The death in January 2012 of Reginald Hill, at the age of 75, has robbed crime fiction of a towering figure, one of the outstanding British mystery writers of the past half century.

Reg—as he was universally known—will be remembered most widely for his series of novels featuring “Mid-Yorkshire’s finest,” that splendid odd couple of cops, Andy Dalziel and Peter Pascoe. They made their debut in Reg’s first published novel, A Clubbable Woman, which was published under the Collins Crime Club imprint back in 1970. Incidentally, throughout his long career, Reg remained with the same publisher and same literary agent. He was also married to Pat (her maiden name was Patricia Ruell, hence one of his pseudonyms, Patrick Ruell) for more than 50 years. Nobody could deny that Reg epitomized loyalty.

Reg’s mother was a detective fiction fan, but in his early days, most British crime writers were based in London and the Home Counties. He came from a perhaps unglamorous background—his father was a professional soccer player for Hartlepool United long before footballers became highly paid—but hard work and a sharp mind took him to St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, and he later pursued a career in academe. He tried his hand at poetry, and one or two of his poems reflected his interest in crime, before he tackled a novel and embarked on a path as a pioneer of realistic, high-quality crime fiction written, and usually set, in the North of England.

Fell of Dark was a thriller set in the Lake District which he wrote before A Clubbable Woman, although it was published after that book. From then on, Reg got into a rhythm, alternating between his main series and other books, and he believed strongly that varying his approach in this way helped keep his series fresh. Inevitably, the success of the Dalziel and Pascoe books led to pressure to produce them one after another, but he did his best to resist the conveyor belt approach—not because he was dissatisfied with the series, but because he was determined not to compromise his standards and slip into a formula.

He was astonishingly prolific, producing no fewer than 17 novels in his first decade as a published writer, while holding down a job as a lecturer in a college that provided him with background for the second Dalziel and Pascoe book, An Advancement of Learning. The switch of settings (their first appearance concerned a case involving a Yorkshire rugby club, their second the comparatively genteel academic world) reflected the contrast in the two men’s natures. Dalziel was rough and ready, coarse and fat—yet a brilliant detective who was also capable of great wisdom. Pascoe was the sensitive liberal, married with a small child, and sometimes shocked by his boss’ behavior and attitudes. Reg readily acknowledged that, up to a point, the characters reflected contrasting strands of his own personality. He was an erudite and cultured man, but he was also keen on rugby and the outdoor life, and enjoyed a belly laugh as much as a subtle shaft of wit.

I first met Reg and Pat at the inaugural meeting of the Northern Chapter of the Crime Writers’ Association, at Boroughbridge in North Yorkshire in 1987. At that time, I was working on my first novel, and was eligible for membership only on the strength of nonfiction that I’d published. I didn’t know any crime writers, and approached that meeting with much trepidation. But I was lucky: the people there could not have been kinder to me. It was a small gathering—Reg dubbed us “the few”—but it included not only Reg and Pat, but another doyen of the genre who would, like Reg, go on to win the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger, Robert Barnard, and his wife Louise, as well as Peter Walker, whose books sourced Heartbeat, one of the most commercially successful British television series of the past 20 years, and Peter and Margaret Lewis, distinguished biographers of Eric Ambler and Ngaio Marsh, respectively. All very memorable and exciting for a writer (and passionate crime fan) at the start of his career.

From then on, Reg offered me a great deal of encouragement. He named me in a magazine interview as the most promising new writer he’d come across, and he readily agreed to contribute a short story to the first anthology that I edited. This was Northern Blood, which members of the Northern Chapter put together in 1992. We shared a love of short stories, and Reg contributed to many of the anthologies that I edited in later years. “On the Psychiatrist’s Couch,” included in Whydunit?, won the CWA Short Story Dagger, an award he’d won once before. “Game of Dog,” another superb tale, was his contribution to the CWA’s Golden Jubilee anthology, and he allowed me to reprint the brilliant “The Rio de Janeiro Paper” in Crime in the City. Most recently, he wrote the utterly absorbing “Where Are All the Naughty People?” for Original Sins. Despite the many calls on his time, he never once failed to respond to a request for a story—not offering something competent yet ordinary pulled from the bottom drawer, but stories that were original and enormously enjoyable. He also found time to write a wonderful introduction to Where Do You Find Your Ideas?, my own gathering of short stories.

