Thursday, January 04, 2018

The Australian True Crime Writer Who Says She Can Now ‘Die Happy’






Art-World Giants Give $40,000 Grants to Three Poets - The New York Times 

Sue Grafton, 77, author of the Kinsey Millhone series, died of cancer at her home in Santa Barbara on December 28. The alphabetical series began with A is for Alibi in 1982 and continued through her last book, Y Is for Yesterday, published in August 2016. She had not yet begun writing the final book of the series, which was to be titled Z Is for Zero and published August 2019. Her daughter Jamie Clark wrote in a message on Grafton's Facebook page, "She was adamant that her books would never be turned into movies or TV shows, and in that same vein, she would never allow a ghost writer to write in her name. Because of all of those things, and out of the deep abiding love and respect for our dear sweet Sue, as far as we in the family are concerned, the alphabet now ends at Y."

Our news editor Sarah Weinman wrote a remembrance of the author for 
Vulture. Other crime writers paying tribute to Grafton included Laura LippmanJeff Abbott and, Meg Gardiner.
In a short piece, the New Yorker 
catches up with Walter Minton, 94, former president of Putnam, who "reminisced about the controversial novels he championed in his youth and the trials of getting them into print. Minton was dressed in slacks and a cardigan, with a thinning head of white hair; he still wears the trim, boxy beard that he adopted mid-career. He was thirty-one when he took over Putnam’s, in 1955, and the shelves of his living room offer a higgledy-piggledy tour of his route through twentieth-century publishing, from John le Carré to Mario Puzo to Scott Turow



The Australian True Crime Writer Who Says She Can Now ‘Die Happy’


Helen Garner, after James Wood praised her in The New Yorker: "I used to have all sorts of secret, spiteful feelings because I never won any prizes in Australia for my non-fiction. I put a lot of energy into acting like I didn’t care. I did, quite a lot. It has literary value and I have worked on it as hard as any fiction I’ve written. So I felt deeply gratified and relieved of enormous amounts of anxiety and mortification." … Read More



This inaugural unclassified report, produced by the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, highlights the way serious financial crimes are impacting on the Australian community.




Today Bill Ackman announced that Pershing Square was settling an insider trading securities class action. To quote:


Pershing Square and Valeant have agreed to split the $290 million total settlement such that Pershing Square will pay $193.75 million and Valeant will pay $96.25 million. 

But Mr Ackman seems to think that a settlement of approximately $200 million does not say anything at all about the legitimacy of the case. Again to quote:
“We continue to believe the case had absolutely no merit,” said Pershing Square CEO Bill Ackman. “We decided, however, that it was in the best interest of our investors to settle the case now instead of continuing to spend substantial time and resources pursuing the litigation.”
Herbalife - who previously settled a case for a roughly $200 million payment - is of course in full agreement.

I think it is the first time Mr Ackman and Herbalife have agreed on anything.

So let us savour it.

Via John HempTon of Bronte Capital fame

Agostino & Associates Monthly Journal of Tax Controversy Articles of Interest to Tax Crimes Enthusiasts

Tax Crimes enthusiasts should regularly read Agostino & Associates Monthly Journal of Tax Controversy.  The December 2010 edition, here ...

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service today announced the release of the Criminal Investigation Division’s (CI) annual report, reflecting significant accomplishments and criminal enforcement actions taken in fiscal year 2017.

Focusing on employment tax, refund fraud, international tax enforcement, tax-related identity theft, public corruption, cybercrime, terrorist financing and money laundering, CI initiated 3,019 cases in FY 2017.  The number of cases initiated is directly tied to the number of special agents that CI has.



Callas Singing ‘Tosca’ Is The Best Opera Recording Ever, And Here’s Why


Anthony Tommasini: "Even though it was done under studio conditions, Callas, Giuseppe di Stefano (as the idealistic Mario) and Tito Gobbi (as the villainous police chief Scarpia) are thrillingly alive and subtle for the towering maestro Victor de Sabata and the forces of the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. It’s hard to think of a recording of any opera that nails a work so stunningly, that seems so definitive." … Read More


Armed with new data, officials target ‘drug-dealing’ doctors W CVB