Serious Stuff
‘Get the Hell Out of Here and Get Something to Shoot With’ The political machine in McMinn County, Tennessee, had spent Election Day intimidating voters, encouraging fraud and holding poll watchers at gunpoint. That’s when a group of World War II veterans decided to revolt.
The Unsettled Legacy of the Bloodiest Election in American History
A vaccine heist in 1959 set off a frantic search to recover the serum before it spoiled
University staff urge probe into e-book pricing ‘scandal’
Censorettes: The Women Wartime Censors Who Kept The Allies Safe And Uncovered A Nest of Spies in Brooklyn
What Ozark Gets Wrong: The Latest Tricks in International Money Laundering
Buying a baby on Nairobi’s black market
Read Walter Mosley’s Incredible Speech From Last Night’s National Book Awards
Why Writing About Cults—and People Who Join Them—Is Never Easy
Two Darwin Notebooks Quietly Went Missing 20 Years Ago. Were They Stolen?
Penguin Random House to Buy Simon & Schuster
On SPECTRE
Do you really want Amazon’s new drugstore knowing your medical condition?
Secret Amazon Reports Expose the Company’s Surveillance of Labor and Environmental Groups
“Amazon’s unchecked growth is a threat to everyone’s rights.”
Audible bows to pressure and changes returns policy
On Serial Killers and the Extremely Violent
‘They were not born evil’: inside a troubling film on why people kill
The psychiatrist, who is the subject of HBO’s new documentary Crazy Not Insane, tells us what she saw during her decades interviewing and assessing serial murders
Samuel Little, America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer, Confesses to Murder That Sent Innocent Man to Prison
Watch the Chilling Trailer For Netflix’s New True-Crime Docuseries, “The Ripper”
Art Crime
Amateur Art Sleuths Are Invited to Share Their Theories on the Whereabouts of Lost Art for a New Show About Missing Masterpieces
Inside Rome’s Secure Vault for Stolen Art
Art thriller ‘The Last Vermeer’ tells the engrossing true story of an ingenious fraud
The True Story of Rose Dugdale, The Woman Who Stole Vermeer
Want to own an art book on the Sistine Chapel? That’ll be $22,000—and you can’t return it.
Words of the Month
scruple (n.) A”moral misgiving, pang of conscience,” late 14th C., from Old French scrupule (14th C.), from Latin scrupulus “uneasiness, anxiety, pricking of conscience,” literally “small sharp stone,” diminutive of scrupus “sharp stone or pebble,” used figuratively by Cicero for a cause of uneasiness or anxiety, probably from the notion of having a pebble in one’s shoe. The word in the more literal Latin sense of “small unit of weight or measurement” is attested in English from late 14c. (etymonline)
Local Stuff
A Mysterious Pacific Northwest Road Trip
UNDETERMINED: A suspicious death at Green Lake, an investigation’s limits
Strange Stuff
The Most Unusual Murder Weapons in Crime Fiction
In the Footprints of the Hound: Why The Hound of the Baskervilles Still Haunts
‘Bullets for Dead Hoods’ salvages encyclopedia of 1930s mobsters
Powell’s by Powell’s fragrance offers smell of beloved Portland bookstore in one-ounce bottle
He Once Scouted Jamaican Beaches for Dr. No. Now, His 007 Rum Will Appear in No Time to Die.
Students discover hidden 15th-century text on medieval manuscripts
What Jack the Ripper’s Victims Can Teach Us About Digital Privacy
Words of the Month
As Donald Trump refuses to concede: the etymology of ‘coup’
Awards
Here are the winners of the 2020 World Fantasy Awards.
Douglas Stuart wins Booker prize for debut Shuggie Bain
Here are the winners of the 2020 National Book Awards.
Here is the shortlist for the 2020 Costa Book Awards.
Book Stuff
France’s independent bookshops struggle to survive a second lockdown
French bookworms denied their fix in lockdown
Want to Own a Beloved Book? Toni Morrison’s Book Collection Is for Sale
My First Thriller: Scott Turow
Vatican Library Enlists Artificial Intelligence to Protect Its Digitized Treasures
Review: Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops by Shaun Bythell – virtuosic venting
A Collection of Rare Ian Fleming Books & Manuscripts Heads to Auction
Harlan Ellison’s The Last Dangerous Visions may finally be published, after five-decade wait
The Fleshly School: Sex writing in recent fiction
A comedian has just solved “the world’s most difficult literary puzzle.”
Beloved arts facility Poets House suspends operations
The Evolution of Espionage Fiction
A letter in which Beethoven literally just asks for some sheet music back has sold for $275k
The art of a short story
Unseen JRR Tolkien essays on Middle-earth coming in 2021
This museum is dedicated to the most famous Irish writers in history.
Has Greed Fallen Behind as a Motive for Murder in Modern Crime Fiction?