His friends and fans were naturally delighted when news came that Dalziel and Pascoe would be seen on television. The books were to be brought to the small screen by Yorkshire Television, which seemed ideal. Anticipation turned to anxiety when it emerged that the comedians Hale and Pace had been cast in the lead roles. Many would say that, even as comedians, Hale and Pace were not really in the first division—possibly not in the second division, either. And as actors….

At a conference in Brighton when the first episode was being made, the Hills confided their doubts. But still one hoped that the adaptation of A Pinch of Snuff—a story with an unorthodox and elaborate plot—would be a success.

The Northern Chapter of the CWA has, ever since that very first meeting, been a convivial and cohesive group, and as well as regular lunches, members have often organized weekend get-togethers in pleasant parts of the region. Reg and Pat were responsible for setting up some of the best of them and I vividly remember a weekend at a Windermere hotel which coincided with the first showing (on a Saturday evening but scheduled at a suspiciously late hour) of the Hale and Pace interpretation of A Pinch of Snuff. Reg made it quite clear that we should all be drinking with him at the bar rather than sneaking up to our rooms and watching the show on the telly. But when we finally returned home and saw the recordings, our worst fears were realized.

Luckily, Reg managed to terminate his contract with Yorkshire Television, and entered into a new deal with the BBC, who engaged high-quality scriptwriters such as Alan Plater and Malcolm Bradbury and cast two fine actors, Warren Clarke and Colin Buchanan, in the key roles. Reg invited me to the screening for the press at the Royal Society for the Arts in London, and I took the day off work to travel down: the occasion was great fun, and it was immediately obvious that the BBC had got the characters and story lines right. The rest is history: Dalziel and Pascoe became a fixture on British screens for years and also enjoyed popularity overseas. But this success, very welcome as it was, did not affect Reg. He regarded what happened on the TV as wholly separate from what happened in the books and he wanted to focus on continuing to write the best novels of which he was capable without distraction. Much as he admired the actors’ work, he once said he’d stopped watching the later series, which were no longer based on his own books.

Dalziel and Pascoe, the second attempt at a British TV
series based on HIll’s novels, was a solid hit. It first
aired in 1996 and ran for 12 series. Above: Dalziel
(Warren Clarke) and Pascoe (Colin Buchanan). © BBC

As a result of this commitment to continuing quality in his own work, and an absolute refusal to compromise on standards, his books became even better as the years passed. He experimented regularly, at one point sending Dalziel and Pascoe into space in One Small Step, as well as belatedly recording their very first encounter in “The Last National Serviceman.” Bones and Silence was a worthy winner of the CWA Gold Dagger but some of his other titles were equally impressive. The stunningly clever Dialogues of the Dead is one example, while its followup, Death’s Jest-Book, is another. Recalled to Life, On Beulah Height, and Pictures of Perfection are among my other favorites. One of his books—I cannot name it for fear of spoiling the pleasure of those who haven’t read it yet—tells you the name of the culprit in the first paragraph. But the clue is so ingeniously concealed that it would take an especially astute reader to spot it. Reg Hill believed in strong and intricate plotting, and at times his cleverness would have had Agatha Christie gasping in admiration.

His non-series books are sometimes underestimated, and this is a pity. The Only Game is a gripping thriller with a cunning plot twist, while The Stranger House was set in the Lake District, an area he and Pat loved and whose character and charm he evoked with his customary skill. After Reg retired from the world of education to concentrate on writing full-time, he and Pat had moved from Yorkshire to Ravenglass on the west coast of Cumbria, and Reg would regularly tramp across the fells.

He made terrific use of his knowledge of Cumbria in the last book he published before he died. The Woodcutter is one of his finest books, and what is so remarkable given that Reg was then well into his seventies, and had published about four dozen novels, is its energy and power. The story of the rise, fall, and rise again of the formidable Wolf Hadda has echoes of The Count of Monte Cristo, but with a difference. As ever, this zestful thriller is packed with the witty lines that were the author’s hallmark.

Reg was appointed Chair of the CWA Diamond Dagger Nominations Sub-Committee a few years after he won that most prestigious award. He asked me to join him and I soon discovered that it was a committee of just two. Reg didn’t really believe in committees and endless debates that never reach a conclusion, and as I didn’t either, all went very smoothly. We found the task one on which we could reach an amiable consensus each year, as a prelude to a long conversation about writing and life in general. I treasure the memory of those discussions. It was always fun, as well as an education, to talk to Reg.

