BunzelGram

February 13, 2023    Issue #121

 

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

In the 1966 film King Of Hearts, a Scottish soldier is dispatched to a French village to defuse German booby traps, only to find that the patients at the local mental hospital have taken over the town. I feel we’re starting to witness this sort of lunatic incursion in Florida, where just this week the Duval County Public School District pulled an illustrated children’s biography of Pittsburgh Pirates legend Roberto Clemente off its shelves to determine whether it is “developmentally appropriate for student use.” [So far, the district has yanked 176 titles from its shelves, for a variety of vague reasons.] “I would have hoped that, in the 21st century, there would be nothing controversial about a book about Roberto Clemente, the greatest all-around baseball player who ever lived and a true humanitarian,” says author Jonah Winter. Knee-jerks have always been afraid children might actually learn the truth behind the white wash of history, but we should all be furious at this new wave of educational oppression masquerading as parental concern.

—Reed Bunzel

The 1930s New York City Crime

Novel You’ve Probably Never Read

Filled with gangsters, gats, molls, and sadistic violence, and set in New York City, No Orchids for Miss Blandish by James Hadley Chase is a raw slice of 1930s hardboiled American crime. Noted for its reality and accuracy, it actually was written by an upper-crust Englishman who had never set foot in the US. As noted by Harry Pearson in Murder-Mayhem, the 1939 crime novel is not for the faint-hearted. George Orwell likened reading the book to diving headfirst into a cesspool, and questions about its content were raised in the Houses of Parliament. There also were calls for both an obscenity trial and a ban. First published in the US in 1948 as The Villain and the Virgin, the book tells the story of a bungled diamond heist that ends with the kidnapping of a New York socialite and the murder of her boyfriend. [It also was made into a movie in 1948, as pictured left.] The plot takes an even darker twist when the kidnap gang is slaughtered in a gun battle with rival hoodlums lead by the slobbering sociopath Slim Grissom and his ice-hearted mother. Multiple murders, torture, and sexual assault follow as the police and hard-bitten private investigator Dave Fenner try to hunt down the Grissom mob and rescue the unfortunate Miss Blandish. If the plot seems somewhat familiar, it is: Chase lifted much of it from William Faulkner’s novel Sanctuary and spiced it up with details from the real-life exploits of Ma Barker and her gang. He wrote it over the course of six weekends, and it has sold over two million copies.

 
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Top Secrets About The James Bond

Franchise That Fans Might Not Know

Jason Bourne, George Smiley, Jack Ryan, Ethan Hunt: Before there was any other prestige movie franchise, there was Bond…James Bond. It seems that nothing can touch Ian Fleming's secret agent—except, perhaps (spoiler alert) in No Time To Die—but it’s been an uneven series of cinematic treachery. The venerable 007 has been played by seven actors in 25 movies, some of them exceptionally daring and dangerous, while a few were downright silly. (Remember the spacewalk in Moonraker?) Each Bond film has been characterized by its own nuances and subtleties, and social commentator Dan Fitzpatrick recently looked into a few of those that make them memorable—and a few that could be forgotten easily. For instance, did you know that, in order to prevent other franchises from ripping off the Bond image, 007 actors were forbidden from wearing tuxedos in other films? [Pierce Brosnan technically got away with it in The Thomas Crown Affair by wearing an unbuttoned shirt and loose bowtie.] Also, Auric Goldfinger's preferred murder method is skin suffocation, or painting victims' entire bodies so they can't absorb oxygen. Of course, humans don't breathe through our skin, but the Goldfinger crew left a patch of skin on actress Shirley Eaton's back unpainted, just in case. Additionally, for those of us who are follicly challenged, while the curls we see on Sean Connery's chest are real, with his hair thinning at a young age, the actor wore a hairpiece or toupee in every 007 appearance.

 
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How Did Nine Hikers Actually Die

In Russia’s Remote Dyatlov Pass?

