Mystery Scene: Thursday, November 30, 2023

A decade ago, British TV presenter Lucy Worsley examined her nation’s obsession with crime.

“Every murder tells a good story,” she said of the British docu-series A Very British Murder, which investigated the real crimes that influenced novelists such as Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, and Graham Greene, and the filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock.

More recently, Worsley has become best known for a spate of programs with a regal hook, many with her name attached. It’s hardly surprising: The Oxford graduate is chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces, the independent charity responsible for maintaining such iconic sites as the Tower of London and Hampton Court Palace. Recent hosting credits include Lucy Worsley’s Royal Myths and Secrets, Lucy Worsley’s Royal Palace Secrets, and Lucy Worsley’s Royal Photo Album, to name but a few.

Ah, but she hasn’t forgotten her criminal past.

Agatha Christie: Lucy Worsley on the Mystery Queen (note the title’s regal reference!), debuts Sunday, December 3, 2023, with two subsequent episodes on December 10 and 17, on PBS, PBS.org, and the PBS App.

During a recent Zoom roundtable interview session, Worsley discussed the production and her Christie compulsion, giving a nod to a Christie trope when she quipped, “If our Zoom call were an Agatha Christie story, I’m telling you, the murderer would be one of us.”

The series builds on Worsley’s critically admired 2022 biography, Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman, and she hopes it will further debunk misconceptions, including the forgivable impression that the mystery author was always gray-haired and of AARP status.

“She wasn’t like Miss Marple,” Worsley said, referencing Christie’s elderly spinster crime-solver. On the contrary, when Agatha Christie came to fame, explained Worsley, “physically, she was young, she was blonde, she was strong, she liked surfing and driving fast cars.”

The series weaves period and contemporary footage with interviews with various experts—including other Christie historians, mystery writers, and authorities on topics including the women of World War I, psychiatry in the 1920s, and archaeology, the latter a subject that would profoundly affect Christie’s life.

To illustrate parallels between events in Christie’s life and her writings, Worsley was filmed visiting significant locales, including an archaeological dig where Christie met the man who would become her second husband. Scenes of Worsley making her way through a Middle Eastern marketplace appear in black and white, grainy effects simulating vintage footage. There are also reenactments, as much a popular element of Worsley’s shows as her blonde bob, bright lipstick, and unmistakable narrative delivery (She has difficulty with the letter “r”).

Utilizing materials from Christie archives, Worsley gets to show viewers the first-ever detective story penned by Christie. It’s a kind of spoof, written for a hospital magazine when Christie was with the Voluntary Aid Detachment, working with injured World War I veterans. A harbinger of the signature story elements to come, the piece involves a murder, poison, and a close circle of suspects. For Worsley, discovery of the piece was “a super wow moment.”

There are additional revelations, most notably involving Christie’s headline-making 11-day disappearance in 1926. In the series, Worsley calls the subsequent search for the author “the biggest manhunt yet seen in Britain.” No less an authority than Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the great Sherlock Holmes and a noted believer in the supernatural, tried to aid the quest—by enlisting the help of a psychic.

For dramatic effect, Worsley visits the same rustic site where Christie’s automobile was found abandoned.

It was at a spa hotel, 230 miles north of where she was last seen, that Christie was finally found. She had checked in using the name of her cheating husband’s mistress.

Both in the series and during the interview session, Worsley expressed ire that many people at the time, and still today, considered the disappearance a publicity stunt to sell books.

Calling such speculation “deeply wrong and deeply unfair,” Worsley added, “She was ill,” carrying out her actions while in “a fugue state” not unlike the shellshock that afflicted veterans of World War I. Further, Worsley believes Christie sought help for memory loss following her breakdown. After consultations with the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Worsley and her team were able to pinpoint the treating psychiatrist. “And you won’t hear about him anywhere else because he’s a new discovery in our program.”

