11/23/11

Announcement: The Bughouse Affair (2013) by Pronzini and Muller

"They're coming to take me away, ho, ho, hee, hee, ha, ha
To the funny farm..."
- Napoleon XIV
Pronzini and Muller
Consider this an addendum to the review posted on Sunday, in which I briefly discussed the stories comprising Carpenter and Quincannon: Professional Detective Services (1998). John Quincannon and Sabina Carpenter, a former secret service man and a female ex-Pinkerton operative and widow of a Pinkerton detective, who have gone into business together and run a private detective agency during the dwindling years of the nineteenth century, are Bill Pronzini's secondary characters – both of whom sporadically roam the pages of The Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.

However, in a recent exchange of emails, Bill Pronzini divulged that he and his mystery-writing wife, Marcia Muller, are collaborating on a series of full-length Carpenter and Quincannon novels for Tor/Forge – and the first of them has been delivered to them and will be published in January 2013. The book has been titled The Bughouse Affair and I can reveal that part of the plot will revolve around a locked room/impossible disappearance ploy and that a new recurring character, who fancies himself to be Sherlock Holmes, will contribute to the solution of the story.

At the moment, Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller are firing up their word processors to begin working on the second entry, The Spook Light Affair, which will also contain one or two impossible situations. I, for one, can't wait to dig into these affairs!

In other news:

Marco Books, who penned, IMHO, one of the best crime/mystery novels of 2011, De laatste kans (The Last Chance), submitted another prospective masterpiece to his publisher and additional information is expected to be released in December. Now if only a foreign publisher out there would pick him up and introduce his work to an (English-reading) audience he deserves!  

Curt Evans, a mystery scholar who's actually dispelling misconceptions of the genre instead of nurturing them, in order to feed them to a pet theory, has entered the blogosphere like a comet – and you can follow him along over at The Passing Tramp. This erudite scholar is also the author of the upcoming book Masters of the Humdrum Mystery: Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel, 1920 to 1961, in which he champions the cause of the shamefully neglected and often ill treated humdrum writers.

6 comments:

  1. Hey, sounds great! There's much to look forward to coming up-- including the revival of Paul Doherty's "Cantetbury Tales" series. :)

    Ah, so I see you're posting news items now? Hm... Looks like I'll have to outdo you on this front. Which will quite possibly occur within the next few days... (Why yes, I'm being purposely vague. ;) )

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  2. I'm not going to make a habit out of posting news items, but these spate of news worthy criminal activity within the genre justified an exception – and I don't think there's enough news within the classic genre to do even a monthly news bulletin.

    But I'm looking forward to what you've to share with the rest of us!

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  3. Thanks to you I'm now a confirmed Pronzini fan (my bank balance does not thank you!) I have to wait until 2013 until the first of the Carpenter/Quincannon novels? Can't they write a little bit faster, please?!

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  4. Sextonblake,

    The book is finished and submitted, but their publisher has set January 2013 as a release date – so we have to bug them about it.

    And I am pleased to learn that I've contributed to feeding your mystery addiction. ;)

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  5. Bill & Marcia smile a lot -- it must be their publisher who wanted the serious photo.

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  6. Yes, I agree. Doug. That's a dour photo that looks like it belongs to the Edwardian era. Very cool news about the new book. Bill Pronzini used to buy books from me and has some of my real prizes - among them the UK copy of DEATH IN THE DUSK with that great DJ.

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