Bertelsmann To Acquire S&S

For Almost $2.2 Billion

Bertelsmann last week announced it was purchasing Simon & Schuster from Viacom/CBS for $2.175 billion. Pending regulatory approvals, the deal is expected to be completed sometime in 2021; until then, S&S will continue to operate independently under the direction of President/CEO Jonathan Karp, and COO/CFO Dennis Eulau. Earlier this year Bertelsmann completed its full acquisition of Penguin Random House, which was initiated in 2013, and this new deal will merge the country’s largest and third largest trade publishers, with combined revenues of close to $3 billion. PRH worldwide CEO Markus Dohle said in a statement, “Simon & Schuster aligns completely with the creative and entrepreneurial culture that we nurture by providing editorial autonomy to our publishers, funding their pursuit of new stories, ideas, and voices, and maximizing reach for our authors … [Today] was a good day for books, book publishing, and reading.” As reported by Publishers Weekly, Bertelsmann beat out several competitors, including Harper Collins, the country’s second largest trade publisher.

What Is “The Kraken” …

And Where Did It Come From?

In recent weeks there’s been an impassioned cry from some corners of the political world to “release the kraken,” a catchphrase for exposing unfounded conspiracy theories. Indeed, just this past week, “kraken” allegedly was released in Georgia and Michigan—causing me to wonder just where this reference originated, and what it means. Turns out, the earliest written reference to “the kraken” dates back to Nordic folklore in 1180 and the appearance of a mystical sea creature in The Conversation, an epic tale penned by Norway’s King Sverre. Mentioned occasionally over the ensuing centuries, the beast was resurrected in 1830 by Alfred Tennyson, whose sonnet The Kraken described a massive creature that dwelled at the bottom of the sea. Herman Melville added to the mythology in his 1851 novel Moby Dick, wherein Starbuck calls it “the great live squid,” and narrator Ishmael references as “the great Kraken." Since then the creature has been resurrected dozens of times by everyone and everything from Jules Verne to H. P. Lovecraft to Michael Crichton to Disney. Paleontologist Rodrigo Brincalepe Salvador has described the kraken as “perhaps the largest monster ever imagined by mankind,” a figment of human fiction that that’s best to remember in current matters of state—and political connivance.

The Best Thriller Films Ever Made

There’s a reason why thrillers—books and movies alike—are hugely popular with audiences. While we like to get our heartstrings tugged with a moving romance or laugh at a great comedy, almost everyone loves that shot of adrenaline that surges through the bloodstream while watching a great film like L.A. Confidential  (pictured, left) or Silence of the Lambs. As Tom Nicholson and Sam Parker recently observed in Esquire magazine, “Thrillers are where a lot of the most innovative and distinctive writers and directors do their best stuff. After all, thrillers live or die by keeping audiences intrigued, so filmmakers are always exploring new ways to ratchet up the stress. The best thrillers are all about that build-up and release of tension, which is, ultimately, the fundamental joy of cinema.” With more than a century of thrillers from which to choose, they created this guide to the best of the best thrillers in film history.

The 56 Original Nancy Drew Books,

Ranked From Worst To Best

I’ve mentioned in previous BunzelGrams that the Hardy Boys were instrumental in forming my early passion for mysteries and, when the local library well ran dry, I even read several of my sister’s Nancy Drew books. I didn’t find them nearly as absorbing, but they were popular with millions of young girls (and boys), causing “Carolyn Keene”—a pseudonym for the various authors who penned them—to write a total of 56 for Grosset & Dunlap between 1930 and 1959. Additional works in the series have been printed by other publishers since then, but those originals are considered the “classics” of the series. To keep track of them all, Eileen Gonzalez of Book Riot compiled this list of all 56—ranked from worst to best—taking into account what she describes as sloppy sleuthing, poor editing, and “rampant racist Dickensian nonsense.”

December Mysteries Scheduled

By Turner Classic Movies

The month of December hits us tomorrow, and with it comes a full slate of Christmas movies bound to cause holiday fatigue while Mariah Carey causes us to drain every last drop from the pitcher of eggnog. With this in mind, Turner Classic Movies has counter-programmed 31 days of mysteries to keep us sane while decking the halls and yearning for figgy pudding. Lest anyone think I’ve been Scrooged, I love the holiday season and everything it means, but there’s only so many sleigh bells and angels getting their wings one can take. From The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man to Dial M For Murder and Rear Window, here’s the TMC schedule—courtesy of The Cozy Mystery Blog—of crime films and thrillers to watch when you’re seriously contemplating taking a knife to the elf on the shelf.

Edgar Allan Poe:

Creator Of The Mystery Genre

Most devotees of mystery fiction know that Edgar Allan Poe introduced the literary world to a new kind of tale: the detective story. "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is a short story he published in Graham's Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine in 1841, and features the shocking case of two women who were brutally murdered in Paris. Enter amateur sleuth C. Auguste Dupin, generally considered to be the first fictional detective, who investigates the killings for his intellectual curiosity, as well as to prove a falsely accused man innocent. The story so intrigued readers that it sparked an entirely new genre, and so inspired Arthur Conan Doyle that Watson even directly compared Holmes to Dupin in the first Sherlock Holmes story, “A Study in Scarlet.” Agatha Christie was similarly influenced by "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," as were Jorge Luis Borges—who pays homage to Dupin in his story "Death and the Compass"—and graphic novelists Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill, who did the same in the "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen." Last but not least, as Emily Martin notes in an article in Novel Suspects, Poe’s significant role in developing mystery fiction as we know it today is honored every year with the Edgar Awards.

The 50 Biggest Box Office

Bombs Of All Time

When studios invest in a movie, they’re betting their box office intake will be higher than their production and marketing budgets. Sometimes that gamble doesn’t pay out and, other times, it’s a total disaster—what’s commonly referred to as a box office bomb. With that in mind, Finance Republic last week ranked the 50 biggest box office bombs of all time—including several mysteries and crime thrillers. FR used the box office site The Numbers to examine all films with a production budget of at least $75 million, then weighed that against their worldwide gross and then ranked those movies that lost the most amount of money. Keep in mind that these movies also spent millions in marketing and distribution, and inflation is not accounted for, so some losses may be even greater than they appear.

HOLIDAY GIFT BUYING

“Reed Bunzel‘s Seven-Thirty Thursday (Suspense Publishing) is an intensely personal tale that echoes of both Greg Isles and John Hart. This establishes 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 sets the stage for the storm that’s coming."

–The Providence Journal