I mentioned his generosity and a couple of instances spring to mind from the last two occasions we spent much time together over the past couple of years. We had lunch during the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival with a major publisher who was interested in revamping the CWA anthology and wanted Reg to be named as editor. He said he wouldn’t do it unless he and I could do it jointly and that I received the same credit as him—despite the fact that, of course, my name was much less of a draw than his. And then, the last time we had dinner together as members of the Detection Club he mentioned that he’d been approached by a TV production company who wanted him to help them with a series set in the Lakes. He told them he wasn’t interested but recommended that they talk to me about adapting my books for television. And so they did. Even though those discussions haven’t come to anything as yet, I will always appreciate that act of kindness. Typical of Reg Hill: a fine person, as well as a fine writer.

A REGINALD HILL READING LIST

Dalziel & Pascoe Novels
A Clubbable Woman (1970)*
An Advancement of Learning (1971)
Ruling Passion (1973)
An April Shroud (1975)
A Pinch of Snuff (1978)
A Killing Kindness (1980)
Deadheads (1983)
Exit Lines (1984)
Child’s Play (1987)
Under World (1988)
Bones and Silence (1990)
One Small Step (1990), novella
Recalled to Life (1992)
Pictures of Perfection (1994)
The Wood Beyond (1995)
Asking for the Moon (1996), ss
On Beulah Height (1998)
Arms and the Women (1999)
Dialogues of the Dead (2002)
Death’s Jest-Book (2003)
Good Morning Midnight (2004)
The Death of Dalziel (2007), US: Death Comes for the Fat Man
A Cure for All Diseases (2008), US: The Price of Butcher’s Meat
Midnight Fugue (2009)
Final series novel (2013)

Joe Sixsmith Novels
Blood Sympathy (1993)
Born Guilty (1995)
Killing the Lawyers (1997)
Singing the Sadness (1999)
The Roar of the Butterflies (2008)

Other Crime Novels
Fell of Dark (1971)
A Fairly Dangerous Thing (1972)
A Very Good Hater (1974)
Another Death in Venice (1976)
The Spy’s Wife (1980)
Who Guards a Prince? (1982)
Traitor’s Blood (1983)
Guardians of the Prince (1983)
No Man’s Land (1985)
The Collaborators (1987)
The Stranger House (2005)
The Woodcutter (2010)

Writing as Patrick Ruell
The Castle of the Demon (1971), aka The Turning of the Tide
Red Christmas (1972)
Death Takes the Low Road (1974), aka The Low Road
Beyond the Bone (1975), aka Urn Burial
The Long Kill (1986)
Death of A Dormouse (1987)
Dream of Darkness (1989)
The Only Game (1991)

Writing as Dick Morland
Heart Clock (1973), aka Matlock’s System
Albion! Albion! (1974), aka Singleton’s Law

Writing as Charles Underhill
Captain Fantom (1978)
The Forging of Fantom (1978)

Collections
Pascoe’s Ghost: And Other Brief Chronicles of Crime (1979)
There Are No Ghosts in the Soviet Union (1987)
Brother’s Keeper (1992)

*Dates are UK publication

This article first appeared in Mystery Scene Spring Issue #124.

One can search the entire annals of crime and mystery fiction and find no lead character as unpleasant, as morally ambiguous, or as downright disturbing as the "Mystery Man of New York,” Randolph Mason.

Can’t recall Randolph Mason?

Like his namesake Perry, Randolph Mason is a brilliant defense attorney. Unlike Erle Stanley Gardner’s courtroom hero, though, he is an unscrupulous, antisocial, abusive, and amoral man who is not only hated and feared by his peers and opponents, but is similarly regarded by his own clients, whom he regularly berates. Physically ugly, with a sneering face that alternately reflects fearlessness, cunning, or brutality, depending upon the angle from which it is seen, Mason is known as “the Man of Last Resort” because of his genius for finding loopholes within the law through which his guilty-as-sin clients can crawl to freedom.

Such a character is startling enough in a world where readers have grown accustomed to protagonists who battle as many personal demons as the antagonists, while watching on television the antics of today’s real-life celebrity defense attorneys, who play more to the media than the bench. But the shocking truth about Randolph Mason is that he first appeared in print over one hundred years ago.

