New Spy Thriller All The Old Knives

Stars Chris Pine, Thandiwe Nelson

As many of you know, I earned my bachelor’s degree from a small New England college in Maine. We Bowdoin Polar Bears stick together, so when I learned last week that a fellow alum (Steve Schwartz ’70) is the producer of a new espionage film titled All The Old Knives, starring Chris Pine and Thandiwe Newton, I immediately put it on my calendar. The story in a nutshell: When the CIA discovers one of its agents leaked information that cost more than 100 people their lives, veteran operative Henry Pelham (Pine) is assigned to root out the mole from among his former officemates at the agency's Vienna station. His investigation takes him from Austria to England to California, where he is reunited with his one-time colleague and ex-lover Celia Harrison (Newton). Together again, they are forced to blur the lines between profession and passion in a tale of espionage, moral dilemma, and deadly betrayal. The film, directed by Janus Metz, also stars Laurence Fishburne and Jonathan Pryce and is based on the novel by Olen Steinhauer, who also wrote the screenplay. The movie opens “in theaters everywhere”—and on Amazon Prime—this Friday, April 8.

DNA Cold Case

Police Solved 42-Year-Old Murder

Using New Tech And Public Database

The last time police came to her door, Irene Wilkowitz was 17 and they told her they’d found the body of her 20-year-old sister Eve, who had been kidnapped, raped and strangled after taking a late-night train home from Manhattan. That was 42 years ago, and over the intervening years Wilkowitz had gone to college, worked, married, raised two children, divorced, and moved away from Long Island, always in fear that the killer would one day come for her—and wondering if they’d ever catch him. She also became Eve’s staunchest advocate, consistently contacting detectives for updates every few weeks and urging them to try an investigative technique involving DNA that has recently helped crack hundreds of cold cases around the country. The detectives told her they were trying, but she had started to lose hope. Late last week, however, Suffolk County, NY Police Detective Jeffrey Bottari informed her that her persistence finally had paid off. “We identified the person responsible for the death of your sister, Eve,” he told her, explaining that access to public DNA databases revealed the killer to be Herbert Rice, who lived on the same block as where his victim’s body was found, and who died from cancer in 1991.

6 Classic Films Featuring Gaslighting,

Including, Of Course, Cukor’s Gaslight

The term gaslighting is used a lot…sometimes correctly, many times not. I’ve addressed this before in BunzelGram, but essentially it applies when someone in your life tries to convince you that you’re going crazy, usually for their own gain. It’s normally a spouse or a partner acting as the villain, but that’s not always the case. The term comes from the 1944 George Cukor film Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman as a naive young woman named Paula who, as a young girl, witnessed the murder of her beloved aunt. Years later, in Italy, she meets and marries dashing Gregory (Charles Boyer), who returns with her to London to live in the house she inherited from her aunt, which is also the house where the murder occurred. Over time, Paula begins to doubt her sanity as Gregory tells her that she’s becoming forgetful and acting in irregular ways. He confines her to the house, and tells everyone she’s not well. At night she hears knocking in the walls. She sees the gas lighting dim. But he tells her she’s imagining things. With that in mind, here’s a list of six movie classics—compiled by Crime Reads’ Eric Ruth Neubauer—in which people are manipulated and deceived by those they trust the most.

The CIA, Crop Dusting, And Drugs:

Why A Pilot Faked His Own Death

A new HBO docuseries The Invisible Pilot recounts the wild yet true story of Gary Betzner, a man who jumped off a bridge in 1977, leaving behind a web of secrets. As reported by The Daily Beast, on Sept. 18, 1977 in Hazen, Arkansas, Gary Betzner took a daytime drive in his El Camino to a dairy bar with his wife and daughter. Afterwards, he stopped on a bridge due to car trouble, opened the hood to check on the problem, and then suddenly and inexplicably dived into the White River. This sent his wife Sally into hysterics, and cast an immediate and terrible pall over his family, which—like everyone else in their small, rural southern town—was plagued by a single, persistent question: why? Forty-five years later directors Phil Lott and Ari Mark (and executive producer Adam McKay) turned to the one person who can best shed light on this seemingly tragic event: Gary himself, who not only is the subject of their three-part program, but also its primary narrator. Turns out the guy didn’t die that day—the first of many bombshells revealed about the ace crop duster, daredevil and, it turns out, cocaine addict—a problem for which he was arrested in a major 1977 Miami DEA sting, and was facing 20 years behind bars. Rather than do time (spoiler alert), he decided to stage his death and go on the run.

Crime Fiction Novels Featuring

A Bit Of An Historical Twist

Whether visiting war-torn London or delving into secrets from the Revolutionary War, historical mysteries provide the perfect reading blend of fiction with a healthy dash of intrigue and suspense. There’s something particularly different when a mystery book is set in times gone by, transporting the reader to an era he/she can only experience through the written word. From plundered artwork to Prohibition-era moonshine wars to post-WWII corruption in Hollywood, this list from Novel Suspects features some of the best crime fiction with an historical twist.

What people are saying about Jack Connor:

“Palmetto Blood is a winner. It sweeps you in with intrigue and authority and never lets you go. I want to go riding with Jack Connor again.” —Michael Connelly

“Reed Bunzel peels away the layers of mystery like a master of the genre.” —T. Jefferson Parker

“Reed Bunzel lights up the Southern sky with taut, exciting action and a memorable cast of characters led by Jack Connor, a protagonist sure to become a major favorite of crime fiction fans.” —Michael McGarrity

"Tightly plotted and skillfully written, Carolina Heat makes clear that Reed Bunzel has created a winning series." —Alafair Burke