BunzelGram May 23, 2022 Issue #90 This Week's Thoughts On Mysteries, Thrillers, and All Things Crime |
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Both the FBI and the Congressional Research Service define mass shootings as “multiple firearm, homicide incidents involving 4 or more victims at one or more locations close to one another.” Last week the United States had eight such incidents, in which a total of six people were killed and 33 wounded. The prior week there were 18 mass shootings, taking the lives of 20 people and injuring an additional 87. There’s no way to excuse these statistics as anything other than pure madness, and it poses an ethical problem for any mystery writer who, almost by literary necessity, incorporates gun violence into a storyline. I’m as guilty as the next novelist but, until our culture changes (doubtful), I can’t promise I won’t continue to write about triggers and guns—and the people who use them. —Reed Bunzel |
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Black And White And Noir All Over: A Brief History Of Crime Comic Strips When I first started reading the funny pages as a kid, I headed straight for the humor strips, like Peanuts (my childhood favorite), Nancy, Beetle Baily, and B.C. Later, Calvin and Hobbes became the all-time best strip ever, followed closely by Doonesbury. What never gripped me were the soap opera-ish dramas along the lines of Mary Worth, Apartment 3-G, and Rex Morgan M.D., but adventure stories and crime noir looked awesome in black and white newsprint. “Who could have known that newspaper comic strips and crime stories, including noir, were a match made in heaven?” Keith Roysdon points out in a recent Crime Reads article. “The best-known of the newspaper crime strips is probably Dick Tracy, which debuted in October 1931 and is published to this day." Then there's the adventure strip Steve Roper and Mike Nomad, which began life under another name, Big Chief Wahoo, featuring a stereotypical Native American. "As Roper fought spies during World War II, Wahoo became nothing more than his sidekick," Roysdon says. "And by 1944, Roper’s name was in the title and by 1947, Wahoo was gone. Mike Nomad was introduced to the strip in 1956 as a two-fisted adventurer not unlike the Race Bannon character of the later animated series Jonny Quest." | | |
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Kristin Chenoweth “Should Have Been” On Deadly Girl Scout Trip One June 13, 1977, three young girls between the ages of eight and ten were raped and murdered at Camp Scott in Mayes County, Oklahoma. All three campers were residents of Tent #8, and the morning after they were attacked, their bodies were found on a trail leading to the showers. A large, red flashlight was found at the crime scene, and a fingerprint—which has never been identified—was smudged on the lens. Additionally, a footprint from a 9-1/2 size shoe was smeared in a pool of blood at the scene of the crime. The case initially was classified as solved when a local jail escapee with a history of violence named Gene Leroy Hart was arrested, but he was acquitted in 1979 after a jury unanimously returned a not guilty verdict. What makes the case particularly haunting today is that Tony- and Emmy-winning actress Kristin Chenoweth was supposed to have been at the camp at the time, but she had become ill and couldn’t go. In an upcoming ABC News docuseries for Hulu, she says, "I should have been on that trip, but I had gotten sick. My mom said, ‘You can't go.’ It has stuck with me my whole life. I could have been one of them.” The program debuts May 24. | | |
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Ann Rule: The Woman Who (Could Have) Invented True Crime Ann Rule didn’t really invent true crime, but if you enjoy reading and watching fact-based crime stories, she is a big part of the reason. Perhaps best-known for her true crime book The Stranger Beside Me, Rule has shaped the genre as we know it today. While Edmund Pearson arguably holds the title as “creator” of the genre, she popularized it in a way that possibly no other writer has. Growing up in Michigan, she was surrounded by family members who worked in law enforcement; her grandfather and uncle were sheriffs, another one of her uncles was a medical examiner, and her cousin was a prosecutor. During the summers, Rule spent her time volunteering at her grandfather’s jail in Stanton. It would come as no surprise, then, that Rule pursued a career in law enforcement, for the Seattle Police Department. At the time, Rule was the youngest policewoman to ever be hired onto the force, but she was forced to leave the department because of her poor eyesight. Her first true crime book, The Stranger Beside Me, wasn't published until 1980, but it’s roots sprouted in 1971 when the author was volunteering at a suicide crisis hotline, where she worked with Ted Bundy. As Rule wrote, “I can remember thinking that if I were younger and single, or if my daughters were older, this would be almost the perfect man.” | | |
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Suspect Charged After Body Of Missing New York Teen Discovered Normally I don’t cover cold case crimes that are fewer than 20 years old, but this news story hit home because it occurred not long after I moved to the Charleston area. The incident also caused me to contemplate setting a mystery series along the Carolina coast, and three years later Palmetto Blood—the first in my Jack Connor mysteries—was published. In 2009, 17-year-old Brittanee Drexel went to celebrate spring break in Myrtle Beach, and she never returned home to Rochester, NY. Her mother, Dawn Drexel, had a bad feeling about the spring break trip and said she couldn’t go, but the teen went anyway. Within days of leaving for the vacation, the teenager vanished. The Washington Post reported at the time that hotel security footage revealed her leaving a hotel where she was visiting friends. That hotel was only a mile and a half from where she was staying, but something happened that prevented her from ever returning to her room. In 2016, a jailhouse informant identified an inmate named Timothy Da'Shaun Taylor as her abductor and killer, but the snitch’s story was proven faulty by the discovery of Drexel’s body earlier this month. DNA tests yielded a positive I.D., and authorities arrested Raymond Moody, a registered sex offender. He had been considered a person of interest for a decade, and confessed to the crime on May 4. | | |
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Young Martin Scorsese's Idol Gave Him Glowing, Early Career Feedback Sometimes we forget that those who have achieved greatness in their field ever doubted themselves, suffered rejection, or looked up to industry icons. I recently stumbled upon a little squib about Martin Scorsese who, in 1975, met his idol, renowned British filmmaker Michael Powell (The Red Shoes, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp), who regularly offered invaluable advice and feedback to the young American director. A perfect example of this friendship: in 1988, after reading a new Scorsese script titled Wise Guys, Powell sent his friend an enthusiastic letter in which he declared it “one of the best constructed scripts [he had] ever read.” The letter states, in part: “The narration is brilliantly handled, and the tone of the narration will be equally important… I can only compare it with the script of The African Queen, or Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity. It’s a masterpiece, a stunning script, and will make a wonderful film, and a priceless social document.” Interestingly, Wise Guys eventually became Goodfellas, and earned Scorsese Oscar nominations for Best Director and Best Screenplay. Sadly, Powell died in February of 1990, just months before the film’s theatrical release. | | |
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ALSO: Congress Holds Second Hearing, Focuses On Censorship In Classrooms Six weeks after holding a hearing to investigate the recent surge of book bannings in public school libraries and classrooms around the country, the U.S. House Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties last week held a second hearing in Washington to address “the closely related nationwide assaults on the rights of teachers and students to engage in free speech in in the classroom.” [Publishers Weekly] Thrilling Page-Turners Featuring Strong Female Leads In these action-packed thrillers, powerful heroines take on the dark and twisted forces plaguing their fictional worlds. [Novel Suspects] Liar, Liar…Everything’s On Fire: A Reader’s Guide To Teenagers Whether you are a timid twelve-year-old, a sixteen-year-old trying to fit in, or a parent, teenagers can be terrifying. They love and hate with intensity and often at the same time. Surging hormones, irrational logic, and desire for connection leads to overwrought secrets, volatile relationships, and bad decisions. [Crime Reads] |
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“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 | | |
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