Randolph Mason was the first popular creation of a criminal and corporate lawyer-turned-writer named Melville Davisson Post (1869-1930). While virtually forgotten today, Post was a highly regarded crime writer of the era, so much so that no less an authority than Anthony Boucher proclaimed his “Uncle Abner” stories, featuring a Virginian sage whose last name was as elusive as Lt. Columbo’s first, to be “the best American detective short stories since Poe.”

Mason’s first appearance was in the 1896 volume The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason, which immediately gained notoriety because of one particular story: “The Corpus Delicti,” which remains after all these years one of the most cynically gruesome tales ever penned by a mainstream author. In “Corpus Delicti,” Mason’s client is Richard Warren, a murderer and impostor who has killed a wealthy man in order to steal both his identity and his wife. That woman, however, is threatening to expose him on the eve of his marriage to another. Upon consultation, Mason tells Warren that the solution to his problem is quite simple: he must kill the troublesome wife. But to escape punishment he must dismember the woman’s body and then dissolve the pieces in a chemical solution in the bathtub! Mason callously assures Warren that if he follows his instructions to the letter, the law will not be able to touch him.

Warren does so, reducing his former common-law wife to “only a swimming mass in the tub,” and based on evidence of overheard threats, bloody clothes, a knife, and even a near-confession, he is arrested for the crime. The prosecution’s case is seen as a virtual slam dunk until Mason asks the state to produce the body of the victim, which of course, it cannot. The defense attorney reminds the court that, under the current law, a man cannot be convicted of murder if there is no evidence of a body. The irate judge has no choice but to set the two-time killer free so he can happily marry his beautiful new wife (who, one hopes, has better luck than the prior one).

Outrage over “The Corpus Delicti” made The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason, in Post’s own words, “a dangerous book.” But there was method to the author’s callousness. Based on his experience as an attorney, Post believed many of the laws of the land to be flawed and riddled with holes. He furthermore felt that these flaws could only be corrected through public exposure, so by creating Randolph Mason he was offering the reading public an example of the kind of scoundrel that should be confounded at all costs. “Against these [attorneys] the average man of affairs can defend himself but poorly,” Post wrote. “He may be warned, however, and the author will have accomplished his purpose if he succeeds in identifying the black flag of such pirate crafts.”

Post’s strange scheme paid off: “The Corpus Delicti” is said to have prompted actual reform in the law regarding evidence in a murder case.

Even though none of the other stories in The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason are as shocking or gruesome as “The Corpus Delicti,” they all depict a protagonist fighting a losing battle against insanity and struggling for his mortal soul. In one story, “The Men of the Jimmy,” a judge describes Mason as “a master mind moved by Satanic impulse.” By the time of another story, “The Animus Furandi,” Mason is a broken man, having failed in a major case involving the French syndicate, as well as a broke one, having lost his wealth. The closest thing to a friend in the world is his loyal secretary, Courtland Parks, a melancholy clerk who tries to build his ruined employer back up by securing clients.

Mason’s illness is even more pronounced in the second volume of stories, Man of Last Resort, or The Clients of Randolph Mason (1897). The lawyer only makes token appearances in these tales and when he does surface, he is depicted as ailing, weak, and old-looking, even though he is in only in his mid-40s. What he lacks in page count, however, Mason more than makes up with vitriolic behavior. In the story “Mrs. Van Bartan,” for instance, the lawyer is so abusive to his client, who likens him to the devil, that he nearly drives her away. Mason is completely absent from the volume’s final story, “The Rule Against Carper,” but is said by a doctor to be so deeply in the grips of mania that not even two hypodermics of morphine can stop his raving.

After Clients, Randolph Mason disappeared for more than a decade, and in that time Post seems to have decided that he had pushed his character as deeply into hell as was possible, because when Mason finally did return in 1908, in a new collection of stories titled Corrector of Destinies, he was a changed man. While still gruff and impatient, the reformed Randolph Mason had conquered his mania and had not only developed a moral code, but had managed to acquire some manners. This Mason was now a righter of wrongs and an avenger of injustice, more of an early Simon Templar than a latter-day Simon Legree. A measure of Mason’s change of heart can be found in the story “The Pennsylvania Pirate,” in which he turns the tables on a con man who is trying to cheat the owners of oil-rich property out of their land. Mason goes so far as to rebuke the con man’s attorney for even thinking of filing a shady lawsuit. “Such a suit would be founded on a moral wrong,” Mason tells him. “If the law permitted this wrong, would your conscience permit it?” This is a far cry from the man who once declared, “The word ‘moral’ is a purely metaphysical symbol.”

