Yes, you read that right. I have a batch of things to recount, and rather than bury the lede I’ll come right out and lead with it. (Lede with it? Never mind.)
Years ago, before any of us were born, I wrote a story called “Bride of Violence” and sold it to Two-Fisted Detective Stories, in whose pages it appeared in December of 1959. It brought me a penny a word, so I got something like $25 for it. That doesn’t sound like much now, but believe me, it wasn’t much then, either.
Who knew it would wind up on the screen a mere 59 years later?
A couple of years ago, writer/director Travis Mills read it and saw possibilities, and now my little pulp story has been transformed into a feature-length film, and you can see it for yourself on Amazon Prime Video—for free, if you’re an Amazon Prime member.
My Frequent Companion and I watched it last night, and while I rather doubt it’ll grab up a double handful of Oscar nominations, there’s a lot to like about Bride of Violence. It’s gripping and fast-moving, and delivers a good measure of shock and awe. So far six viewers have reviewed it on the Amazon site, and every one of them has given it five stars.
Over at the UK site, Eye For Film, Jennie Kermode weighs in with a thorough and thoughtful review. “Travis Mills’ adaptation of Lawrence Block’s short story is his strongest film to date,” she reports, “evoking a particular strain of Seventies horror rarely encountered today...This oddly atmospheric film suggests that Mills has finally found his voice.”
As the author of the original story, and as an Executive Producer of the film, I’ve every reason to urge y’all to see Bride of Violence. And if you’re a Prime member, it’s free.
And if you’re not, well, just click here and you can get yourself a free trial membership. (Given the amount of things I find to buy on Amazon, my own Prime membership pays for itself many times over, and that’s not counting the free video or other perks. But your mileage may vary—so a free trial takes all the risk out of the enterprise…plus you get to watch Bride of Violence.)
Hey—I’m an Executive Producer, remember? It’s part of my job description to urge you to watch the movie. Here’s a trailer. Here’s another. Enjoy!
There! That’s the lede, definitely uninterred. Now let’s follow it with what Paul Harvey might have called The Rest of the Story—a string of essentially unrelated items which I’ll number to provide the illusion of order and purpose:
1. Kit Tolliver goes Italian!
Kit Tolliver is the homicidal heroine of Getting Off; Hard Case Crime’s edition bore the subtitle “A Novel of Sex and Violence,” and nobody ever decried that as false 
advertising.
Meanwhile, readers of Italian have been keeping busy with Luigi Garlaschelli’s splendid translations. Along with his Scudder and Burglar titles, Luigi has turned his attention to Keller. The reception of Il Sicario has included an urgent call for more about the wistful hit man, and Luigi’s now at work on a translation of Hit List.
Meanwhile, Annalisa has moved on to another Hard Case original,The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes…
2. I’m on the radio with Wallace Stroby!
…and if you opened this newsletter as soon as it arrived, you may be in time to hear us. We’ll be on Pam Stack’s 
program, Authors on the Air, live at 2pm Eastern time Friday, October 26, which as I write this is 24 hours in the future.
I don’t know what Wallace and I will be talking about, but we’re fond enough of each other’s company to find something to say. He’s done a brand-new Crissa Stone story for my upcoming Subterranean Press anthology, At Home in the Dark, and if you know his work you won’t be surprised to hear that it’s terrific. (His new book is a stand-alone,Some Die Nameless, and it’s excellent, but I’d rather show you the cover of one of his Crissa Stone books, because I am absolutely crazy about its title.)
3. Keller’s coming to Germany!
Well, to the German language. Sepp Leeb, whose most recent Matthew Scudder translation is Die Blumen, sie sterben alle (aka All the Flowers Are Dying), has just delivered Kellers Metier (aka Hit Man). Within the next couple of weeks we hope to have it available for you in ebook and paperback form…and while my Goddess of Design and Production busies herself with making this 
happen, Sepp’s already moving on to the second book in the series. (That’s Hit List in English; we’ll have to decide on a title for the German edition.)
4. Sagen Sie etwas auf Deutsch, Herr Scudder!
In a recent newsletter, I seem to recall mentioning that I’d found a voice artist to launch Matthew Scudder into German audiobooks. Well, Richard Heinrich has delivered the first portion of Die Sünden der Väter, and I don’t have to understand German to appreciate the spot-on quality of his narration. I hope we’ll have the audiobook available for you soon, perhaps by the year’s end. And I hope Richard enjoys the process—and Matthew’s company—enough to work his way through the whole series.
5. I’ll be reading Sunday evening in Kew Gardens.
It’s a special Noir at the Bar project in aid of Duane and Meredith Swierczynski’s daughter, who’s recovering from a bone marrow transplant, at Kew and Willow Books, 81-63 Lefferts Blvd. I’ll be joining Megan Abbott, Rob Hart, Jason Starr, Alison Gaylin, Jordan Harper, Jill D.Block, Kellye Garrett, and there’ll be other events in other cities, so just click on the link and find a way to be there.
6. Oh, r@s, I buried the lede after all…
Well, not quite. But there’s another movie coming, based on another of my early short stories, and you’ll be able to watch it as of November 5 on iTunes, Amazon Prime Video, and Google Play. It’s entitled If Something Happens, and you can click and watch the trailer now.
And I’m ending this here and now, in the hope that I can actually get it to you before all of the above turns into Old News.