There’s even a photograph of the doctor, which Worsley proudly presents to the cameras. She cites one of the titles Christie wrote under a nom de plume—unknown to readers during most of her lifetime—as a thinly veiled account of what really happened.

In Grant’s Bread, written under the Christie pseudonym Mary Westmacott, a woman with an unfaithful husband loses her memory, and goes on to be aided by a doctor who sounds an awful lot like the same man who may have treated Christie. There are six Mary Westmacott books, and while none are mysteries, Worsley believes they are “vital for understanding the real Agatha,” revelatory in regard to Christie’s personal life. At the time the Westmacott books were written, the pseudonym shielded Christie from scrutiny. “Even as her books were getting more and more globally successful…,” Worsley explained, “she became ever sort of more meek and more humble and never let anybody into her process, if you like.”

Christie’s mysteries, on the other hand, were game changers for the genre. It was she who famously startled readers with a story told by an unreliable narrator (a work Worsley discusses in the series following a helpful spoiler alert). Christie also popularized “mysteries of the past”—aka historical mysteries (Murder in Mesopotamia). The ABC Murders is one of the earliest of the serial killer genre. The Mousetrap, which remains the longest running play in the world, illustrates the power of raiding from true crime; the show includes a segment on the horrific child abuse case that inspired the story.

The series doesn’t sidestep the controversy that some Christie materials are today deemed politically incorrect or insensitive. A segment discusses the book that was eventually retitled And Then There Were None (and, in the United States, Ten Little Indians).

Worsley is up-front about Christie’s disapproval of various screen adaptations of her work. As a “control freak,” said Worsley during the roundtable, “[Christie] didn’t like the idea of people taking and messing with her characters.” Pressed about specific depictions, Worsley said that Christie wouldn’t have given a thumbs-up to any actor portraying her characters. That includes David Suchet’s popular depiction of the famed detective on TV’s long-running series, Agatha Christie’s Poirot. No matter that it holds special meaning to Worsley. “I mean, this is how I came to Agatha Christie. I used to watch it on Sunday nights at my granny’s.”

Worsley also grew up in the shadow of Sherlock Holmes—“who I absolutely love.” Worsley’s next venture, Killing Sherlock, will examine the life of creator Conan Doyle, and “the kind of toxic relationship he had with his hero.”

For now, fans of both Worsley and the enigmatic Christie can enjoy the series dedicated to the writer whose first success, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, was published nearly 100 years ago. Worsley’s personal charm and exuberance, and her knowledge of the great Christie, makes for a production that’s every bit as satisfying as sitting down with a good mystery.

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Nat Segaloff was working as publicity director for a Boston theater chain when Exorcist first opened. He subsequently got to know both filmmaker William Friedkin and author William Peter Blatty, who wrote the 1971 bestseller on which the film is based as well as its Oscar-winning screenplay adaptation. Curious about the Exorcist “curse” (the weird goings-on during the film’s production)? The industry backlash when the movie was nominated for 10 Oscars, but won only two? How about how the film’s star-less cast contributed to the film’s success? In his exhaustive compendium, Segaloff provides all the background details, and explains why the film ranks as a great whodunit.

You can find my piece here: https://mysteryscenemag.com/blog-article/7698-q-a-with-nat-segaloff-author-of-the-exorcist-legacy-50-years-of-fear

P.S. Back in 1973, Yours Truly was among the throngs standing in a line that wrapped around an entire city block, waiting to see the movie at the National Theatre in Westwood, California. Hey, it was worth the wait!

The first book, by Mark Dawidziak, opens with the literary icon’s strange passing in Baltimore — a city he wasn’t intending to visit — at age 40 in 1849. Found wearing another man’s clothes, not long after telling a friend “I am full of dark forebodings,” Poe added to the ensuing intrigue by calling out a name in his final hours that no one recognized. Dawidziak examines the many theories of what he labels “one of the great literary stage exits of all time,” tracing Poe’s rise, struggles, artistry and that confounding demise.

