Remembering Sidney Poitier Through His Classic Film

In The Heat Of The Night

When I was seven years old my mother took me to see the Sidney Poitier classic Lilies of the Field which, I must admit, was a bit hard for me to understand. Maybe it was the German nuns; maybe it was the fact that—coming from a progressive and political California family—I didn’t comprehend the racial undertones. It wasn’t until many years later when I finally saw In The Heat Of The Night that I was really struck by the barriers Mr. Poitier had crossed in his career, and the stereotypes he shattered. The plot of the film in a nutshell: Philadelphia detective Virgil Tibbs becomes tangled in a murder case in Sparta, Mississippi and forms a fragile alliance with the bigoted police chief (an amazing performance by Rod Steiger) to catch the killer, while the residents make no secret of their desire to run him out of town. As noted in Criterion, “Director Norman Jewison splices incisive social commentary into this thrilling police procedural with the help of Haskell Wexler’s vivid cinematography, Quincy Jones’s eclectic score, and two indelible lead performances—a career-defining display of seething indignation and moral authority from Poitier and an Oscar-winning master class in Method acting from Steiger. Winner of five Academy Awards, including best picture, In the Heat of the Night is one of the most enduring Hollywood films of the civil rights era.” And Sidney Poitier is one of the most enduring actors in the history of American cinema. RIP, Mr. Tibbs.

How The Kefauver Committee 

Sparked A Wave Of Gangster Noir

On January 5, 1950, Estes Kefauver introduced a Senate resolution calling for an investigation of organized crime—in particular, interstate gambling—in the United States. On May 10, 1950, the freshman senator from Tennessee became chairman of the Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, and the crime committee was in business. Though the hearings were initially held behind closed doors, the committee gained more and more publicity and stirred more and more interest as it opened its doors to the public and moved from one city to the next. As Robert Miklitsch wrote in Crime Reads last week, the Kefauver Committee would not be remembered today to the extent that it is if it not for television. “Originally, television coverage of the committee’s activities was typically confined, as in previous congressional hearings, to short takes for use on regularly scheduled news programs,” he says. “In January 1951, however, a local television station in New Orleans began to televise the proceedings. The climax of the investigation was the coverage of the New York City hearings in March 1951, which was carried by the national networks. The undisputed star of the investigation was Frank Costello, at the time the most influential underworld leader in America, who complained about his testimony being televised. To accommodate his concerns, the committee ordered the cameras to refrain from showing his face and, as in a classic Hollywood close-up, only his nervously twitching hands—or as the pundits put it, his ‘hand ballet’—were visible on screen” [see photo, above left].

Mafia Boss Captured After Being Spotted on Google Street View

Facial recognition has become a bit of a cliché in recent crime thrillers, as the entire globe seems to be swarming with surveillance cameras seemingly tied into some central computer equipped with biometric software. Who would have guessed that, when police arrested Gioacchino Gammino—one of Italy’s most wanted mafia fugitives—in a Madrid suburb last week, it was because he’d been spotted in a Google maps street view image. As reported by The Daily Beast, Gammino—age 61—was a member of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra’s Stidda clan and was serving a life sentence for murder, drug trafficking, and mafia collusion in Rome’s Rebibbia prison until he escaped in 2002, during the filming of a movie. He had been living under various names since then and, with his wife, ran a series of businesses that included a hair salon, a restaurant, and a vegetable shop. An anti-mafia investigator who had received an anonymous tip suspected he was living in the town of Galapagar, Spain, and decided to scour Google Maps’ Street View images to see if he could spot the vegetable store named El Huerto de Manu that the fugitive was thought to own. “The photogram helped us to confirm the investigation we were developing in traditional ways,” Nicola Altiero, deputy director of the Italian anti-mafia police, told reporters. Gammino is now in custody in Spain and is facing extradition to Italy, where he will be imprisoned to serve out his life sentence.

A Brief History of Spy Fiction:

From 1821 To 2022

While it has been said that Chapter 2 of the Book of Joshua might count as the first spy story in world literature, the first instances of spy fiction can accurately be traced back to the first half of the 19th century, with the publication of such classics as James Fenimore Cooper’s espionage novels The Spy (1821) and The Bravo (1831). Fast forward 70 years and we find the Dreyfus Affair (1894–99), which rekindled public interest in espionage, but it wasn’t until World War I that John Buchan appeared on the scene, with thrillers that portrayed the war as a clash of cultures. As noted by Emily Martin in Novel Suspects last week, “notable novels by Buchan include The Thirty-Nine Steps and Greenmantle, both of which feature the fictional spy character Richard Hannay." The Thirty-Nine Steps was also the inspiration for the famous 1935 Alfred Hitchcock film The 39 Steps [pictured left]. While wars and international conflicts have always triggered more of an interest in spy books, the spy fiction genre really took off during the Cold War. “With the threat of nuclear war and terrorism, distrust and fear spread across the world, readers turned to spy fiction to see the United States and its allies fight against the ever-threatening Red Menace,” Martin says. “It was a way for readers to assuage any fears they had about the state of the world.”

9 Highly Anticipated Thriller Book

Adaptations To Look For This Year

While many of us wonder whether 2022 will be any different than last year, or the year before that, one thing is certain: there are so many good crime TV shows and movies being released over the next twelve months that it’s going to be almost impossible to keep up with all of them. To help you keep track of those that are either slated to be released in the next few weeks, or are somewhere in the pipeline, here’s a list from Murder-Mayhem of some of the most anticipated TV shows and movies to look for. From an adaptation of Joe Hill’s short story The Black Phone, to Patricia Highsmith’s Deep Water, to Charles Graeber’s The Good Nurse, there’s something on this list for everyone.

 Greenwich Mean Time

Set For Q3 Release

I learned late last week from my editor at Epicenter Press that Greenwich Mean Time is set for release in the third quarter of this year. Not sure yet of the exact date, but rest assured I’ll keep you up to date on all development in the publishing cycle. Until then, here’s a peek at what to expect:

On assignment to photograph the Baltoro glacier in Pakistan’s Karakoram Mountains, Monica Cross literally stumbles into the grisly wreckage of a long-lost airplane crash. She unwittingly becomes privy to a dangerous secret that a sinister dark web outfit known as the Greenwich Global Group will do anything to prevent from ever seeing the light of day. Meanwhile, in the plains of the Tanzanian Serengeti, the retired assassin who crashed the plane and killed all those on board learns of the discovery of the wreckage. Long thought dead, Rōnin Phythian possesses a unique and mystical skillset that for years made him the most lethal man alive, and his reawakening conscience (also long thought to be dead) convinces him that he alone has put Monica Cross in danger—and is the only force that can save her.

[Note: Cover image is watermarked and

subject to change]