CIA’s Kryptos Still Not Deciphered

After Sculptor Reveals Final Clue

Just outside of the CIA’s cafeteria in Langley, Virginia is a sculpture titled Kryptos, a curved wall of copper erected thirty years ago that consists of 865 letters and four question. Though three of its passages were successfully decoded in the 1990s, Kryptos’ fourth and final section has proven harder for codebreakers to solve than originally anticipated. According to The New York Times, the puzzle’s creator—sculptor Jim Sanborn—has released a new clue to the 97-character passage: “Northeast.” The one-word hint is a decryption of letters 26 through 34, and the third and final clue Sanborn is willing to offer. The other two hints—“clock” and “Berlin,” released in 2010 and 2014, respectively—sit back-to-back at positions 64 through 69 and 70 through 74. Kryptos’ first passage reads, “Between subtle shading and the absence of light lies the nuance of iqlusion.” (Sanborn left misspellings and extra characters to throw codebreakers off track but otherwise used classic ciphers.) Only he and former CIA director William Webster, now 97, possess the solution to the encrypted message, which Sanborn developed with help from Edward Scheidt, retired chairman of the CIA’s Cryptographic Center.

Did Bigfoot Massacre Three

Pot Dealers In The Early ‘90s?

Bigfoot? Seriously? With all the things to be worried about these days—the pandemic, gun violence, insurrection, geopolitical threats—Hulu’s latest three-part docuseries introduces another potential threat to our collective safety and well-being: Sasquatch. Directed by Joshua Rofé (Lorena) and produced by Mark and Jay Duplass (Wild Wild Country), Sasquatch (which premiered on 4/20, for good reason) revisits the legend of Bigfoot through the prism of a still-unsolved true crime case. As The Daily Beast’s Nick Schager writes, in the fall of 1993, David Holthouse went to work on a cannabis farm in the marijuana fields of northern California’s Emerald Triangle, which boasts the perfect soil and atmosphere needed to grow excellent crops. One dark and stormy night, while less than completely sober, Holthouse watched as two men burst into his house and reported the unbelievable: a marijuana deal had gone terribly awry, and three individuals had been massacred. “They’re mangled,” the pair stated with panic and fear in their eyes. Stranger still, the weed they’d been selling hadn’t been taken, so this wasn’t a rip-off by the transaction’s other partners. What was the explanation for this bizarre calamity? The frightened man was clear: “A Bigfoot killed those guys.”

Thriller Award Nominees Announced

The International Thriller Writers has announced the nominees for this years Thriller Awards. Those named in the Best Hardcover Novel and Best First Novel category are named below; the entire list can be found here.

Best Hardcover Novel:

• S.A. Cosby, Blacktop Wasteland (Flatiron Books)
• Joe Ide, Hi Five (Mulholland Books)
• Richard Osman, The Thursday Murder Club (Penguin)
• Ivy Pochoda, These Women (Ecco)
• Lisa Unger, Confessions on the 7:45 (Park Row)

Best First Novel

• Jasmine Aimaq, The Opium Prince (Soho Press)
• Don Bentley, Without Sanction (Berkley)
• Kyle Perry, The Bluffs (Michael Joseph)
• Francesca Serritella, Ghosts Of Harvard (Random House)
• David Heska Wanbli Weiden, Winter Counts (Ecco)

The winners will be announced on Saturday, July 10, 2021 during Virtual ThrillerFest. Congratulations to all the finalists!

Hercule Poirot Won Fans Through

Television And Radio In 1930s

Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot debuted to mystery fans in 1920 in The Mysterious Affair at Styles (published in 1920), and exited the literary world 55 years later in Curtain (published in 1975). In fact, he is the only fictional character to have an obituary appear on the front page of The New York Times. During the 1920s the Belgian detective enjoyed success in print and on stage, but it was the 1930s that helped cement his position in the public consciousness through his appearances on radio and a fledgling medium known as television. Oddly, a BBC production televised on June 18, 1937 to a few dozen wealthy London viewers preceded his radio career, with a 25-minute production of the play The Wasp’s Nest, based on Christie’s short story of the same title that had first been published in the Daily Mail in 1928. Five months later Poirot was introduced to a radio audience with a play titled The Yellow Iris written specifically for the medium, weaving the story of a poisoning between various musical numbers performed as part of the cabaret where the murder takes place. As noted by Mark Aldridge in Crime Reads, “Christie always seemed more interested in radio when she was presented with a particular challenge,” and went on to write a number of plays featuring perhaps her most famous sleuth.

Mystery Or Literary: What Does

The Word “Genre” Mean, Anyway?

Any writer who has ever tried to find an agent, let alone a publisher, is acutely aware of literary genres. Mystery, thriller, romance, sci-fi, horror—there’s a niche for everything, and everything in its niche. That’s why I found a blog post from crime writer Chris Knopf especially interesting, particularly when he defines literary fiction (borrowing from fellow crime writer Reed Farrel Coleman) as “Books without plots.” While offered up somewhat tongue-in-cheek, Knopf has a point: “Mystery writers have a sacred obligation above all else to write books and stories that have plots,” he says, while “literary writers and their editors often hide behind virtuosic prose, eccentric characters, and angst-ridden descriptions of consuming a latte in a Brooklyn coffee shop to justify the absence of a satisfying narrative arc.” For the record, I happen to enjoy the works of both John Grisham and John Irving, Ernest Hemingway and Michael Connelly, and can’t say enough about James Lee Burke, whom I believe epitomizes the best of crime writing and literary craftsmanship in American literature today. With this in mind, please take five minutes to read Knopf’s marvelous essay on transgenre writing, here.

It All Began With A Broken Car, A Bus Ride From Hell, And Laguna Heat

Many people have asked me how I got started writing mysteries. My go-to answer has always been The Hardy Boys and Perry Mason reruns, but a more genuine answer involves a broken-down Renault Fuego, a hellish bus-ride from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles, and a paperback I picked up at the Greyhound station while waiting to board. I was in a particularly lousy frame of mind that day (it was the first anniversary of my wife’s death) and, as I took my seat—the last one available—I found myself pressed up against the window by an amazingly doughy and malodorous passenger. The only thing that kept me from going insane (good, thing, since we made an unscheduled stop at the Camarillo State Mental Hospital that hot August afternoon) was my copy of Laguna Heat, by T. Jefferson Parker. From the very first sentence I was hooked, and by the time I finished it the next day I felt a new awakening. Mysteries had started my love of books when I was a child, and I believed that was my new path forward. Not long afterwards I began writing my first novel, Pay For Play, eventually published by Avon/Morrow in 1992. Eleven years later I attended the Edgar Awards in New York for the first time, and made my way to the stage after Parker’s Silent Joe had just won the prize for Best Novel. I shared my story (briefly) with him, and he was gracious enough to later agree to read a draft of Palmetto Blood. You can find his cover praise below. Thank you, Jeff, for being there when I needed a little Heat.

Skeleton Key, Fourth Book In The Jack Connor Mystery Series, Available Now

“In Palmetto Blood, Reed Bunzel peels away the layers of mystery like a master of the genre. The American south hasn’t seemed this hot, menacing and filled with surprises in ages. Bravo to a fine writer and a splendid novel.”

– T. Jefferson Parker, three-time Edgar Award Winner