The most interesting thing about the new Randolph Mason is his decidedly Holmesian demeanor (though he did have a brief Sherlock-esque moment in the novella “Once in Jeopardy,” from The Clients of Randolph Mason, in which he barked to a client: “Give me the facts just as they occurred. You may reserve your melodrama for purposes of copyright”). In Corrector of Destinies Mason is back on his feet financially and conducting business out of a run-down mansion on Broadway, near Wall Street, which was willed to him by a former client. He shares the house with two Italian servants: a man named Pietro, whom Mason actually likes, and Pietro’s wife Francesca.

The voice of the stories has changed as well in the later volume. Whereas there was no official narrator of the earlier Mason tales, in Corrector of Destinies Mason’s exploits are faithfully recorded and recounted by Courtland Parks, who has similarly undergone a personality transformation from the somber, resigned man of the earlier stories to a gregarious New York socialite. Parks is now less a secretary than a general assistant and legman; something of a cross between Dr. Watson and a prototype of Nero Wolfe’s Archie Goodwin. One more Sherlockian parallel can be found in the story “The Intriguer,” which chronicles how all of Mason’s careful plotting was completely undone by a clever and strong-willed woman—shades of Irene Adler!

After Corrector of Destinies, Post abandoned Mason altogether and concentrated instead on his Uncle Abner series for the Saturday Evening Post and a separate series featuring Sir Henry Marquis, “the sleuth of St. James Square.” But the Mystery Man of New York remains a truly fascinating, if rather frightening, character, and even though Post’s stories have long been out of print, any reader of today who is seeking a rare and unconventional peek into the darker side of the human psyche, circa 1900, would be well served by finding a copy of the strange adventures of Randolph Mason.

This article first appeared in Mystery Scene Fall Issue #91.

Alfred Hitchcock has never been hotter.

His 1958 masterpiece Vertigo has been named the No. 1 film of all time by Britain’s Sight & Sound poll, bumping off perennial favorite Citizen Kane.

Hitchcock himself has been the subject of two bio-pics – HBO’s dreadful The Girl, about the filming of The Birds and Marnie, and now the highly entertaining, often funny Hitchcock.

Hitchcock, which opens Nov. 23 in Los Angeles and New York markets and in general release on Dec. 7, is, on the surface, about the making of Psycho and the controversy surrounding the film.

But Hitchcock also is the story of Alma Reville Hitchcock, who was as much of a partner in her husband’s work as well as being his devoted but often frustrated spouse; of Hitchcock’s demons and fears that always threatened to overwhelm him; and of a moment in film history when audiences really could expect the unexpected.

Hitchcock was, to say the least, an odd person, as shown in Donald Spoto’s 1999 biography and in The Girl, directed by Julian Jarrold. Controlling, vengeful, fearful, obsessive, witty, voyeuristic were just a few of his personality quirks, and quite possibly his better traits.

But while Spoto and Jarrold emphasized the negative, Hitchcock shows a more three-dimensional man, a director who made nearly flawless films; who was capable of ruining—and making—an actor’s career and who had the insight to perfectly cast his enthralling movies.

Credit Hitchcock’s director Sacha Gervasi, making his debut, as well as the brilliant performances by Anthony Hopkins as Hitchcock and Helen Mirren as his wife, Alma.

The superb acting and efficient directing completely immerse the audience in this enthralling tale about a unique couple and the making of a landmark movie. Hitchcock is based on the book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho by Stephen Rebello.

Hitchcock opens with the director in a gloomy mood having just seen some of his greatest commercial successes with the 1959 North by Northwest and the long-running television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

But you’re only as good as your next success and Hitch, as he prefers to be called in one of the film’s ongoing jokes, has no idea what that will be. Nothing excites him; he’s just passed on Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale as “more of the same spy stuff;” and, at 60, he’s mad that the studio and others see him as old.

Hitch is the definition of eating your emotions as he indulges in late-night refrigerator raids of rich food and wine that would feed a family. His wife Alma wants him to lose weight.

The director finally finds inspiration in the oddest of places – Robert Bloch’s novel Psycho based on the true story of Wisconsin murderer Ed Gein. The novel’s sense of the macabre and Gein’s obsessive nature appeal to Hitch. But he alone believes in the project.

