10/13/1989 Crimes and Misdemeanors revealed

October 13, 1989.  Woody Allen is not generally thought of as a director of crime movies, but there are Take The Money and Run, Manhattan Murder Mystery, and Small Time Crooks, among others.  And there is Crimes and Misdemeanors, released on this day.

Allen and Martin Landau star as two men in bad marriages, at least one of whom is considering murder as a solution.

The movie was nominated for three Oscars, and the Edgar.

10/7/2014 Shanks on Crime on time

October 7, 2014.  On this day Shanks on Crime was published.  Leopold Longshanks is a curmudgeonly mystery writer who just wants to create his books in peace, but true crimes keep interfering...  Most of these stories appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, but four are new.

10/1/1923 The Continental Op arrives

October 1, 1923.  "Arson Plus," by Peter Collinson appeared in the issue of Black Mask with this cover date.  Peter Collinson was really Dashiell Hammett and this was the first appearance by one of his greatest characters, the nameless, cynical, overweight, private eye known as the Continental Op.

9/19/1936 The False-Face Murders

September 19, 1936.  On this day Detective Fiction Weekly served up the first third of "The False-Face Murders" by Judson Phillips.   You can read it here.  Phillips was better known for the mysteries he wrote later under the name Hugh Pentecost.  He scored more than 100 books in all. 

8/15/1888 Waxwork begins

August 15, 1888.  The action began on this date in Waxwork, Peter Lovesey's last novel about Victorian police detective Sergeant Cribb.  The wife of a photographer is convicted of murder.  While she is awaiting execution a photo is anonymously sent to the government that seems to prove she could not have done it.  Cribb is ordered to settle the question, quietly, and before the execution date.

One of my favorite mystery novels, period.

8/12/1876 Had she but known

August 12 1876.  Mary Roberts Rinehart was born this day in Pennsylvania.  In 1907 she wrote The Circular Staircase, a mystery novel that sold more than a million copies.  She was a prolific and highly successful writer but is perhaps best known today as a creator of  the "Had I But Known" school of suspense.  She is also credited/blamed for the cliche "the butler did it," although that phrase does not appear in her novel in which the butler, in fact, did.

8/7/1951 The Pedestrian appears

August 7, 1951.  The issue of The Reporter bearing this date featured a short story by Ray Bradbury called "The Pedestrian."  It was science fiction.  It was also crime fiction.  Briefly, in the year 2131 a man is arrested for walking down a city street.  (I feel obliged to say that in this case his race had nothing to do with it.)  Bradbury wrote it after being stopped (but not arrested) by cops in southern California for the same offense.  You can read the story here or in his collection The Golden Apples of the Sun.