THE BICENTENNIAL BLOGGER

by Rob Lopresti

If you take a peek at the right hand column of this web page, under Filed Briefs, you will discover that this is my 200th entry here and furthermore, that due to a combination of hard work, diligence, and rugged good looks I am the first of our little band to reach that impressive level. I have spent a while pondering how to celebrate and decided to look at the mystery field in chunks of 200, so to speak. (Call this my humble salute to the Eames’ masterpiece Powers of Ten).

200 days ago…

On August 14, 2010, John Floyd brightened this space with a piece about sixteen of his favorite underappreciated books and movies. He also included the answers from one of his famous quizzes on movie quotes, including this favorite. It’s not a crime movie, but boy, the line is cold enough to belong in noir:

I’m sorry we won’t be able to invite you to the wedding, Benjamin, but the arrangements have been so rushed.

THE GRADUATE (Anne Bancroft, to Dustin Hoffman)

200 weeks ago…

The first week of May, 2007 the Publisher’s Weekly bestseller list featured:

The Woods by Harlan Coben

The Good Husband of Zebra Drive by Alexander McCall Smith

I Heard That Song Before by Mary Higgins Clark

The paperback bestseller list included titles by Lee Child, Patricia Cornwell, Janet Evanovich with Leanne Banks, Jonathan Kellerman, Elizabeth Lowell, James Patterson with Andrew Gross, J.D. Robb, John Sanford, and once again, Mary Higgins Clark and Harlan Coben.

200 months ago…

In June 1994 the big mystery news was that John Grisham’s The Chamber had hit number 1 on the bestseller list the week of its release.

200 years ago…

1811 was the year of release for that classic, The Mysterious Hand; or, Subterranean Horrours! by Augustus Jacob Crandolph. Okay, maybe classic is too strong a word. But this gothic novel features an attempted rape in hot air balloon, the framing of the hero for murder, and an island rigged with explosives, all plotted by a villain inspired by getting a bad review of his book of poetry. Now, that’s a bad guy I understand.

200 decades ago…

I’m glad you asked. The year 10 a.d. was a good year for arms control in China when that sneaky usurper Wang Mang outlawed the private ownership of crossbows. In 14 a.d. the first Roman emperor, Augustus, died. If you read I, Claudius by Robert Graves you know that the years on either side of that event were marked by just about every crime that had yet been invented, including more murders than you could shake a stick at.

200 centuries ago…

Now you.re talking real mysteries.

Thanks for putting up with me for all these weeks. See you again in slightly less than 200 hours.