In the second, Chris Alexander explores Roger Corman’s popular cycle of eight films based on the darkly imaginative writer’s most famous works; interviews with the pioneering producer/director himself add to the author’s astute analysis.

I recommend both publications … and the website, which you’ll find at https://mysteryscenemag.com/

Mystery Scene

Curious about the history of mysteries and the folks who write them? You could take a master’s class that spans months and costs serious bucks. Or, you could buy Martin Edwards’ latest genre compendium, and curl up with it on your sofa. But do so with care … the book weighs in at 2.6 pounds.

In The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and Their Creators (Collins Crime Club, November 2022, 724 pages, $32.99), Edwards gives the reader the full monty with his authoritative, eye-opening and entertaining opus. He is well-qualified to do so, as the archivist of the Crime Writers’ Association, president of the Detection Club, and author of titles including the hefty The Golden Age of Murder: The Mystery of the Writers Who Invented the Modern Detective Story (2015).

Comprised of 55 chapters with endnotes, the final 100 pages devoted to bibliography and indexes, The Life of Crime scrutinizes the genre through changing eras, subgenres, specific writers.

Citing novelist-critic Julian Symon’s 50-plus year-old Mortal Consequences: A History from the Detective Story to the Crime Novel as impetus for this project, Edwards utilizes what he calls “novelistic techniques” – accessible rather than scholarly writing – to chart the genre’s story. Chapters begin with a tantalizing anecdote, which leads to an examination of topic. Many names and claims to fame will resonate with genre enthusiasts. Just as many will surprise.

What was the first book about a manhunt? Long before John Buchan’s masterful The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915) there was Things As They Are: The Adventures of Caleb Williams, written by William Godwin in … 1794. Oh, Godwin gave the genre another benchmark when he and his wife, the pioneering feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, produced daughter Mary, who would go on to pen Frankenstein. Readers of Ruth Rendell will be glad to hear that, as a fledgling journalist, she faked her attendance at an event she was assigned to cover. Writing the piece as if she’d been there, she was unaware the guest speaker had dropped dead at the gathering. Fired from her job, she decided to write a mystery. A chapter on genre rogues gives a nod to Arthur Conan Doyle’s brother-in-law, E.W. Hornung, creator of the debonair A.J. Raffles, cricketer by day, burglar by night.

Naturally, Doyle’s Great Detective gets his own chapter and other usual suspects – among them, Christie, Highsmith, Hammett, and Chandler – are also prominently featured.

But there are also accolades for the offbeat. Like the scientific mysteries of R. Austin Freeman, who personally tested his assorted theories. And how about Astrogen Kerby, aka Astro, the psychic and charlatan who solves crimes in the anonymously published 1912 short story collection The Master of Mysteries. A cipher within the book identified the author as Gelett Burgess who, per an endnote, is credited with originating the term, “blurb.” Yes, some of the book’s details are deliciously arcane.

Edwards doesn’t neglect the challenges of early female crime writers, some of whom felt it necessary to utilize male pseudonyms or gender-neutral monikers. Discussing genre diversity, Edwards charts the talents and turbulent personal life of Black writer Chester Himes, moving on to the impact wielded by the black-Jewish Walter Mosley, and his PI, Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins. The pros and cons of various Asian crime-fighters are also explored, and props given to the first gay detective.

I could go on and on … about the book’s coverage of Scandinavian crime, noir (and more noir), domestic suspense, psychological suspense, police procedurals, even my personal favorite, Ross Macdonald. But if I continued it would become a master’s class, and I’d have to charge tuition. Get this book instead. It’s an essential for mystery lovers.

