Cartoon of the Day: Editor

 

GLASS BELL AWARD LONG LIST 2025

Goldsboro Books revealed the Long List for the 2025 Glass Bell Award, celebrating the very best storytelling across all genres of contemporary fiction. Launched in 2017, the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award is awarded annually to outstanding work of contemporary fiction, rewarding quality storytelling in any genre. 

Glass Bell Award Long List

The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden (Century, PRH)
The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands by Sarah Brooks (W&N, Orion)
The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown (Transworld, PRH)
James by Percival Everett (Picador & Mantle, Pan Macmillan)
The List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey (Hutchinson Heinemann, PRH)
The Silverblood Promise by James Logan (Arcadia, Quercus Books)
Hunted by Abir Mukherjee (Vintage, PRH)
Berlin Duet by S. W. Perry (Corvus, Atlantic Books)
A Little Trickerie by Rosanna Pike (Fig Tree, PRH)
There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak (Viking, PRH)
The Kellerby Code by Jonny Sweet (Faber & Faber)
All the Colours of the Dark by Chris Whitaker (Orion Books)

(nominees in bold reflect crime fiction)

Cartoon of the Day: Cats!

 Happy Caturday!

MAIGRET: New TV series on PBS

MASTERPIECE on PBS has announced that Maigret, a contemporary series, will premiere on Sunday, October 5, 2025 at 9/8c on PBS. The first trailer for the brand-new series has been released in conjunction with the news. Scroll to watch the trailer, and scroll down for a short history of Maigret on TV and film.

Writer and EP Patrick Harbinson  has taken the Georges Simenon detective stories and updated them into a contemporary show starring Benjamin Wainwright as the detective Jules Maigret. The Maigret novels are the second best-selling detective series ever, behind only Sherlock Holmes and this is the first modern-day adaptation for the screen.

Maigret inhabits a vividly realized Paris that takes us from the glitzy upper-class world of luxury hotels and mansions to local bourgeois bistros and bars and the underground haunts of the professionally criminal. “To understand and not to judge”: Maigret strives above all to unravel  motivations. He is good at this not because he is a genius, or has special methods, but because he listens – he doesn’t solve crimes so much as he solves people. 

Patrick Harbinson's adaptation reframes Maigret as an unconventional young detective with something to prove, a rising star in the Police Judiciare, relentless in his investigations, with an uncanny ability to get under the skin of the criminals he is chasing and a matchless knowledge of Paris and its inhabitants. 

I haven't seen the series yet, but my main question is where is Madame Maigret? She is one of my favorite characters in the Simenon books. It doesn't look like she's in this new series which is about the 'young' Maigret. I guess we won't be seeing all those mouth-watering French meals. Other questions: Where is Maigret's crumpled trenchcoat, pipe, and hat? Perhaps he acquired them later in his life?

Since this series debuts in October, you have plenty of time to get reading.The Simeon Maigret mysteries are short and easy to read. And, there are 75 novels and 28 short stories, so lots to read.

FYI: There have been over 35 actors that have played Maigret. French film adaptations began in 1932, but Jean Gabin was the first 'well-known' French actor playing the role in 1958, 59, and 63. French actors Jean Richard and Bruno Cremer followed with Jean Richard appearing in 90 episodes.

On British TV, Rupert Davies starred in the role in the 1960s (more than 50 episodes). In the early 1990s, Michael Gambon solved 12 crimes. I loved this series, and I thought Gambon was the perfect Maigret. But, the first actor in the Uk to play Maigret was Charles Laughton in the 1949 film The Man on the Eiffel Tower. I think the most recent Maigret series on TV starred Rowan Atkins in 2016 and 2017. Several of these series are streaming. 

Here's the trailer for the new series on Masterpiece. 

Cartoon of the Day: Book Signing

 

The Women Who Transformed the CIA: Agents of Change

Thursday, July 10, 5:30 p.m.

The Commonwealth Club of California

110 The Embarcadero

Toni Rembe Rock Auditorium
San Francisco, CA 94105 

Join the Commonwealth Club of California for a lively discussion of Christina Hillsberg's book Agents of Change: The Women Who Transformed the CIA. Hillsberg is a former intelligence operative who has written a narrative exploration of the agency’s history, told through exclusive interviews with current and former female CIA officers, many of whom have never spoken publicly until now. The book fills a necessary gap in the agency’s history and takes a critical view of the agency’s indisputable record of suppressing the women who would become its most valued trailblazers—and its most vocal troublemakers. 

These were women who sacrificed their personal lives, risked their safety, defied expectations, and boldly navigated the male-dominated spy organization, routinely passed over for promotions, recruiting assets, and managing clandestine operations. 

Terry Shames, who worked at the CIA and is an acclaimed, award winning mystery writer, will provide additional energy and knowledge of both the CIA and writing. 

You won't want to miss this program!

Register: https://commonwealthclub.my.salesforce-sites.com/ticket/#/instances/a0FVb000004wQ6HMAU

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Christina Hillsberg of Chicago is a former CIA intelligence officer and writer. While at the CIA, she wrote analytic assessments for the president, his cabinet, and other senior-level policymakers. Hillsberg specialized in African politics and leaders and was one of the intelligence community's few Swahili and Zulu linguists. She later worked in the CIA's Directorate of Operations, clandestinely collecting intelligence from the field. She is the recipient of multiple CIA Exceptional Performance Awards. After leaving the CIA, Hillsberg worked in information security at Amazon, where she stood up the company’s first insider threat program, created a new global framework to analyze cyber risks, and established new processes to utilize intelligence tradecraft to analyze information security threats.

Terry Shames is the award-winning, best-selling author of 11 Samuel Craddock mysteries. As well as winning the Macavity Award for Best First Novel, her first book, A Killing at Cotton Hill, was also shortlisted for the Strand Critics Award. She has been short-listed for the Left Coast Crime Lefty Award, and in 2016 won the RWA Editor’s Choice award for The Necessary Murder of Nonie Blake. The eleventh in the series, The Troubling Death of Maddy Benson, October 2024, was an Amazon Editor's Pick. In April 2024, she debuted the Jessie Madison thriller series with Perilous Waters. In March she published Out of Control, her first domestic suspense novel. After graduating from The University of Texas, Shames worked for the CIA for three years in the China division. After she left the CIA she went into computer programming and analysis for 10 years, during which she began writing fiction. Shames lives in Southern California with her husband, her dog Monty and her cat Max. She is a member of the Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers and the Texas Institute of Letters.

Moderator: Frank Price