155 Summer cover, Anthony Horowitz

Hi Everyone,

There’s something particularly delicious about summer reading. The bees buzz by, the grass gets longer, and you linger inside the pages of a good book while the world slows down around you. We feature lots of great books in this issue; I’m sure you’ll find something here for those long summer afternoons.

Anthony Horowitz is something of a renaissance man. Not only does he have one of the hottest books of summer—The Word Is Murder—but he also has created classic crime TV, including one of my all-time favorites, Foyle’s War. He’s written estate-approved and bestselling James Bond and Sherlock Holmes novels, and is the creator of the teenage spy Alex Rider series for young adults. In his new novel, he not only sets the plot whirling, he jumps in himself as a Watson to his new series detective, Daniel Hawthorne. Being part of the action puts “a different spin on everything. I could do all the fun things of a murder mystery—the clues, suspects, alibis, the red herrings, the twists, the plot from different angles,” Horowitz tells Oline Cogdill in our interview.

“...I know many things, for I walk by night.” So began one of radio’s classics, The Whistler. Michael Mallory offers a look at this long-running show, which even had a few film spin-offs.

As a child Emily Arsenault didn’t speak much—except for the dialogue in her stories. “I think at the time I was trying to create the kind of conversations I wished to have. Decades later, dialogue is still the heart of my stories,” says Arsenault, who has an interesting chat with John B. Valeri in this issue.

The sales of crime novels in the UK have soared, overtaking general fiction for the first time. Writer Sophie Hannah isn’t surprised at all—and offers a few thoughts on crime fiction’s ascent.

One of mystery fiction’s most iconic characters, Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch, took a tortuous path from page to screen greatness. The Harry Bosch on the page and the screen is “very much the same character, he’s just on a different timeline,” says Connelly. What hasn’t changed is Harry’s essence. According to actor Titus Welliver, the L.A. cop is “an attainable character, a human character. For me, as an actor, it’s the richest character I’ve ever been able to play in my career.” Craig Sisterson takes a look at the series and chats with some of the principals.

Barry Forshaw surveys historical authors who have turned to crime in their writing. In this issue, he travels the centuries with Bernard Knight, Lindsey Davis, Andrew Taylor, Imogen Robertson, and Michael Jecks.

James W. Ziskin’s latest novel to feature 1960s journalist Ellie Stone, A Stone’s Throw, has just been nominated for the 2018 Anthony Award for Best Paperback. Valeri catches up with the author in this issue.

Enjoy!

Kate Stine
Editor-in-chief

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