Indie Bookstores Concerned As

Pandemic Crushes Many Businesses

Many independent bookstores have been crushed by ten months of closures, lockdowns, social distancing, and a major shift toward online ordering and e-book purchases. Now, a year after Covid-19 hit U.S. shores, many store owners and managers remain concerned about the government’s response to the pandemic and the continuing uncertainty about the health of the economy. An ongoing survey from Publishers Weekly shows that about 40% indie booksellers experienced sales declines of 10%-30% vs. 2019, while the same number hovered between declines of 10% and gains of 10%. One store cited a 50% sales increase over 2019, while another experienced a 43% decline. The defining characteristic of the year was consumers’ shift to online ordering; at Queen Anne Book Company in Seattle, online sales were 5% of the business in previous years. In 2020, e-commerce spiked to 70%. Julie Beddingfield, co-owner of Inkwood Books in Haddonfield, NJ, said online sales at her store were up 2,829% in 2020 vs. the previous year. Booksellers are also aware of Amazon’s enormous profits during the pandemic, and many are clamoring for the incoming Biden administration to take action to address the company’s dominance.

Pandemic Has Shifted

Many Book Clubs To Zoom

Tens of thousands of readers across the U.S. belong to book clubs that meet regularly, usually on a monthly basis. Unfortunately, the pandemic has shut a lot of these in-person gatherings down and, while many have shifted to Zoom or other online platforms, the dynamics of these gatherings have changed considerably. According to BookBrowse Publisher Davina Morgan-Witts, a survey of 3,400 book club members indicates that three-quarters of respondents have continued to meet, and have been doing so through most of the pandemic, albeit in markedly differently ways than in the past. While a vast majority said their primary book club used to meet in person and indoors, now two-thirds are meeting virtually (almost all on Zoom)—and of the remainder, half were meeting outside at the time of the survey (which was October, before the weather changed). Most also said that meeting on Zoom is much better than not meeting at all; in fact, a third like the format so much they expect to retain a virtual element even after it's possible to meet in person again—which many expected to be sometime in the third quarter of 2021.

TRUE CRIME PODCAST

Podcast Recounts Hunt For

Hollywood Con Queen

A new podcast highlights the lengths to which a cruel conman upended the dreams of gig workers in the movie industry by luring them to Indonesia with the promise of being hired to work on a blockbuster Hollywood film. Chameleon: Hollywood Con Queen recounts how a scammer impersonated prominent women in the biz—Kathleen Kennedy, Amy Pascal, Donna Langley, Dede Gardner, Deb Snyder, Wendi Deng, and Gigi Pritzker—and enticed them to fly to Jakarta, Indonesia. Once there, these aspiring professional would be strung along, forced to pony up hundreds of dollars per day for “driving fees,” “photo permits,” “rebooking fees,” and other supposed essentials. The con was first revealed several years ago, and for a while it was thought that some criminal cabal was behind it. Not so, as the podcasts producers identified a lone Indonesian man living in the U.K. as a likely suspect. The suspect, Hargobind Punjabi Tahilramani, was born in Jakarta in 1979 and is known in the U.K. as “Gobind,” a foodfluencer who was Instagramming under the handle Pure Bytes and ISpintheTales. He allegedly made a few thousand dollars per victim, but the "long con" added up to a large haul before the case was cracked.

100 Years Of The

Talented Patricia Highsmith

Last week (January 19, to be precise) was the 100th birthday of acclaimed writer Patricia Highsmith, whom faithful readers and critics regard as a deeply contradictory figure known for her psychological thrillers, including her series of five novels featuring the character Tom Ripley. To honor the centennial of her birth (she died in 1995), Bookmarks last week compiled a selection of reviews, both classic and contemporary, of her most famous novels. Examples: “Before Hitchcock’s movie came Patricia Highsmith’s 1950 novel Strangers on a Train, a moody and disturbing excavation of guilty paranoia that bears little resemblance to the film beyond its initial premise.” [Leonard Cassuto, The Wall Street Journal]. “An exciting rat-race with the principal rat in the title role is Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. You certainly wouldn’t want to meet him; but he is perfectly fascinating to read about.” [Lockhart American, The Pittsburgh Press] “The 17 tales in Highsmith’s new collection (Little Tales of Misogyny) are a far cry from Strangers on a Train and her other unforgettable thrillers. These stories, although written with exemplary style, make the flesh crawl but not pleasurably, as reliable suspense fare does.” [Publishers Weekly].

Real Crimes That Were Solved

In Almost Unreal Ways

Discovering the culprit is the goal of any crime investigator—and typically the reason mystery fans read mysteries, and writers write them. But sometimes the story of how the crime gets solved is even more fascinating, whether it's through intense investigative efforts or little twists of fate. As Insider.com points out in this list of crimes solved in unbelievable ways, the random presence of pet hair, chance high school friendships, even advanced NASA technology have been used to solve inexplicable crimes. Whether by chance or intense investigative effort, some crimes get solved in mind-bending ways. Take, for instance, forensic botanist Patricia Wiltshire, whose astute observation that some stinging nettles in a path to a known crime scene were growing new side shoots, confirming they’d been trampled the day of a murder two weeks before. Or a deck of Cold Case Homicide Playing Cards that was introduced into Florida jails in 2007. resulted in the resolution of several murder cases that had gone cold.

FILM REVIEW

John Sayles’ Lone Star Is A

Darned-Near Perfect Movie

Someone recently asked me, “What mystery do you wish you’d written, but didn’t?” A few titles and authors immediately came to mind, including Trevanian’s The Summer Of Katya, which I’ve written about here before. But then the magnificent film titled Lone Star came to mind, causing me to recall how much I loved John Sayles’ slow, deliberate pacing of a sheriff’s investigation into a murder along the Rio Grande in south Texas. Nominated for an Academy Award for Sayles original screenplay, the film—which earned near-universal critical acclaim—features stellar performances from Chris Cooper, Kris Kristofferson, Matthew McConaughey, and Elizabeth Peña. It’s a complex yet simple tale that pits fairness and justice against racism and greed, love and honor against terror and extortion—against the backdrop of the murder of a corrupt and cruel sheriff who disappeared four decades in the past. Writing at the time of release, The New York Times’ Janet Maslin said, "This long, spare, contemplatively paced film, scored with a wide range of musical styles and given a sun-baked clarity by Stuart Dryburgh's cinematography, is loaded with brief, meaningful encounters.. It features a great deal of fine, thoughtful acting, which can always be counted on in a film by Mr. Sayles.” Yep, I wish I’d written it.

CLEVER PROMOTIONAL TIE-IN

Two weeks from now we’ll know if Tom Brady won his seventh Super Bowl after a record tenth appearance, or if the Kansas City Chiefs were able to repeat their 2020 victory. And the day after that—February 9—is the day you can buy Skeleton Key, the fourth book in my Jack Connor series. Of course, you can always pre-order it today from Amazon.