Prolific Crime/Mystery Writer James

Patterson Sells His 100 Millionth Book

Walk into any Barnes & Noble and you’ll see at least five James Patterson books in the bestsellers section. Most of them today are co-authored with other crime writers, but the point is he’s one of the most prolific and profitable novelists still working today. No surprise, then, that Publishers Weekly just announced that in early April he became the first author to sell more than 100 million copies across all print formats since BookScan (now known as Circana BookScan) started recording unit sales of print books in 2004. Patterson easily topped the print sales accrued by Dr. Seuss, whose books have sold 83 million copies since 2004. Patterson’s top-selling print book is Honeymoon, which edged out 3rd Degree for the #1 spot. Like many of his bestsellers, those two are parts of series, and books in the Women’s Murder Club and Alex Cross lines have fared particularly well. His top 10 bestselling titles sold just about 12 million copies, meaning that the rest of Patterson’s oeuvre racked up sales of 88 million copies in total. That kind of sales breadth is a testament to just how well Patterson’s books have sold across the different print formats, as well as to the number of titles out in the market. Patterson’s longtime U.S. publisher, Hachette Book Group, reported that the author has had 100 #1 New York Times bestsellers over his career and that his backlist of adult fiction and nonfiction stands at 179 titles.

Nazi-Hunting In Movies And TV Thrives

More Than 70 After The End Of WWII

Movies and television have fought and re-fought World War II almost continuously for more than 70 years. Not just stories of the blood-drenched battles themselves, but also those thrillers that have mined the aftermath of the war. As Keith Roysdon recently wrote in Crime Reads, a current example is Hunters, the streaming series [Prime Video] that follows a group of war crimes hunters in 1970s New York as they track Nazi leaders, scientists and concentration camp officials who are hiding in the United States and, in the series’ second season, internationally. While “ground zero” for a lot of these dramas were the 1960s and 1970s, these plotlines began almost immediately after the war with such thrillers as The Stranger, director Orson Welles’ 1946 noir film starring Edward G. Robinson as an agent of a United Nations war crimes commission who tracks Nazi fugitive Franz Kindler (played by Welles) to a small town in Connecticut. Others of note are John Schlesinger’s Marathon Man, written by William Goldman and starring Dustin Hoffman; Franklin J. Schaffner’s The Boys from Brazil (Gregory Peck and Laurence Olivier), and the fast-paced novel The Day After Tomorrow—not to be confused with the climate change film of the same title—penned by Allan Folsom.

From The Godfather To Baby Driver, The Top 40 Gangster Films Of All Time

People have always loved gangster movies. The genre has thrived on screens big and small from the 1930s all the way through to today, and it's spawned more classics than most people would ever hope to remember. Along the way several master filmmakers have carved out their own sub-genres, most notably such directors as Quentin Tarantino’s [Kill Bill 1 and 2; Reservoir Dogs; Pulp Fiction], Guy Richie [Snatch; Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels; The Gentlemen], Brian de Palma (Scarface, Carlito’s Way, Untouchables], Martin Scorsese [Casino, Mean Streets, The Irishman, The Departed] and, of course. Francis For Coppola’s twin masterpieces, Godfather I and II. With this in mind, the folks at Digital Trends identified the 40 greatest gangster movies of all time (ranked), culled from a list of mob movies that have had at least 100,000 votes on IMDb. They then combined audience scores from Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes audience scores for each gangster film — having multiplied the IMDb figure by ten to make the math work — and arrived at an average for all of them.

Mystery Writers Of America Announces

This Year’s Edgar Award Winners

Because of my recent trip to Rome, I’m a little late bringing you the winners of the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Allen Poe Awards. The Edgars, as they're affectionately called, honor the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction, and television published or produced in 2022. Some of this year's winners include:

Best Novel: Notes on an Execution, by Danya Kukafka (HarperCollins – William Morrow)

Best First Novel: Don’t Know Tough, by Eli Cranor (Soho Press – Soho Crime)

Best Paperback Original: Or Else, by Joe Hart (Amazon Publishing – Thomas & Mercer)

Best Fact Crime: Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation, by Erika Krouse (Flatiron Books)

Best Critical/Biographical: The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and Their Creators, by Martin Edwards (HarperCollins – Collins Crime Club)

Best Short Story: “Red Flag," Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, by Gregory Fallis (Dell Magazines)

Best Juvenile: Aggie Morton Mystery Queen: The Seaside Corpse, by Marthe Jocelyn (Penguin Random House Canada - Tundra Books)

Click here to see the full list of all winners…and congratulations to all my writer friends who were nominated.

Malice Domestic Announces

2003 Agatha Awards

The winners of the Agatha Awards were announced at Malice Domestic the weekend before last; again, because of my Rome trip I was not able to share the winners in BunzelGram. They are:

Best Contemporary Novel: A World of Curiosities, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)

Best Historical Novel: Because I Could Not Stop for Death, by Amanda Flower (Berkley)

Best First Novel: Cheddar Off Dead, by Korina Moss (St. Martin’s)

Best Short Story: "Beauty and the Beyotch," by Barb Goffman (Sherlock Holmes Magazine, Feb. 2022)

Best Non-Fiction: Promophobia: Taking the Mystery Out of Promoting Crime Fiction, Diane Vallere Ed. (Sisters in Crime)

Best Children's/YA Mystery: Enola Holmes and the Elegant Escapade, by Nancy Springer (Wednesday Books)

REVIEW

Don Winslow’s City of Dreams Is A

Superb Sequel To Danny Ryan Saga

When we left Danny Ryan at the end of Don Winslow’s gritty ‘80s crime novel City On Fire, he was staring at Rhode Island in his rear view mirror with a fading hope of reinventing himself a full continent away. To do this he has to escape the clutches of the Italian mob that wants its ten million dollars back, outrun the cops who want to arrest him for murder, and come to terms with the death of his loving wife Terri, whose funeral he couldn’t attend. With his little boy and elderly father in tow, he heads to California, where—not unlike the late and former organized crime boss Whitey Bulger—he settles into a drab life near the beach and plans to live out his life under the radar. That plans goes to hell when he’s coaxed by DEA agents to do them a favor that could make him a fortune or kill him, in a most spectacular and fiery way. When he learns that a Hollywood studio is shooting a film based on his former life, Danny demands a piece of the action and begins to rebuild his criminal empire. Much death and destruction ensues, but behind it all we know Ryan is a good person, and we inwardly cheer for him despite his faults and sins. In fact, at one point he muses, “I thought Jesus died for my sins…maybe my sins just maxed out Christ’s credit card.” City of Dreams is both a violent crime novel and a sweeping saga of family, love, revenge, and resilience, crafted in the way that only Winslow—probably today’s master of gangland grit and gore—can deliver to the printed page. In a word: superb.

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

"Original, riveting, and with more unexpected plot twists and turns than a Disneyland roller coaster, Greenwich Mean Time is a fun read for anyone with an interest in assassination and conspiracy psychic thriller novels."

—Midwest Book Review

If you've read Greenwich Mean Time and liked it, please

leave a review here.