**

Omitted from the massive Edwards tome, Stephen King merits his own spotlight in the gorgeously produced, oversize volume, Stephen King: A Complete Exploration of His Work, Life, and Influences (Epic Ink, September 2022, 240 pages, $30). Timed to the prodigious writer’s 75^th birthday, this celebratory critique is by Bev Vincent, who himself is pretty prodigious. Author of more than 120 short stories (published in Ellery Queen, Alfred Hitchcock, etc.), and previous King-related books, Vincent has been chronicling his idol for more than two decades, actually collaborating with King on several projects.

This book’s focus is on King’s writings, and includes anecdotes about particular works (King’s breakthrough novel, Carrie, began as a short story), as well as manuscript pages, correspondence to and from publishers, book cover art, and more. Interspersed are “sidebar” featurettes on film adaptations, King’s sports interests, collaborations, and so on. Fittingly, some of the book’s pages are “blood”-spattered.

Cynics may think it improbable, but Vincent manages to include appendixes of all of King’s writings (phew!) – and those myriad adaptations, right up to the latest streaming ventures.

This work will delight Stephen King’s fans while giving pop culture scholars – and adventurous newbies – plenty to process.

**

If historical true crime is your passion, reach for American Demon: Eliot Ness and the Hunt for America’s Jack the Ripper (Minotaur Books, September 2022, 352 pages, $29.99), in which Daniel Stashower details the life, career, and eventual downward spiral of the legendary G-Man, whose final years were tinged by regrets about the case he couldn’t solve.

It was as Cleveland’s Director of Public Safety in the 1930s, in the aftermath of helping to take down Chicago’s Al Capone, that Ness was tasked with finding a serial killer who became known by lurid monikers such as the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury and the Mad Torso Killer. To this day, the case remains unsolved.

Part biography, part true crime saga, this work utilizes reams of documents, including Ness’ own papers, and a cavalcade of newspaper clippings. It also builds on previous non-fiction books, including the 2020 entry by genre heavyweight Max Allan Collins and A. Brad Schwartz, and multiple volumes by James Jessen Badal (also an interview source), the Cleveland professor who has spent decades studying and writing about the homicides.

Stashower, a multiple Edgar award-winner, came away from this book still admiring Ness, even though the man wasn’t as stalwart as media depictions by the likes of Robert Stack and Kevin Costner. Still, in addressing the lawman’s failings, Stashower underscores the challenges he faced. With the torso killings, the era’s forensics tools were a serious impediment.

A skilled writer, Stashower delivers vivid, atmospheric depictions of the era and locales. There’s no downplaying the horrific nature of the crimes – even basic details are gruesome. At one point authorities put a severed head on display, in hopes of identifying a victim. No one was ever brought to justice and no conclusive evidence remains, still, Stashower has his suspicions (and they seem solid) about the evil doer. Devotees of true crime, especially the serial killer subgenre, will not be disappointed.

**

I’ll sign off with The First True Hitchcock: The Making of a Filmmaker by Henry K. Miller (University of California Press, January 2022, 233 pages, $26.95), which delves deep within the foggy mythos surrounding the 1927 silent movie, “The Lodger.”

Based on Marie Bellow Lowndes’ classic 1913 novel about a boarding house tenant, who may be Jack the Ripper, Hitchcock’s screen version launched an astounding career – indeed, a brand. Miller, a Sight and Sound critic and author of The Essential Raymond Durgnat (he was an esteemed British film critic), microscopically examines the 26-year-old director’s every filmmaking decision, including the choice of where to stage the first murder – which “marked the real beginning of a film career in which appearances deceive, identities divide, and authorities are undermined.”

Hitchcock’s relocation from Britain to America is ever-shadowed by The Lodger, which he long talked about remaking. Despite the assignment going to another filmmaker (for a 1944 version), Hitchcock was still trumpeting the possibility when he sat down for his famous interviews with French filmmaker-critic Francois Truffaut in 1972.

An academic work that could have used more chronological organization, this book nonetheless fills a gap within existing Hitchcockian studies. That alone makes it worthy of scrutiny. As does time spent in the company of the ever-compelling master of suspense.

