Happy birthday to Ian Fleming
Happy birthday to Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond thrillers.
Fleming was born on May 28, 1908. He died on August 12, 1964.
You can read three of my On Crime & Thrillers columns that dealt with Ian Fleming here
Entries Tagged as 'on thrillers and crime'
On crime & thrillers: Boston Noir
When I think of Boston I think of George V. Higgins’ The Friends of Eddie Coyle.
For more than a dozen years when I worked for a Defense Department command in Philadelphia, our regional headquarters was located in Boston. During that time I visited the city quite often.
Boston has fine bars and restaurants and fine historical and cultural scenes, and I’ve had some fine times there – yet to me Boston will always be first and foremost the home of The Friends of Eddie Coyle.
On crime & thrillers: Ian Fleming and the James Bond Omnibus
I’m not big on graphic novels and I’ve not read comic books or adventure comic strips since I was a kid, but The James Bond Omnibus, Volume I interested me.
I was first introduced to Ian Fleming’s iconic secret agent when I saw Dr No at the Colonial movie theater in South Philadelphia in 1962 when I was 10-years-old. But for many British children and adults, their first visual introduction to James Bond was through a daily comic strip that appeared in the newspaper the Daily Express.
On crime & thrillers: Conspirata – crime, conspiracy and political intrigue in ancient Rome
Conspirata opens like many crime thrillers. There is the discovery of a dead body.
But Conspirata (Simon & Schuster) is different than most crime thrillers, as the dead body in this novel is a slave who was murdered more than 2,000 years ago, and the person called to investigate is Marcus Tullius Cicero, the great Roman orator and statesman.
On crime & thrillers: Fire lovers and fire monsters
“Always keep the hose’s stream of water between the fire and you,” I recall my Navy fire instructor telling me so many years ago.
If you let the flames get around you, I learned, they’ll reach out and hit you like a boxer’s jab. That’s what happened to me when I was an 18-year-old sailor attending the U.S. Navy Fire Fighting School in San Diego.
On crime & thrillers: killers, cops and crime reporters – a Q & A with crime writer Michael Connelly
Michael Connelly is a best-selling crime novelist whose series of crime thrillers about Harry Bosch, a troubled but dedicated LAPD detective, is very popular with crime and thriller readers.
I spoke to Michael Connelly about his latest novel, Nine Dragons, and his previous novel, The Scarecrow. We also discussed the Internet, crime novels, crime, Clint Eastwood, and the current state of journalism.
Below is my interview with him:
On crime & thrillers: Wiseguys, goodfellas and godfathers — the portrayal of gangsters in fact and fiction
I watched the first season of Wiseguy on DVD this past week.
I enjoyed the TV crime drama during its original run from 1987 to 1990. Produced by television veterans Stephen J. Cannell and Frank Lupo, the program was about an undercover FBI agent, Vinnie Terranova, played by actor Ken Wahl.
On crime & thrillers: Tokyo Vice — a true story about an American reporter on the police beat in Japan
Jake Adlestein, an American reporter working the police beat for a Japanese newspaper, begins his true crime story with a meeting he took with two members of the yakuza, Japan’s organized crime group.
“Either erase the story, or we will erase you. And maybe your family. But we’ll do them first, so you learn your lesson before you die,” one of the yakuza members said to Adelstein.
Adelstein writes that this seemed like a straightforward proposition. [Read more →]
Dance with the Bull, part I, fiction by Paul Davis
I was told that Lieutenant Edwin Fay was thrilled with being a naval intelligence officer back in 1964. James Bond-mania was in full swing and Fay was a big fan of the novels and films.
Fay was pleased to learn that his true-life hero, the late President John F. Kennedy, a World War II naval officer, was also a fan of the novels and once dined with Bond’s creator, Ian Fleming. [Read more →]
On crime & thrillers: LA Noir: a story of a hood, a police chief, showgirls, newspaper tycoons and bent politicians in mid-century Los Angeles
Back in the early 1970s I was stationed in Southern California while serving in the Navy. Although I’m a die-hard South Philly guy, I loved my time on the West Coast.
I particularly loved my weekends in Los Angeles, a city I read about as a teenager in the novels of Raymond Chandler and was at that time reading about the city in the novels of Joseph Wambaugh. I had also seen LA as a backdrop in a good number of movies and TV shows growing up. From crime stories to tales of Hollywood, LA was almost a mythical place to me.
