Augustus Mandrell is coming back!
Back between 1965 and 1971, Frank McAuliffe brought out three collections of linked stories about an amazing international hit man and master of disguise named Augustus Mandrell. Another Mandrell book lay unpublished for more than forty years, scuttled, it is said, by the unfortunate coincidence of its title with the assassination of John F. Kennedy.Shoot the President, Are You Mad? will finally see the light of day in the first quarter of 2010, thanks to The Outfit, a new crime-fiction publisher headed by JT Lindroos and Sean Wallace. The book will take its place beside the first three Augustus Mandrell books: Of All the Bloody Cheek, Rather a Vicious Gentleman and For Murder I Charge More.
Here's what I wrote after reading Of All the Bloody Cheek:
"McAuliffe must be one of the slyest, hippest, funniest, sharpest, most satirically minded writers who has ever written crime fiction. He offers the reader thrills, surprise endings, laugh-out-loud jokes, and a memorable protagonist. Mandrell may remind you of the Saint or of James Bond, but he's deadpan funnier than both without being at all groaningly spoofy. And he's not all thrills and laughs, either. The third story in Of All the Bloody Cheek, for example, has a rather poignant moment just before its end."Read all my raves about Frank McAuliffe and Augustus Mandrell to learn why I'm so delighted that another book is on the way.
N.B. The forthcoming book is usually discussed under the title They Shoot Presidents, Don't They? but Lindroos says The Outfit is publishing it with the title McAuliffe intended.
© Peter Rozovsky 2009
Labels: Augustus Mandrell, Frank McAuliffe, JT Lindroos, Sean Wallace, The Outfit
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 4:44 PM
8 Comments:
This is great news.
Some of the best and most exciting crime-fiction news I've heard in a while, and certainly the best I've heard since I returned on Sunday from my first visit to Texas.
Peter
Conflating two of your previous posts: Wes Anderson, famous Houstonian, says that he was heavily influenced by Robert Bresson's Pickpocket, which of course is a crime film without a murder, or indeed any kind of big score.
I am open both to off-topic posts and conflation. Sit back, order a drink, and conflate away.
That would have been a distilled, intensified version of my question: Name crime stories that lack not just a murder, but a big score, payoff or heist. It would get readers -- OK, me -- thinking about what we mean when we talk about crime stories, if such thought is necessary.
Before he got precious Wes Anderson made one of my favourite films Bottle Rocket where the big score is a hilarious and unmitigated disaster. All filmed in and around Houston.
That sounds very much worth a rental, provided my current DVD-playing problems are not too serious. Still worth a rental even it they are, because a new player would be worth a purchase.
This is wonderful! I remember the first three books fondly.
Those three books were among my great discoveries of recent years. They're reminscent of other things going on in the 1960s, but there is nothing quite like them.
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