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There’s big trouble at the Executive Mansion. Treachery, deceit, infidelity, murder. And that’s just the short list.

Things aren’t much better down at the end of the National Mall, just two and a half miles away, at the Capitol Building.

And don’t even ask what’s happening at the Supreme Court.

It may be an election year, but all the slings and arrows from the warring candidates and their respective parties can’t compare to the ominous weaponry and sinister plots perpetrated in the fictional world of political thrillers.

With so much action currently emanating from White House and D.C. environs, it seems apt to explore fictional thrillers related to the presidency – and the capital that is the heartbeat of American democracy.

Like governments, political thrillers come in all forms. Some anticipate true history, others bank on it. Many reflect contemporary anxieties.

The genre has a cadre of leading authors whose names are as unmissable as the cover artwork of their books. The roster includes David Baldacci, Nelson DeMille, Vince Flynn, Brad Meltzer, Daniel Silva … Book dust jackets often depict the White House or the domed crown of the Capitol building, and are emblazoned with superlatives like “propulsive,” “nail-biting,” “blistering,” “explosive,” and “page-turning.”

Explaining the genre’s appeal, writer Matthew Quirk suggests, “People like to pull back the curtain on iconic institutions, and they like thrillers with high stakes. And it doesn’t get much more iconic or high stakes than 1600 Penn.” The author of half a dozen titles, including 2020’s Hour of the Assassin, about a former Secret Service agent on the run and a presidential candidate with a dark secret, Quirk stresses that well-drawn characters are necessary components for a reader’s “emotional investment.”

When the U.S. presidency is involved, he adds, the attraction is “the natural intrigue and fascination that comes with the most powerful job in the world.”

Quirk’s relevant job history includes having worked as a reporter in DC (he twice visited the White House), making him part of the constituency of journalists-turned-authors. Call it the genre press corps.

Still other contributors migrated to the field after genuine hands-on government work. These “insiders” – onetime spies, military members, politicians, staffers, and others – are known for bringing serious street cred to their novels.

Few authors can say, authoritatively, “I was in the Situation Room the night we bombed Libya.” For Karna Small Bodman it was one of many memorable experiences with the Reagan White House, where the former TV newscaster spent six years as deputy press secretary, then served as senior director of the National Security Council. During her tenure, Bodman had almost daily meetings with Reagan, and traveled on Air Force One for international trips that included arms control talks with the Soviets.

The author of five political thrillers boasting a female protagonist, Bodman reads a stack of newspapers daily, clipping articles that might be useful. (“The Wall Street Journal is my bible,” she declares.) The idea for one of her books evolved from a question she asked a high ranking military official: “What keeps you up at night?”

Her most recent book, 2018’s Trust But Verify, got its title from a political phrase popularized by – yes – Reagan.

**

You could stuff a ballot box with the names of all the politicos who have penned thrillers.

The list includes Newt Gingrich, Barbara Boxer, Gary Hart (under the pseudonym John Blackthorn), Marilyn Quayle (who teamed with her sister, Nancy T. Northcott). Not to omit Margaret Truman – daughter of President Harry S. Truman – who for many years “authored” her Capital Crimes novels. (A ghostwriter eventually came forward.)

John Ehrlichman, the former White House counsel who served time in federal prison for his role in the Watergate scandal, culled from real life for his entry, The Company, about a Nixon-like president’s downfall. Forty-six years after its 1976 publication, the book continues to track on “best of” lists.

Thrillers by William S. Cohen, former secretary of defense under President Bill Clinton, include a trilogy about a former national security adviser who dealt with the threat of an asteroid hurtling toward Earth in 2015’s Collision and 2018’s Final Strike.

Stacey Abrams, former minority leader of the House of Representatives, made headlines with the May 2021 publication of While Justice Sleeps, about a  beautiful Black Yale Law School graduate-turned-law clerk, who becomes legal guardian to an ailing Supreme Court justice. The story’s destructive Republican president would like to see that justice assassinated.