The novel is shocking to 1959 sensibilities and overtly bloody. His agent doesn’t want him to do it and certainly not the head of Paramount Studio, so Hitch does the unthinkable—he pays for the project himself. The couple puts their Bel-Air home on the line to foot the entire $800,000 movie, a sum that might buy one or two days of filming today.

While the making of Psycho forms the plot’s foundation, the heart of Hitchcock is the relationship between Hitch and Alma.

Unlike The Girl which made Alma out to be a passive, meek voyeur, Hitchcock shows Alma to be the director’s true partner, a strong woman quite aware of everything going on around her. Alma often was credited as a screenwriter and always worked as a story adviser and editor for Hitch as well as sitting in on casting. But Alma also has grown weary of always being in the background and of Hitch’s fantasies about his blond stars. When Alma starts to work on her own script, Hitch is pushed to his limits.

Anthony Hopkins gives more than his usual spot-on performance as Alfred Hitchcock. Nearly unrecognizable under the expert make-up job, Hopkins inhabits the director’s heart and soul, showing a deeply flawed, yet brilliant man whose greatest battle is not with the conservative studios or the “cool blondes” but with himself and his obsessions.

As good as Hopkins is, Mirren steals every scene with her calm controlled acting and her mesmerizing characterization of Alma. Although she doesn’t physically resemble Alma, Mirren shows how the director’s wife must have had a spine of steel and abundant compassion that allowed the couple to survive in Hollywood.

Both Mirren and Hopkins give performances worthy of Oscar nominations.

Scarlett Johansson shimmers and shines as Janet Leigh who sees Psycho as a breakout film, but has no idea what she is getting into. Johansson’s Leigh comes off as an exceedingly nice woman, devoted to her career but in love with her family. That Hitch meets her when she already is married to Tony Curtis and the mother of two little girls saves her from Hitch’s more prurient obsessions.

That wasn’t the case with Vera Miles, quietly and beautifully played by Jessica Biel. Hitch proclaimed Miles to be “the new Grace Kelly,” put her under personal contract and cast her opposite Henry Fonda in The Wrong Man. Miles was to have been the lead in Vertigo, but her pregnancy caused too many delays and opened the door for Kim Novak. Hitch never forgave that Miles choose motherhood and her husband over stardom, which is made painfully obvious in Hitchcock.

The rest of the casting is equally impressive, each giving flawless performances. Toni Collette excels as Peggy Robertson, Hitch’s loyal secretary/assistant. James D’Arcy illustrates the uncertainness and nervous energy that earned Anthony Perkins his role of Norman Bates.

Danny Huston is his usual wonderfully smarmy self as ambitious scriptwriter Whitfield Cook, who had contributed to the scripts of Hitchcock's Stage Fright and Strangers on a Train. But Gein’s (a creepy Michael Wincott) frequent appearances to Hitch are unnecessary and bog down an otherwise solid movie.

While obsessive behavior and a serial killer make for good drama, Hitchcockalso is full of droll wit, courtesy of Hitch’s self-deprecating humor and his macabre comedy. The humor and the drama are perfectly balanced with neither overshadowing the other.

In addition to the Hitchcocks’ relationship, Hitchcock also is a movie about the making of a movie. Like the brilliant 1992 The Player, Hitchcock manages to make the behind the scenes machinations of studio politics, censorship, scriptwriting and filming exciting. While Paramount Studios reluctantly honored its obligation to release the film, the studio tried to squash Psycho by showing the “horror movie claptrap” in only two movie houses.

But Hitch also was a master of marketing and knew how to create a buzz by making something forbidden and exclusive. One of the most intriguing and funny aspects of Hitchcock is how he devised a booklet telling movie theater owners how to show Psycho, that no one would be admitted after the movie started and that cops should be hired to calm the crowds. Hitch’s literal orchestration of this humorously brings in the audiences by the droves.

The only thing missing from Hitchcock are actual scenes from Psycho, but legal restrictions prevented any actual footage from being used.

Still, Hitchcock wonderfully shows us what all the fuss was about and will make audiences want to see the original Psycho again. That of course would be the one with Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins. Please, skip the dreadful 1998 version with Anne Heche and Vince Vaughn.

Hitch had nothing to do with that remake, and neither should you.

PHOTOS: From top, Scarlett Johansson, Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren; Hopkins, Johansson and James D’Arcy; Mirren and Hopkins; Hopkins; Hopkins, Johansson and D’Arcy; Jessica Biel

Photos courtesy Fox Searchlight

Rated PG-13 for some violent images, sexual content and thematic material.

