2024 Silver Falchion Award Winners

Announced At Killer Nashville

The 2024 Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award winners, representing the best books published in 2023, were announced at Killer Nashville on Saturday, August 24. Here are some of the winners [in alphabetical order]:

• Best Action Adventure: Hanging the Devil, by Tim Maleeny

• Best Book By Attending Author: Face of Greed, by James L’Etoile
• Best Comedy: A Crafty Collage of Crime, by Lois Winston

• Best Cozy: Trust the Terrier, by DL Mitchell

• Best Historical: Arsenic at Ascot, by Kelly Oliver
• Best Investigator: Vessels of Wrath, by Thomas Holland
• Best Juvenile/YA: Where Echoes Die, by Courtney Gould
• Best Mystery: Indigo Road, by Reed Bunzel
• Best Nonfiction: Finding Your Path To Publication, by Judy Penz Sheluk

• Best Supernatural: Ghost Tamer, by Meredith R. Lyons

• Best Suspense: The Rule of Thirds, by Jeannee Sacken

• Best Thriller: Breaking Apart, by Wanda Venters and Mary Rae
• Best Western: Reckoning, by Baron Birtcher

• Book Of The Year: Ghost Tamer, by Meredith R. Lyons

Scarface vs. Scarface: Why DePalma

Remade The Howard Hawks Classic

     The 1932 gangster film Scarface, directed by Howard Hawks, features a moment in which a newspaper editor refers to the recently deceased mob boss Costillo as “the last of the old-fashioned gang leaders,” then noting “this town is up for the grabs.” The man who will eventually take over is Tony Camonte (Paul Muni), and he will eventually die because of the rampant gangster-ism that allowed his takeover in the first place. As Olivia Rutigliano points out in Crime Reads, however, gangster movies also have their own cycle, and Tony Camonte—or as he is also known, Scarface—isn’t dead for too long before he is resurrected by Brian de Palma, who remade the film in 1983, with the similar character Tony Montana as the new Scarface.

     Both films feature the same narrative trajectory, but de Palma’s version features several main departures that transform it from a simple remake into a serious rethinking of the original, and a meditation on the gangster genre. In the adaptation, Tony Camonte’s story shifts in time, space, and nationality—moving fifty years forward and 1,300 miles south and across cultural heritages.

     The impulse to remake Howard Hawks’s 1932 gangster film came from Al Pacino himself. In an interview from 2011, Pacino recalled, “My first experience was seeing Paul Muni in the Howard Hughes film, the original Scarface that they did in 1932. I went and saw that film and called Marty Bregman after. I said, ‘I think we could do this thing. There’s a remake here.’ And he, very wisely, very astutely, got out there and put the whole thing together. [And] I said, ‘I gotta be that Tony Montana guy. That’s my license to live.'”

Ten Unconventional Gangster Movies

That Changed The Sub-Genre

     The gangster genre continues to evolve with unconventional storytelling, challenging typical character types, and narrative structures. Crime films tend to follow consistent visual and narrative devices that continue to be used, but several trailblazing films have made a significant impact in influencing the stories that exist today and served to transform the entire subgenre.

     Take Layer Cake, for example. Directed by Matthew Vaughn [Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch], the film exudes a dark confidence as it follows a mid-level drug dealer [Daniel Craig] who is contemplating stepping away from “the life,” while his supplier [Kenneth Cranham] has other plans. As Aryanna Alvarado says in Screen Rant, rather than focusing on one individual in the drug world, this film dives deep by examining all the parties involved in the operation, stitched together with stylized action and fueled by a convulsive, over-the-top soundtrack.

     Then there’s the Coen Brothers’ Miller's Crossing, a blend of dramatic neo-noir and dark humor that define much of the directing duo’s later work. The characters in Miller's Crossing have the same mobster roles as those in every gangster film, but there's a lighthearted touch in their characterization that plays out humorously. Though Miller's Crossing didn't perform well at the box office when it was released, there is no denying how the film wound up having an impact on the gangster genre and the Coen brothers' career as a whole.

     With this in mind, here’s Alvarado’s list of ten unconventional motion pictures that illustrate how the gangster genre has evolved over the years.