A former law clerk and Yale graduate herself, Abrams wrote the thriller almost a decade ago. It initially failed to sell, in part because of perceived disinterest in the Supreme Court. Known for her never-say-die spirit, Abrams – whose published works include eight romantic suspense novels, written under the pen name Selena Montgomery – resubmitted and sold the manuscript. Reviews were decidedly mixed, but initial sales made the book a best seller.

Later in 2021, Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny proved a winning ticket as co-authors of State of Terror, in which a secretary of state must prevent global nuclear warfare. Clinton and Penny first met in 2016, after Clinton lost the presidential race to Donald Trump. Outlining their book prior to the 2020 election, which saw Trump ousted by Joe Biden, they wrote the text during the pandemic.

State of Terror spent nine weeks on the best seller list of the New York Times, which called it a “romp,” noting “Political junkies will relish the veiled insults to real-life people.” Consider: a charismatic former president named Eric Dunn is known, among his advisers, as Eric the Dumb.

While there’s no word, yet, on whether Clinton and Penny will reteam for a sequel, Clinton’s husband has co-authored two thrillers with the prolific James Patterson. The Bill Clinton-Patterson teaming began with 2018’s The President is Missing.

That one didn’t give reviewers goosebumps, despite promises of insider details “that only a president can know.” “The CIA can relax,” wrote the Washington Post. “No felt-tip pens went dry redacting material for this manuscript. [The book] reveals as many secrets about the U.S. government as The Pink Panther reveals about the French government.”

Still, it was a best seller. Readers have long cast their ballots for plotlines about missing presidents.

**

“Red China is threatening to attack.

The hawks want to strike.

And then, suddenly

The President’s Plane is Missing!”

The print advertisements for this 1967 Cold War entry didn’t waste any time on the tarmac.

When a burdened president is headed to Palm Springs for rest and relaxation aboard Air Force One, his plane crashes in Arizona. But the president isn’t among the victims. Where is he? And is the vice president capable of sitting behind the desk of the Oval Office?

Author Robert J. Serling was a noted aviation writer who brought a “you are there” sensibility to the scenes aboard the presidential aircraft. The brother of Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling, Serling had collaborated on several of the iconic series’ famed episodes. He knew a thing or two about milking suspense. His novel subsequently became a popular TV movie.

**

The mania for MIA politicians dates back to the 1930s. When first published by “Anonymous,” The President Vanishes was promoted as “A story so startling its author dared not sign his name.”

The year was 1934. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was chief executive. The county was still recovering from the horrors of the First World War. But there were menacing signs overseas – specifically, in Germany. Thus the saga of a peace-loving commander-in-chief who is trying to keep the United States from being dragged into a European war promoted by industrialists and businessmen. Then, he disappears …

By the time the film version was released in 1935, Rex Stout, creator of Nero Wolfe, had been outed as the unknown author.

The President Vanishes created a genre boilerplate.

**

Then there’s the popular scenario about efforts to create a puppet presidency.

The classic example is the 1959 novel, “The Manchurian Candidate.” Richard Condon’s mix of satire and suspense follows a former Korean War POW whose Communist Chinese captors subject him to brainwashing, and program him to kill (using a post-hypnotic trigger). The story climaxes with the attempted assassination of a presidential candidate. The book was originally likened to science fiction by reviewers.

The 1962 film adaptation was hyped with come-ons such as, “You’ll swear there’s never been anything like it!” Directed by 60’s wunderkind John Frankenheimer, the movie starred Laurence Harvey, Frank Sinatra, Janet Leigh and, as one of filmdom’s most infamous mothers, Angela Lansbury. Though Lansbury was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance, the movie divided the critics.

But with the November 1963 assassination of JFK, both book and film took on a prophetic mystique.

Within a month, Richard Condon was guesting on the Today show, discussing similarities between his book and real life. (Condon revisited the JFK assassination in 1974 with his thriller Winter Kills.)