Love and Murder with Jo Nesbø
The untold truth of the Hardy Boys
Arthur Conan Doyle and the Mutineers
Penguin Random House Staff Confront Publisher About New Jordan Peterson Book
‘Queen of crime’ Agatha Christie goes to Bollywood
Other Forms of Entertainment
How Sean Connery, an Unlikely Choice to Play Bond, Defined 007’s Style
15 Essential Conspiracy Theory Movies
Brooke Smith Answers Every Question We Have About The Silence of the Lambs
Val McDermid: The award-winning crime writer on how the plot of the novel that became ITV’s hit series Wire in the Blood arrived, fully formed, while she was driving on the M6
The secrets of TV’s greatest thriller-writer
This Week on Unlikeable Female Characters Podcast: Let’s Explore a Complicated Thriller Archetype: The Femme Fatale
This cryptic corner in downtown San Francisco is a movie treasure
C.J. Box on Big Sky, Big Twists, and Bringing a New Western Thriller to Montana
A forgotten female Sherlock Holmes gets her due in this audio play (with physical clues)
The Enduring Noir Legacy of John Cassavetes
31 Things We Learned from Michael Mann’s ‘Collateral’ Commentary
10 International True Crime Podcasts You Should Be Listening To Now
Misery at 30: a terrifying look at the toxicity of fandom
Out of the Shadows: Scoring ‘Double Indemnity’
‘Daredevil’ fans want Marvel to revive the show now that they have the rights again
‘Luther’ creator Neil Cross says there won’t be a season six but new project is coming soon
~ on The Godfather ~
Francis Ford Coppola announces new cut of ‘The Godfather III’
Oscar Isaac and Jake Gyllenhaal to star in ‘The Godfather’ making-of movie
Watch the dramatic trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s new ‘Godfather III’ cut
Diane Keaton says watching recut ‘Godfather: Part III’ was “one of the best moments of my life”
Words of the Month
fustigate (v.)”to cudgel, to beat,” 1650s, back-formation from Fustication (1560s) or from Latin fusticatus, past participle of fusticare “to cudgel” (to death), from fustis “cudgel, club, staff, stick of wood,” of unknown origin. De Vaan writes that “The most obvious connection would be with Latin -futare” “to beat,” but there are evolutionary difficulties. (etymonline)
RIP
October 20: Jill Paton Walsh, writer of many genres, died at 84
November 6: Obituary: Geoffrey Palmer
November 8: Long-time customer Jim Mohundro died at 82
November 10: Scooby-Doo co-creator Ken Spears dies aged 82
November 29: Darth Vader actor Dave Prowse dies aged 85
Links of Interest
November 4: Inside the Early Days of The Crime of the Century
November 5: High Life: The Carnegie Deli Murders
November 9: Why the funniest books are also the most serious
November 10: Owners’ joy as rare £2.5m books stolen in London heist returned
November 12: The instrument that ‘aided espionage’
November 12: Newton’s Daunting Masterpiece Had a Surprisingly Wide Audience, Historians Find
November 12: 200 more copies of Newton’s ‘Principia’ masterpiece found in Europe by scholar sleuths
November 12: Cognitive Load Theory: Explaining our fight for focus
November 13: Yorkshire Ripper death: Force apology over victim descriptions
November 14: Egypt: More than 100 intact sarcophagi unearthed near Cairo
November 18: My Mother, The Mystery Writer
November 19: Theodore Roosevelt and The Frontier Lawman
November 20: War, heroism and sex: Pulp magazines & the messages they perpetuated
November 20: Berlin police hold ‘cannibal’ after bones found in park
November 22: Unknown Constables found hidden for 200 years in family scrapbook
November 22: Decades of Alan Rickman’s diaries will be published as a book in 2022.
November 24: Linda Millar’s brief life was full of tragedy. Her secrets found their way into novels thanks to her celebrated parents, Ross Macdonald and Margaret Millar. It’s time to see who she really was.
November 24: Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert
Words of the Month
cantankerous (adj.) “marked by ill-tempered contradiction or opposition,” 1772, said by Grose to be “a Wiltshire word,” conjectured to be from an alteration (influenced perhaps by raucous) of a dialectal survival of Middle English contakour “troublemaker” (c. 1300), from Anglo-French contec “discord, strife,” from Old French contechier (Old North French contekier), from con- “with” + teche, related to atachier “hold fast” (see attach). With -ous. Related: Cantankerously; cantankerousness. (etymoline)
What We’ve Been Up To
Amber
Still love Christie….I am still writing! So check out Finder of Lost Things!
I am presently killing my hands painting the interior of my husband and I’s new house…and have literally packed every single one of my books in preparation for moving (which is killing me as a bibliophile). So I haven’t had much spare time to read…I know excuses, excuses!
Fran
You’re going to get tired of hearing this.
I know, I know, but Louise Penny is great!
At least half of you are skipping this, aren’t you? Either you’ve already read it or you’re not a convert yet. Ha!
If you’ve never read Louise Penny, starting with her latest, ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE, actually isn’t a bad place to begin. Granted, you won’t have the emotional ties that come with being in love with the series, but don’t worry. Once you’re hooked (and you will be), you’ll go back and start with STILL LIVES, and you’ll catch up.
ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE takes place in Paris rather than Three Pines, which is part of what makes it okay to begin here. Also, you get a lot of family history, which will help you understand some of the cloudiness about Gamache’s relationship with his son, Daniel.
There is a lot going on in this book. Armand’s relationship with Daniel, Armand’s relationship with his godfather, Daniel’s relationship with Jean-Guy. And we spend a lot more time with Reine-Marie, which is lovely.
Oh, and there’s murder. And attempted murder, and theft and burglary and corporate shenanigans. Everything you expect from Louise Penny.
Now, let me be frank. This is not my favorite of her books. I think the ending was rushed, and I’m not entirely sure her new editor gets Louise’s vibe. At times it felt a little clunky.
That being said, I still skipped all my chores to race to the ending, which quite literally haunted my dreams. I woke up from a nightmare about being in the middle of the final conflict. She’s that good. So when I say it felt clunky, understand that it’s still much, much better than many other authors’ work! It just felt rushed.
So there you go, yet another endorsement for Louise Penny, and yes, you absolutely should read ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE. And don’t worry, you’ll still be in touch with the Three Pines crew. I think you’re gonna love the ending, by the way. *wink*
Now I want a Parisian pastry.
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