Before A Is For Alibi, Sue Grafton Co-

Wrote An Agatha Christie TV Movie

     Before she created the iconic character of private investigator Kinsey Millhone in her “alphabet” novels, author Sue Grafton spent 15 years working as a screenwriter for film and television. Although she has writing credits on everything from an episode of the classic sitcom Rhoda to a remake of 1944 fantasy comedy The Canterville Ghost, the projects that connect her most to her later work are a pair of 1983 Agatha Christie adaptations. As Josh Bell recently wrote in Novel Suspects, what better way to study the mechanics of mystery writing than by interpreting and updating stories by the genre’s greatest practitioner?

     In Sparkling Cyanide, Grafton and her husband Steven Humphrey (along with co-writer Robert Malcolm Young) transport Christie’s 1945 novel to 1980s Los Angeles, complete with big-haired characters driving convertibles, set to a soft-jazz score. Produced for CBS, Sparkling Cyanide is not all that far from a police procedural of the same era, and director Robert Michael Lewis furthers the connection by casting Dragnet star Harry Morgan as the police detective investigating the central murders.

     Ultimately, the TV movie is structured a bit like a double episode of a nighttime soap, Bell says, although it never gets too far away from the mechanics of mystery-solving. It’s another demonstration of the malleability of Christie’s stories, which can be molded into various styles without losing their essential appeal—which was a valuable lesson for Grafton to take forward.

The Most Stolen Artwork Of All

Time Is A Painting Of A Lamb

     You might not have heard of the “Ghent Altarpiece,” also known as the “Adoration of the Mystic Lamb,” but thieves certainly have. Since its completion in 1432, the 12-panel oil painting by Flemish brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck has become the most stolen artwork of all time. As noted by History Facts, it has been taken at least seven times, including by none other than Napoleon Bonaparte. His army helped itself to four panels in 1794, displaying them in the Louvre until his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815; France’s Louis XVIII returned the panels after he retook the throne. The painting has also been burned and nearly blown up on several occasions, most recently during World War II.

     If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, perhaps thievery is high on the list as well. The altarpiece is a masterpiece, its panels depicting classical Christian iconography such as Adam and Eve, the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist, and, in the most prominent panel, the Lamb of God — a depiction of Christ as a lamb bleeding into the holy grail. Unfortunately, one of the panels remains missing 90 years after it was taken. A copy of the stolen section, which depicts a group of men (including Jan van Eyck himself) on horseback, is on display along with the rest of the altarpiece at St. Bavo’s Cathedral in Ghent, Belgium.

Coming Tuesday, September 10

The Fall Of Vivaldi

On a rainy night across Europe, several seemingly unrelated

incidents unfold in quick order:

• In the City of Light, a beautiful young Parisian newscaster

named Gabrielle Lamoines is brutally murdered in her bed,

just as…

• A disgraced British billionaire takes a dive from the top floor

terrace of a luxury resort on the island of Cyprus, at the same time that…

• Reporter Carter Logan causes the death of a former lieutenant

of the Italian mafia in a narrow street in Rome, not far from…

• The Tuscan farmhouse where Alessandro Bortolotti, the head

of a hard-right neofascist movement, is plotting a deadly

attack on the G20 global summit, while…

• A notorious Russian oligarch named Georgy Sokolov plans to

auction off a kidnapped American teen named Abby Evans in

an online event streamed from his villa on the island of Ibiza.

Each of these random events has one thing in common: Retired assassin Ronin Phythian, once known as “the most dangerous man alive”...

Beyond All Doubt

[Reed Bunzel writing as Hilton Reed]

“Beyond All Doubt is an edge-of-your-seat fast-moving thrill-ride, kicked off by the reappearance of a dead man and propelling the reader along to the final bullet—and beyond.”— S.J. Rozan, best-selling author of The Mayors of New York

​

“Beyond All Doubt is a taut, smart, and emotionally rich thriller. Reed has a sharp eye for character and a screenwriter's feel for action. This tale is sleek as a mink and fast as a bullet.”— T. Jefferson Parker, author of The Rescue and Desperation Reef

“Beyond All Doubt is not a 'who done it,' but a twisty, compelling 'who did what.' Cameron Kane is a sympathetic, yet unrelenting bulldog in his pursuit of the truth about his wife's death. Intriguing and intense, Beyond All Doubt is a winner!”—Matt Coyle, bestselling author of the Rick Cahill crime novels