Harry O: The Complete First Season
Warner Archive, $59.99, 6-disc set

If Peter Gunn was the cool private eye, Harry O was the grumpy, cantankerous, uncool everyman, a misfit Eeyore (played with an gruff panache by David Janssen), limping along the sun-bleached beaches of SoCal, looking for answers he’d never find. Harry was so uncool he didn’t even have a car for much of his show’s run—he would take the bus. The bus! Harry O: The Complete First Season brings together the first year of one of the all-time great private-eye series, second only to (and at times surpassing) its contemporary, The Rockford Files. This tight, evocative drama aimed for a sustained melancholia and world-weary compassion that, in its own way, played as fast and loose with genre rules as Jimbo did, while coming about as close as television has ever come to the poetry of Chandler. Rockford could make you laugh; Harry could make you cry.

In Plain Sight: Season Five
Universal Studios, $29.98, 2 discs

Often dismissed as a wayward Lifetime movie, In Plain Sight: Season Five is a neglected gem from the USA Network that has—despite occasional dips into soap opera territory—proven to be one of the most complex and rewarding character studies of a woman in recent television history. Sure, the will they/won’t they romance between hard-nosed US Marshall Mary Shannon (Mary McCormack) and her dopey, erudite partner Marshall Mann (Frederick Weller), at the Albuquerque branch of the Witness Protection Program, gets unnecessarily cute at times, and certainly the endless squabbles among Mary’s dysfunctional family fairly drip with mawkishness, but at its dark, hard core, this show’s all about how the lives of everyday citizens can take random and terrifying turns. Even the final season’s at-times-sitcom-ready pregnancy arc, and its predictable themes of redemption and growth, can’t ward off the surprising emotional wallop of the final episodes. A witty, smart finale to a consistently engaging and often excellent crime drama.

Breaking Bad: The Complete Fourth Season
Sony, $55.99, 4-disc boxed set

Breaking Bad: The Complete Fourth Season is the ultimate finale to one of the most addictive crime shows ever, a morality play played out against the crystal-meth underworld that bypasses right and wrong completely and takes us straight to hell, with brief pit stops to admire all the good intentions, as family man and former high school chemistry teacher Walter White (Bryan Cranston) squares off against his drug-lord boss for control of the lucrative meth market. This DVD set features every episode of the award-winning season, including the jaw-dropping final episode, 60 minutes so explosively audacious and right that viewers were left stunned. Followed almost immediately as it was by the news that this was not the series’ conclusion, you’ve just got to wonder what on earth series creator Vince Gilligan can possibly do for an encore.

Features

Michael Connelly: 20 Years with Harry Bosch

Harry Bosch’s latest case takes him full circle to a murder that occurred during the Los Angeles riots of 1992.
by Oline H. Cogdill

The Thin Man Returns

The stylish duo of Nick and Nora Charles return in two long-lost novellas by Dashiell Hammett.
by Scott K. Ratner

Judicial Oversight

A roundup of current legal thrillers and courtroom procedurals.
by Jon L. Breen

Gormania

Often overlooked, these actors add style, heart, and humanity to any film they grace.
by Ed Gorman

Gifts for Mystery Lovers

Fiendishly fun books, DVDs, jewelry, clothing, and games.
by Kevin Burton Smith

A Way Through the Maze: Stephen Sondheim and The Mystery

The renowned composer and lyricist is also a longtime connoisseur of the mystery and his oeuvre reflects it.
by Joseph Goodrich

“The Dickens of Detroit” Mystery Crossword

by Verna Suit

Departments

At the Scene

by Kate Stine

Mystery Miscellany

by Louis Phillips

Hints & Allegations

Dagger Awards, Shamus Awards, and Anthony Awards.

The Hook

First Lines That Caught Our Attention

New Books

Dark Lie
by Nancy Springer

Death of a Furry Animal
by JoAnna Carl

Reviews

Small Press Reviews: Covering the Independents

by Betty Webb

Very Original: Paperback Originals Reviewed

by Lynne Maxwell & Hank Wagner

What About Murder? Reference Books Reviewed

by Jon L. Breen

Sounds of Suspense: Audiobooks Reviewed

by Dick Lochte

Short & Sweet: Short Stories Considered

by Bill Crider

Mystery Scene Reviews

Miscellaneous

The Docket

Letters

Our Readers Recommend

MS Online

Advertising Info

Advertiser Index