Oline Cogdill

madmen_jonhamm

Are you mad about Mad Men? I know I am. Although it has been off the air for 18 months, the AMC drama about a Madison Avenue advertising firm has hit the ground running. It airs at 10 p.m. Sundays on AMC.

Don Draper, you've been quite busy this past year and a half, haven't you?

Mad Men has now moved into 1966 and the series has renewed interest in the fashions, food, drink (lots of drinks, mind you) of the late 1950's through the mid 1960s. This past week I have seen several newspaper and magazine stories on the retro interests that have sprung up because of Mad Men, which stars Jon Hamm, at left, as the maddest man of all, Don Draper.

My question, of course, is what did they read?

And since Mad Men looks back at these eras with a bit of cynicism and a gimlet eye (a lot of gimlet eyes, if you ask me), let's look at what contemporary mystery writers have to say about that time frame.

Mystery Scene would love to hear from readers about their favorite mysteries from the 1950s-1960s or contemporary authors who set their stories during those years.

Meanwhile, here's a few to get you started:

James W. Hall: Magic City offers one of the best depictions of 1960s Miami. Although Magic City is part of Hall's series about Thorn, a reluctant detective who lives in the Keys, this novel is heavily rooted the Miami of 1964. In Magic City, Hall chronicles the beginnings of contemporary Miami. In 1964, “the tropical air is sugary with innocence and hope. Anything can happen. It is Magic City.” In 1964, Miami saw the Cassius Clay-Sonny Liston heavyweight-championship fight; the influx of Cuban refugees, and visits from the Beatles, famous actors and politicians who made the city “the center of the universe.” Hall richly delves into all of this.

grafton_isforundertowaudioSue Grafton: The Kinsey Millhone series is set firmly in the 1980s and, as the alphabet winds down has been moving toward 1990. So it's natural that some of the private detective's cases would originate in the 1950s and 1960s.

After all, the past's influence on the present is a reoccuring theme in mystery fiction. And we are talking about a character who, in the early books, drove a 1968 Volkswagen A few of Grafton's novels with roots in the '50s and '60s are "F" is for Fugitive; "Q" is for Quarry; "S" is for Silence; and "U" is for Undertow. For trivia buffs, Kinsey Millhone was born May 5, 1950. (Grafton was the subject of a Mystery Scene profile in issue No. 92, in 2005.)

Kris Nelscott: Her intriguing series about African-American P.I. Smokey Dalton is set in 1960s Memphis and Chicago. After too long an absence, Smokey returns in the series' seventh novel The Day After, scheduled to be published in 2012. Nelscott also writes at Kristine Kathryn Rusch, her real name.

Walter Mosley: The Easy Rawlins series began in post WWII Los Angeles and moved steadily through the 1950s and 1960s, including Cinnamon Kiss, Little Scarlet, Black Betty, and Bad Boy Brawley Brown. Mosley's series about mild-mannered bookseller Paris Minton and World War II hero Fearless Jones started in the mid 1950s: Fearless Jones, Fear Itself, and Fear of the Dark.

Megan Abbott: In an email, Abbott said that Queenpin is definitely early 1960s, although she never specifies the date.

And if you are interested in another view of the 1960s, check out Magic City on the Starz network. Magic City, which has no relationship to Hall's novel, is set in 1959 at a luxury hotel in Miami Beach. The rich, the mob, local criminals and the locals come to the hotel. I also am enjoying seeing on screen a number of area actors including Todd Allan Durkin, Ricky Waugh and Gregg Weiner.

Photo: Jon Hamm as Don Draper in Mad Men. AMC photo

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