via his website and follow him on Facebook and Goodreads. TRACKRS is available via all major booksellers.

 

The Barry Best

Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine announced the finalists for the 2026 Barry Awards, named after reviewer Barry Gardner, which celebrate the best works being published in the field of crime fiction each year. Winners will be revealed at the Bouchercon conference in Calgary, Canada, on October 22, 2026.  Congratulations to all the finalists!

Best Mystery

The Impossible Thing, Belinda Bauer (Atlantic Monthly)
Crooks, Lou Berney (William Morrow)
King Of Ashes, S. A. Cosby (Flatiron Books)
The Black Wolf, Louise Penny (Minotaur Books)
The White Crow, Michael Robotham (Scribner)
Presumed Guilty, Scott Turow (Grand Central)

Best First Mystery

Leverage, Amran Gowani (Atria Books)
All The Other Mothers Hate Me, Sarah Harman (Putnam)
Dead Money, Jakob Kerr (Bantam)
The Vanishing Place, Zoe Rankin (Berkley)
Stillwater, Tanya Scott (Atlantic Monthly)
Julie Chan Is Dead, Liann Zhang (Atria Books)

Best Paperback Original Mystery

Crimson Thaw, Bruce Robert Coffin (Severn River)
Splintered Justice, Kim Hays (Seventh Street Books)
Making A Killing, Cara Hunter (William Morrow)
If Two Are Dead, Rick Mofina (MIRA)
Wolf Six, Alex Shaw (Boldwood Books)
The Dentist, Tim Sullivan (Atlantic Crime)

Best Thriller

Witness 8, Steve Cavanagh (Atria Books)
The Oligarch’s Daughter, Joseph Finder (Harper)
Midnight Black, Mark Greaney (Berkley)
Clown Town, Mick Herron (Soho Crime)
Head Cases, John McMahon (Minotaur Books)
The Mailman, Andrew Welsh-Huggins (Mysterious Press)