In fact, government agencies did chase a theory involving the possible brainwashing of Lee Harvey Oswald. They called it “the Manchurian Candidate syndrome.”

Fiction and reality had collided.

**

The JFK assassination and revelations that followed, including details about the President’s secretive personal life, were game-changers for the political thriller. Likewise Watergate, the fall of Richard Nixon, the Iran-Contra affair, the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal  … and the list goes on.

Already, the failure of the Cuban missile crisis had led to a spate of suspense titles examining Cold War threats, including Seven Days in May, about an attempted right-wing United States military coup. The 1962 book was co-authored by political columnist Fletcher Knebel (of the syndicated column “Potomac Fever”), who got his idea for the story after speaking to a hawkish Air Force general critical of the president’s handling of the Bay of Pigs. “Some thought he and others like him would have liked to overthrow the government,” Knebel recalled.

Seven Days in May was a best seller. The inevitable film version, released in 1964, starred Burt Lancaster, Fredric March, Kirk Douglas and Ava Gardner.

**

It was the death of JFK that sparked what crime editor-publisher Otto Penzler called, “Unequivocally the greatest espionage novel ever written by an American.” Its author, Charles McCarry, was a former CIA undercover agent – and a superlative storyteller.

Published in 1974, The Tears of Autumn proved startling for its plausible explanation of whodunit and why. (Spoiler Alert: It was the South Vietnamese, in retaliation for the assassination of their leader, President Ngo Dinh Diem. Kennedy and his advisers had played a role in the coup that led to Diem’s death, thereby resulting in the payback of JFK’s assassination.)

**

Depending on who you ask, the godfather of the political thriller is either Fletcher Knebel or Charles McCarry.

Knebel, who followed up Seven Days in May with at least another 10 novels, received renewed attention with the 2018 Vintage reprint of his yarn, Night of Camp David. About a mentally unbalanced president, it was first published in 1965, the same year that Congress passed the 25^th Amendment, which mandates  that the vice president shall succeed if a president cannot perform his or her duties. When Camp David was republished, some coverage posited if the topic – and situation – weren’t still timely.

Much of McCarry’s work continues to resonate. Especially Shelley’s Heart (1995), about a stolen election, and Lucky Bastard (1998), in which a curly-haired doughy-faced tomcatting president turns out to be a Soviet agent – and a rapist. The San Francisco Examiner labeled that one “a novelistic smear of President Clinton.”

McCarry could also be eerily prescient, as in 1979’s The Better Angels, which finds Arab terrorists hijacking planes for use as weapons. Critics of the day dubbed it “far-fetched.”

**

Similarly, reviewers deemed Tom Clancy’s Debt of Honor (1994) implausible, for a plot in which a vengeful Japanese national crashes a Boeing 747 into the Capitol. That perception changed on September 11, 2001. On that very evening’s broadcast of CNN’s America Under Attack, Clancy was an interviewee.

Clancy, who passed away in 2013, continues to be a superpower of the genre, with more than 17 bestsellers, film adaptations, and an ongoing franchise supporting his character, Jack “I’m just an analyst!” Ryan.

The presidency figures prominently in Clancy’s works – as when Ryan temporarily assumes the position when the chief executive and the rest of the powers-that-be are killed off, in the aforementioned Debt of Honor.

The author also has the distinction of being propelled to fame at least partly as a result of having a fan in the White House.

When President Ronald Reagan read Clancy’s debut novel, the 1984 techno-political thriller The Hunt for Red October, he famously called it, “my kind of yarn.”

So began Clancy’s rise.

No wonder he went on to write so passionately about power and politics.

As they say, truth is stranger than fiction – even when it’s beyond belief – or on the pages of a political thriller.