The truth behind what really killed a party of hikers in a remote region of Russia's Ural Mountains back in 1959 may be far stranger than the conspiracy theories that have been suggested for more than six decades. In a tragedy known as the Dyatlov Pass Incident, a group of nine students set out on a 16-day hike to cover 215 miles (in the middle of February, no less), but when the hikers didn’t check in, a rescue operation was launched. Searchers eventually found all nine bodies in their underwear near torn tents. With no bodily injuries or signs of a struggle, and all their valuables located nearby, investigators at the time believed all the hikers left their tents together and suddenly died. The official cause of death was determined to be exposure to the elements. Last week, however, on the eve of the 64th anniversary of the tragedy, researchers announced that a failed Russian rocket launch caused a manmade disaster that struck the unaware hikers. The research team believes the launching—and a subsequent failure—of an R-12 liquid single-stage medium-range ballistic missile resulted in the dispersion of a nitric acid fog that reached the tent. Nitric acid is a colorless, highly corrosive mineral acid used as an oxidizer in liquid-fueled rockets that can cause confusion and pain, and it now is thought that the hikers became disoriented and then died.

 
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DNA COLD CASE

Two Men Finally Arrested In

1975 Murder Of Laurel Mitchell

Around 10:00 pm on the night of August 6, 1975, 17-year-old Laurel Mitchell left her job at the Epworth Forrest Church camp outside North Webster, Indiana. As noted in BunzelGram in April 2021, she never arrived at her home, and the next day her body was found in the water 17 miles northeast of town, at the Mallard Roost boat launch. The cause of death was determined to be drowning, but a medical examiner said at the time that her body displayed signs of a struggle. Investigators with the Indiana State Police began a murder investigation that would span almost five decades and involve the Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Department, Noble County Sheriff’s Department, and Noble County Coroner’s Office. They received a break in 2019 when a man told a detective that two men—Fred Bandy, Jr. of Goshen and John Wayne Lehman of Auburn—claimed at a party that they had killed Mitchell together. Based on that admission, and subsequent DNA testing of Laurel’s clothes, they arrested the two men last week. Court records indicate that detectives found that, at some point on the night of the murder, Bandy and Lehman picked Mitchell up before taking her out of their car and drowning her. “This case is a culmination of a decades-long investigation… and science finally gave us the answers we needed. Playing a significant role in charges being filed was the Indiana State Police Laboratory Division. We simply could not have solved this case without them.”

 
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If Valentine’s Day Scares You, Here

Are 14 Horror Movies Just For You

The origins of Valentine’s Day aren’t exactly clear. One theory suggests that, similar to other modern holidays, it has its roots in a Pagan ritual known as Lupercalia, which was a festival held in ancient Rome every February 15th. The celebration involved animal sacrifices, random pairings of men and women, and naked priests slapping women with bloody strips of goat skin. This is the stuff of a great folk horror movie just waiting to be made. Of the Valentine’s Day horror movies that have been made, many of them involve unrequited love, obsession, and revenge. Others take a less direct approach, using February 14th as a backdrop to support a subplot of romance in a scary movie that otherwise doesn’t necessarily focus on Valentine’s Day. And then there are the movies that just enjoy the iconography of the holiday, filling the screen with red blood and real human hearts. Presented here—courtesy of CreepyCatalog.com—are 14 of the best horror movies that, one way or another, use Valentine’s Day as their setting.

 
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ALSO:

 

Book Publishers Face A Challenging Year Ahead

Following a down year for print book sales, NPD Group publishing industry analyst Kristen McLean predicts that 2023 will be a year of transition for the publishing industry. Meanwhile, with sales of Prince Harry’s Spare slowing, unit sales of print books fell 4.2% last week compared to the same week last year. [Publishers Weekly]

 

Which Crime Shows Should You Watch In February?

We’re almost halfway through the month of February, and if you haven’t started watching these crime shows, you might want to start now. [Crime Reads]

 

Some Of The Most Anticipated Debut Books of 2023

If you like experiencing new voices in mysteries and crime fiction, here are the most-anticipated debut novels guaranteed to keep you entertained throughout the year. [Novel Suspects]

NOW AVAILABLE!!!

Greenwich Mean Time

“A globe-spanning, mind-spinning thriller that will delight fans of Jason Bourne. Rōnin Phythian, an assassin with extraordinary powers and a code of his own, deserves a sequel. Make that sequels.” —Joseph Finder, New York Times bestselling author of House on Fire

 

“Greenwich Mean Time is a rollicking good time of thrills and skills.” —New York Times bestselling author Steve Berry

 

"Over-the-top action..." —Publishers Weekly

 

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 sinister plot designed to change the course of history for all time. 

 
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