Have You Heard the News?

Wherein I talk a little about what’s up in the P.I. world, for better or worse, and point toward a few recent links I thought may warrant further investigation. Feel free to comment below, or follow me on Twitter.

• C’est quoi cette merde?
  Colour me not impressed–so far. AMC+’s six-part series (also available on Acorn), Monsieur Spade, with Clive Owen playing Dashiell Hammett’s iconic San Francisco hard-boiled gumshoe Sam Spade is something, but I’m not sure what. It was written and executive produced by Scott Frank and Tom Fontana, both surprisingly well-suited for the project—a rarity of late. And Owens might make for a very convincing Spade (he was once going to play Marlowe). But the proposed series is called Monsieur Spade? That’s when the first alarms went off. Turns out the whole thing is more about branding than anything else. “Nobody cares about that Sam Spade anymore,” says Owens in the trailer—and that about sums up this travesty. Owens fails to channel the oft-mentioned Bogart. Or even Hammett’s Spade, for that matter. And the plot? An unwieldy, hard-boiled pile of hokum that Hammett would have shunned. There have been a string of  miscast depictions of some of my favourite gumshoes recently (Perry Mason, Spenser and Marlowe in both film and print) and this seems like just another entry on that list of brain-dead decisions.  I hope I’m wrong, but man, this take on Spade seems so boneheaded so far, I wonder. (January 2024)
• The Best P.I. Novels of the Millenium: The Preliminary List
  Okay, so a few weeks ago, a discussion broke out on Rara-Avis about how, essentially, they don’t write ’em like they used to. Of course they were talking about the whole hard-boiled/noir universe, but I jumped in and asked them what they consider the best P.I. novels of THIS millennium. I got enough of a response that I started asking in a few more places, mostly Twitter (oh, sorry, Elon– “X”) and Facebook, and got even more suggestions.  I’m still asking, but just listing them right now is sorta fun. So far, there are no obvious “winners,” but we’re compiling one hell of a reading list. 
• Here come da Judge!
  Happy New Year! 2024’s gonna be a big one for me, as I dive into both the present & the future, acting as a Shamus judge for the Private Eye Writers of America‘s BEST P.I. SHORT STORIES of 2023, and doing a survey of P.I. Short Fiction of 2024 for editor Michael Bracken’s BEST PRIVATE EYE STORIES OF THE YEAR (see below).
• My 2023 Faves for The Rap Sheet
  I forgot to mention this earlier (blame Christmas, work, the DMV, COVID, senior moments, etc.), but the list of my favorite crime fiction of 2023 is now available at The Rap Sheet. Of course I wrote that so damn long ago, I’m already wanting to argue with my picks. Maybe you will too…
• BEST PRIVATE EYE STORIES OF THE YEAR! Coming in 2025!
  The Best Private Eye Stories of the Year, an annual anthology celebrating the best private eye short stories published each year, will be released by Level Short, an imprint of Level Best Books, beginning in 2025. The inaugural edition will honor the best PI stories published in 2024.
  Series editor Michael Bracken welcomes Matt Coyle as guest editor for the first volume and notes that Kevin Burton Smith will contribute “The Year in Review,” an essay looking at the year’s significant events in private eye fiction.
  Matt Coyle is the Anthony Award, Lefty Award, and two-time Shamus Award winning author of the long-running Rick Cahill series. He was named the 2021 Mystery Writer of the Year by the San Diego Writer’s Festival, and he has received the San Diego Book Award for Best Mystery as well as a silver Ben Franklin Award for Best New Voice in Fiction. He has also been nominated for Barry, Derringer, and Macavity awards.
  Kevin Burton Smith (who?) is the creator and driving force behind The Thrilling Detective Web Site, founded in 1998, and he has written extensively about private eye fiction for Mystery Scene, January Magazine, The Rap Sheet, Deadly Pleasures, and many others. He has also spoken on the subject at numerous mystery conventions, and on radio and television.
  Michael Bracken, the Anthony Award-nominated editor or co-editor of more than two dozen published and forthcoming anthologies, is a consulting editor at Level Short, editor of Black Cat Mystery Magazine, and associate editor of Black Cat Weekly. Also a writer, Bracken is the Edgar- and Shamus-nominated, Derringer-winning author of more than 1,200 short stories, including crime fiction published in The Best American Mystery Stories and The Year’s Best Mystery Stories.
  Only private eye stories published in English during 2024 will be considered. Head here for a complete description of submission requirements.
• A Long-Lost Raymond Chandler Work Discovered!
  Relax, it’s just a poem. Still, for diehard fans, any new Chandler is Good Chandler. Or at least Interesting Chandler. The poem, “Requiem,” was among papers his family donated to the University of Oxford in the eighties, and was only recently found (in a shoebox!), and is currently available in (where else?) the latest issue of The Strand Magazine. It is–perhaps not unsurprisingly–a love letter of sorts, written for his wife Cissy who had died the year before, and according to Strand editor Andrew Gulli reveals “a more sentimental, more mystical Raymond Chandler than we’re used to… We know the wisecracking Philip Marlowe, but Chandler is more complex than we expected.” You think?
  
• Looking for Something P.I. to Read?
  Contributor Pekka Mackoin has recently unleashed his own GoodReads shelf/list of private eye mysteries. He compiled the list of currently easily available books by working his way through various online sources (Stop, Your Killing Me, Crime Writers of Color, The Private Eye Writers of America and of course this site). He’s up to over 400 entries (so far), and urges anyone interested to “feel free to suggest or not to suggest more books.”
  
• The Private Eye Writers Bulletin Board
  What’s the buzz, cuz? My latest hare-brained scheme to drive traffic to this site is The Private Eye Writers Bulletin Board. If you’re a private eye writer, and you’ve got something coming out in the next little while (a book, a short story, a movie deal, whatever, please let me know via email (or DM me,  for you youngsters) and I’ll post the news on this page. Feedback so far seems positive, but we’ll see.

AND DON’T FORGET

Word on the Street A listing of new Hardcovers, Paperbacks, Audio, eBooks, Collections & Anthologies, Non-fiction, Reference & True Crime, Comics & Graphic Novels and DVDs & Blu-Rays.

The P.I. Calendar The latest P.I. happenings around the world… and maybe your hometown.

Did Dashiell Hammett Change the Way America Drinks?

Respectfully compiled by Kevin Burton Smith. Hammett photo is © The Hammett Estate.