James Caan, Stellar In Any Role,

Was Best Known For Playing Brutes

James Caan perhaps is best known for his portrayal of Sonny Corleone in the 1972 classic The Godfather (and a brief cameo in Godfather II), but my first memory of him was in the made-for-TV tear-jerker Brian’s Song. I should have known at the time what a brute force he would become in cinematic thrillers (after all, not too many actors can make a 15-year-old kid cry), with a career that spanned seven decades in film and television. A quick glance at his filmography reveals a versatile performer who appeared in 91 films and 18 TV series, and who was extraordinarily adept in virtually every role he touched, in every genre imaginable. It was his mastery of the cinematic tough guy, however, for which he very well may be best remembered, from the ice-cold professional safecracker in the 1981 film Thief, to the powerful mobster known only as “the Big Man” in the 2003 experimental flick Dogville. Of course—and as mentioned above—he is best known as Sonny, the unruly spawn of Don Vito Corleone who wears expensive suits, shtups around, and engages his hair-trigger temper at the flip of a switch. Caan died July 6 at the age of 82.

Quinn Martin Detective Shows

Dominated TV In The ‘60s And ‘70s

If you grew up in the 1960s and ‘70s, and watched television, you knew Quinn Martin. One of the most prolific Hollywood producers of the era, he was the creative force behind such blockbuster small-screen hits as Dan August, The FBI, Cannon, Barnaby Jones…and so many more. As Keith Roysdon points out in a recent Crime Reads article, at one point in 1976, his company had four series running simultaneously on the networks, including the little-known and highly forgettable Bert D’Angelo – Superstar, a spin-off of Streets of San Francisco. “[That series] was the archetypal Martin series in many ways,” he says. “Filmed on location, the series, which debuted in 1972, followed TV cop show convention by pairing a veteran cop (played by Karl Malden) with a young maverick (Michael Douglas)…All told, Martin produced hundreds of hours of solid crime dramas that made up for what they lacked in gritty realism with appealing premises and big-name guest performers.” Perhaps the most recognizable elements of any Quinn Martin production were the credits, which began with a very dramatic reading—usually by announcer Hank Simms—of the title of the show, stars, and the week’s guest stars. Martin died in 1987 at age 65.

MWA To Bestow Lilian Jackson Braun

Award For Best Full-Length Cozy

The Mystery Writers of America has announced the establishment of the Lilian Jackson Braun Award for the best full-length, contemporary cozy mystery published by an MWA-approved publisher. This annual award comes with a $2,000 prize as the result of a generous endowment to MWA by the late Lilian Jackson Braun, who died in 2011 at the age of 97. Braun was the New York Times bestselling author of the “The Cat Who…” series of amateur sleuth mysteries, which spanned 29 books published between 1966 and 2007. Featuring clever Siamese cats Koko and Yum Yum, who lived with grumpy newspaper reporter James Qwilleran, her books sold millions of copies and were published in 16 languages. “Lilian Jackson Braun is a legend in the mystery community,” stated Greg Herren, the Executive Vice-President of Mystery Writers of America. “Her incredibly generous bequest to MWA was a very pleasant surprise and will enable us to fund some exciting new projects and programs to benefit our membership. It felt appropriate to honor her career and her legacy in this way.”

COLD CASE

Boy Found Dead In Georgia In 1999 Finally Identified 23 Years Later

In 1999, a young boy was found deceased in DeKalb County, Georgia, but for the next two decades his remains went unidentified—until July 2022, when police announced the child’s identity as William DaShawn Hamilton. According to the county’s District Attorney, the six-year-old child was living in Charlotte, North Carolina, when his mother, Teresa Ann Bailey Black, withdrew him from school and moved to Atlanta. When she returned to North Carolina the next year, Black allegedly gave conflicting information about where her son was. The story might have ended there, if not for a woman named “Ava” (she’s understandably reluctant to provide her full name to reporters) who helped take care of the child and described him as a "fun, witty, adventurous, and intelligent little boy who loved to dance." She spent much of the last 23 years looking for young William, and Angeline Hartmann, with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, credits her with helping to solve the mystery. Last month authorities arrested the boy’s mother in Phoenix, Arizona; she is awaiting extradition back to Georgia to be tried for his murder.

The Best Spy Films Every Fan  

Of Espionage Needs To Watch  

Bestselling novels and Hollywood classics tend to portray espionage as a profession of heroism, intrigue, loyalty, and sacrifice, but novelist John le Carré often brought “the world’s second-oldest profession” down to earth with his personal take on the business of spycraft. Example: In the 1965 film The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, adapted from the book, Richard Burton's disgruntled secret intelligence officer Alec Leamas offers a choice appraisal of his career: “What the hell do you think spies are?” he asks, only somewhat rhetorically. “Model philosophers measuring everything they do against the word of God or Karl Marx? They're not. They're just a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards like me…civil servants playing cowboys and Indians to brighten up their rotten little lives.” As a recent article in Esquire notes, “Leamas is one of the many less-than-glamorous spies that populate the author's work and their adaptations—from an outdated, out-numbered, and out of style Gary Oldman in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy to a haggard Philip Seymour Hoffman, giving one of his final (and greatest) performances as a German intelligence officer in A Most Wanted Man.” I mention this only as a teaser to this list, compiled by four of the magazine’s contributors, of some of the best spy films of all time, “from le Carré-style gritty realism to the outlandish espionage fantasies of Jason Bourne and (of course) James Bond.”

Coming In January 2023:

Greenwich Mean Time

When photojournalist Monica Cross literally stumbles into the site of an old airplane crash at the edge of a Himalayan glacier, she is exposed to a dark and deadly secret that was meant to remain hidden forever. Unaware that her life is in grave danger, she attempts to get home to New York while the Greenwich Global Group—a dark-web, murder-for-hire outfit—pulls out all stops to make sure she never gets there. Spanning ten time zones, nine countries, and four continents, Greenwich Mean Time is a tightly spun thriller that plays out against a violent plot designed to change the course of history for all time.