BunzelGram

June 14, 2021    Issue #47

 

This Week's Thoughts On Mysteries, Thrillers, and All Things Crime

 

It’s been 487 days since I last set foot inside a movie theater. For a fanatic who once saw five films in one day (40 years ago, when I took a Tuesday off from work), I’ve really been jonesing to sit in my favorite stadium seat and experience something that’s mind-bogglingly good. That means a compelling story, complete characters, unexpected twists, fine dialogue, and no action heroes. My Moviefone app shows a lot of interesting stuff coming in the pipeline, but nothing that stands out. So, dear readers…please help me with suggestions for a magnificent flick you may have heard about that will break the post-pandemic ice.

—Reed Bunzel

New Podcast About The Wonderland

Murders From Michael Connelly

The Wonderland Murders And The Secret History Of Hollywood is a new non-fiction limited podcast created and written by best-selling author Michael Connelly. Available exclusively from Audible, the program examines the Wonderland Murders, an iconic and brutal mass murder in a city known for its homicides. The podcast follows the life of a man known best as pianist Liberace’s lover and confidant, played by Matt Damon in the movie Behind the Candelabra, revealing himself to be the “Zelig of Awful” and the podcast’s tour guide into Hollywood’s dark underbelly. He is either the ultimate conman or the ultimate witness to the secret history of Hollywood. Named for the street in Laurel Canyon where the killings took place inside the house of a small-time drug gang, the Wonderland Murders reflects the crimes of the times, and tells a broader story of Los Angeles, the American dream machine, and when justice does – and doesn’t – work. And for the first time, a notorious “missing” witness unlocks it all and puts the pieces together.

 
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49 Years Later, DNA Leads

To Arrest Of Murder Suspect

On July 8, 1972, 15-year-old Julie Ann Hanson borrowed her brother's bicycle to go to a baseball game in her home town of Naperville, IL. She was reported missing to local police later that day and her body was discovered in a field with multiple stab wounds. A suspect in the case was never identified but finally, 49 years after Hanson’s death, authorities arrested her alleged killer following technological advancements in DNA and genetic genealogy analysis. Barry Lee Whelpley, 76, of Mounds View, Minnesota, was 27 years old at the time of the murder, and lived one mile from her home. "This horrific crime has haunted this family, this community, and this department for 49 years," Naperville Police Chief Robert Marshall said at a press conference. "This was never a cold case for our police department…We were all conscious of Julie's murder, and we had Julie's picture on our desks for all these years." Whelpley has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder, and bond as been set at $10 million.

 
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Seven Great Thrillers Featuring Investigative Reporters

At a writer’s conference I attended prior to the pandemic, a question was asked during a panel discussion about whether investigative reporters are considered amateur sleuths. No, they are not police detectives, but they are paid to get to the bottom of an issue—and sometimes that issue is a crime. While the debate was never settled conclusively, the fact is that journalists have been uncovering hidden truths and sharing their information with the world for years. Woodward and Bernstein broke the Watergate scandal wide open, and Michelle McNamara helped bring the Golden State Killer back into the public view and put new pressure on the police, leading to his capture. If you’re a fan of suspense books with thrill-a-minute plots as investigative reporters work to uncover killers, lies, and secrets, here’s a list of seven books from Novel Suspects to add to your “must-read” list now.

 
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Mysteries and Thrillers About

Marriages Gone Wrong

Last week my wife was searching on her iPhone "How do you clip your dog's nails?" She got as far as "How do you c..." when Siri completed the query with, "How do you choke your partner during sex?" We both enjoyed a good chuckle (and she turned off the Siri app), but then the next day I found an article (with a list) by Lisa Holmes on Murder-Mayhem titled “Intimate Illusions: Mysteries and Thrillers About Marriages Gone Wrong.” It got me thinking about the many great books and films about relationships that are on the brink of collapse…and possibly facing multiple felonies in the future. As Holmes writes, “There’s more to marriage than Instagram-perfect moments spent sipping wine together in the glow of the Parisian sunset. There are the inevitable fights about what kind of monster puts an empty milk carton back in the refrigerator, and there are the mysteries, like why the scissors are always missing. Of course, in some marriages, the mysteries are deeper and more sinister. Spouses are supposed to be the people we trust with our hearts, but if stories about misplaced trust and malevolent matrimony make your pulse race, you’ll want to investigate the mysteries and thrillers on this list.”

 
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Great Summertime Road

Trip Crime Movies

This coming Sunday is the first official day of summer. What that means is the days soon will be getting shorter and, in many places, hotter. This phenomenon is called seasonal lag, and generally has to do with how much heat is required to warm up a particular material or substance. For instance, if you’re boiling a pot of water, it takes a good amount of time after you start heating it before the water temperature increases. San Francisco, which is bounded by water on three sides, typically sees its hottest day of the year in late September, while El Paso—which sits in the middle of the desert hundreds of miles from the ocean—typically experiences its hottest day of the year right around the summer solstice. In any event, summer is a good time to go on a road trip—short or extended—and provides a convenient hook for this list of summertime road trip crime movies, compiled by Crime Reads’ Olivia Rutigliano.

 
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How Far Will You Read Before

You Give Up On A Book?

“How many pages do you give a book before you give up and put it down for good?” No matter how good the synopsis on the back cover or the dust flap, or the Amazon reviews, ultimately we all have our own limits to how we spend our precious time on something that's not worthwhile. Author Terry Odell recently addressed this question in a Killzone blog, soliciting responses from other writers (who also are readers). Here are some of those replies:

  • “I will read the first chapter of a novel, however long or short it is. If the first chapter doesn’t capture my interest, I won’t continue reading the book.”
  • “I’ll give it a paragraph or two. No, that’s a lie. I have been known to stop after a sentence. Life is way too short to waste on a boring book.”
  • “I used to be a finisher out of respect for the author, until I found authors who were so far away from competent that I had to cave. I no longer feel compelled to read a horribly written book.

Please feel free to share with BunzelGram your own tolerance level for reading a book.

 
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     “Reed Bunzel hits all the right notes in Seven-Thirty Thursday (Suspense Publishing), an intensely personal tale that has echoes of both Greg Isles and John Hart. 
     "Rick Devlin is living proof of the old Thomas Wolfe adage that you can’t go home again, especially in the wake of his mother’s murder at his father’s hand in his once-beloved Charleston, South Carolina. That is, until new evidence surfaces suggesting that his father may be innocent, leading Devlin to launch his own investigation. It turns out pretty much everyone involved is hiding something, and it’s up to him to sort through the grisly morass to get to the truth.
     “This is Southern gothic writing extraordinaire, establishing Bunzel as a kind of William Faulkner of the thriller-writing world. His effortless prose crackles with color and authenticity as the brooding Charleston skies set the stage for the storm that’s coming.”

—Providence Journal

 
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