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I’ve been busy on the fiction front, too. My short story “The Fast and the Furriest,” about a Hollywood fixer, was reprinted in June’s Black Cat Weekly # 41 – which I think is apt, as I’m an unapologetic Cat Lady. The piece first appeared in the pages of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. You can order a copy here: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/l/frank-belknap-long/black-cat-weekly-41.htm

Luhrmann takes oodles of creative license, with the action happening in his trademark flamboyant, sometimes mind-boggling fashion. Along the way the film dodges minefields: several women with whom Elvis was seriously involved, who aren’t popular with the Presley clan, don’t warrant so much as a howdy-do; the Memphis Mafia is downplayed; Elvis’s military time (when he seriously started popping pills) gets short shrift; ditto weight-related issues.

But if this isn’t a warts and all biopic, it does hit the high notes of E’s career, and also serves as an introduction for the younger crowd. And it’s certainly a showcase for Luhrmann’s hyperventilating screen style. This film will be in contention for numerous Oscar technical categories – and possibly, for Tom Hanks’s performance as Colonel Parker. Meantime, with everyone all shook up again, Elvis will continue to entice.

(You’ll find additional thoughts in a longer version of this review on my Facebook page.)

Hollywood Outtakes

Cuz we luv Yesteryear’s Hollywood, and cuz we’re an unapologetic cat lady, we thought we’d give a nod to the holiday by sharing a treat bag of celebs who dared to show their strong “felines” about Halloween. (Ouch!)

We start with screwball comedy film fave Carole Lombard – who did a whole series of snaps with this black beauty. Alas, Lombard was just 33 when she died in a 1942 plane crash while on a war bond tour. She was then Mrs. Clark Gable.

Nancy Carroll – all dolled up as a kitty cat – transitioned from silent to talkies and was especially busy in the Thirties. Heck, she was Oscar-nominated for 1930’s “The Devil’s Holiday.” This photo is from 1935. (P.S. She went on to do TV in the Fifties.)

Leila Hyams, with the art deco cat statuette, was a 1930s showbiz veteran. A child of vaudeville, she’ll forever be known for her daring work in the still-shocking 1932 film “Freaks.” We believe this photo was taken several years later.

The snap of the kitty-costumed Paulette Goddard is a publicity image for her 1939 horror-comedy (co-starring Bob Hope), “The Cat and the Canary.”

Also looking catty is Dusty Anderson, who appeared in small roles in the Forties – and was a hugely popular World War II pin-up. (She was often in the pages of Yank magazine.) She wound up marrying director Jean Negulesco, who was known for his work in CinemaScope.

Familiar to fans of Sixties-era TV for her role of Lily Munster in “The Munsters,” stunning Yvonne De Carlo had a successful career in crime and costume dramas of the Forties and Fifties. Her kitty pose atop the giant pumpkin is from 1946.

We’ll wrap it up with the ever-fabulous song and dance (and legs!) gal Ann Miller. An MGM favorite, Ann posed for this shot in 1949.

Enjoy the treats!

I’ve written lots (and lots) about the horror-fantasy film genres, for publications including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and Entertainment Weekly, so I’m looking forward to discussing “Conjuring Up a Mystery: Paranormal Elements in Fiction” at this Sunday’s (October 24) online meeting of Orange County Sisters in Crime. My talk will begin at 3 p.m.

At 4 p.m. we’ll hear from distinguished authors Chris Offatt and Willy Vlautin (look ‘em up; they have serious credentials!). Interested in attending? Check the chapter website at www.sistersincrimeoc.com for a meeting link.

And it you’re interested in film noir, join me at the Saturday, November 13 online meeting of Partners in Crime, the San Diego chapter of Sisters in Crime. I’ll give a virtual presentation on “Out of the Shadows: A Spotlight on Film Noir.” The talk begins at 2 p.m. (I’m an adjunct professor for the Emeritus Institute of Saddleback College, where I teach film and writing. In my film classes I show lotsa noir.) For more about the chapter and the meeting go to https://sistersincrimesd.org/ .