Bullet Points: Finally, a Mother’s Day Edition

• Author Harper Lee passed away more than a year ago, but the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction lives on. As Mystery Fanfare notes, this commendation—“established in 2011 by the University of Alabama School of Law and the ABA Journal to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird”—“is given annually to a book-length work of fiction that best illuminates the role of lawyers in society and their power to effect change.” Chosen from among 25 entries, the three finalists are:

— Gone Again, by James Grippando (Harper)
— The Last Days of Night, by Graham Moore (Random House)
— Small Great Things, by Jodi Picoult (Ballantine)

A panel of four judges has been tasked with choosing the ultimate winner, though the results of an online public poll are also to be weighed in the final decision. You can vote for your favorite among the three books above by clicking here; voting will remain open until Friday, June 30, at 11:59 p.m. CT. (At last check, Grippando’s Gone Again was leading this reader survey.) I don’t see a specific date on which the award is to be presented, but a press release says it will be handed out at the University of Alabama School of Law “for the first time. The winner will be announced prior to the ceremony and will receive a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird signed by Harper Lee.”

• Although I don’t know how she keeps up the energy to do this, B.V. Lawson produces an excellent and consistent weekly wrap-up of crime-fiction-related news in her blog, In Reference to Murder. On occasion, I feel the need to poach interesting things from those columns, such as these two successive items:

Dr. Mary Brown, writing for The Scotsman, made the case for neglected author John Buchan, only known today because of his First World War adventure story, The Thirty-Nine Steps, and his great character, Major-General Sir Richard Hannay. However, Edinburgh-based publisher ­Polygon recently announced plans for a new installment, with Dundee-born author Robert J. ­Harris
penning the continuation novel The Thirty-One Kings, [due for release this coming October], the first new Hannay book for more than 80 years. If successful, a series featuring Major-General Hannay could follow.

While we’re on the subject of continuation novels, New Zealand author Stella Duffy talked about the tricky art of completing an abandoned Ngaio Marsh mystery novel [the 1940s Roderick Alleyn tale Money in the Morgue].

• Mike Ripley’s May edition of his Shots column, “Getting Away with Murder,” includes remarks about a wide variety of intriguing subjects: Lee Child’s collection of Jack Reacher short stories, No Middle Name (set to go on sale this week); the TV series based on Ken Bruen’s Jack Taylor tales; new works by James Runcie, Tony Park, Dennis Lehane, and Steve Cavanagh; a posthumous James Bond-inspired novel by Donald E. Westlake, and much more. Read all about it here.

• With a sixth Mission: Impossible film currently in production (and due for wide release in July 2018), The Spy Command’s Bill Koenig posts a short retrospective on the man “without whom none of it would be impossible, M:I creator Bruce Geller.” He writes: “Geller died almost four decades ago in a crash of a twin-engine aircraft. It was a sudden end for someone who had brought two popular series to the air (M:I and Mannix) that ran a combined 15 years on CBS. [Geller] was a renaissance man capable of writing, producing, directing and song writing.” Click here to learn more about Geller.

• The Verge reports that California writer Andy Weir, who made it big with his debut science-fiction novel, The Martian (adapted as a 2015 movie of the same name), is coming out in November of this year with a second book—a crime thriller set on Earth’s moon, titled Artemis (Crown). That lunar environment has backdropped previous works of mystery and mayhem (think Anthony O’Neill’s The Dark Side, for instance, or Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s The Retrieval Artist). However, The Verge’s Andrew Liptak says Weir is “hoping for blockbuster success” with Artemis, which he says focuses on “a young woman named Jasmine Bashara (known as Jazz), who lives in the Moon’s only city, Artemis. If you’re not wealthy, living there isn’t easy, and she gets by as a smuggler. When she comes across the chance to commit the perfect crime, she steps into a bigger struggle for control of the city.” Film rights to Artemis have already been purchased.

• Also from The Verge comes this: BBC-TV is planning “a three-part series based on H.G. Wells’ [1898] novel, The War of the Worlds:

The show is scheduled to go into production next spring, and it appears that, unlike most modern adaptations, it will be set in the Victorian era. The series will be written by screenwriter Peter Hartness, who adapted Susanna Clarke’s Victorian-era fantasy novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell for the network, as well as a handful of Doctor Who episodes. The North-West Evening Mail has some additional details, quoting Mammoth Studios Managing Director of Productions Damien Timmer as saying that while the film has been adapted many times, “no one has ever attempted to follow Wells and locate the story in Dorking at the turn of the last century.” The project was first announced in 2015, and today’s confirmation of production comes only months after the book entered the public domain.

• Even 43,000 years ago, humans were murdering each other.

• Congratulations to blogger Les Blatt, who observes that his Classic Mysteries podcast “has reached a milestone of sorts. This week’s audio review of John Rhode’s Body Unidentified is podcast 520 in the series. I have been doing a weekly podcast review every week, and this one is number 520—the number of weeks in ten years.” Wow! The last couple of years’ worth of excellent episodes can be enjoyed here.

• I was saddened to hear earlier this month that 78-year-old American sportswriter and novelist Frank Deford has decided to retire from his gig as a commentator for National Public Radio’s Morning Edition program after 37 years on the job. The Associated Press reported on May 3 that “Deford gave his 1,656th and final commentary on NPR’s Morning Edition Wednesday, ending a run of what he calls ‘little homilies’ that began in 1980. He thanked NPR for allowing him to choose his topics and allowing him ‘to treat sports seriously, as another branch on the tree of culture.’” Although I am no sports fan, I have enjoyed listening to Deford’s gravelly voiced reflections for many years. If my memory can be relied upon, I started noticing them around the time he became the editor-in-chief of a short-lived (but fondly remembered) tabloid paper called The National. Their topics were always sports-related, though they tended often to incorporate larger themes about life and modern society. You can catch up with Deford’s closing report and many of his previous ones here.

• I don’t think anything will make me attractive again (if I ever was), but according to eHarmony UK, being a reader should do the trick—“especially if you’re a man. The popular online dating site notes that men who listed reading as one of their interests received 19% more messages, while women readers received a 3% bump in communication,” explains the BookBub blog, adding: “Regardless of what you read, eHarmony reports that bibliophiles are considered to be more intellectually curious than non-readers and have an easier time building open and trusting relationships.”

• Why do we love the smell of old books?

• In a piece for The Guardian, Mark Lawson follows up this page’s recent post about former President Bill Clinton throwing in with James Patterson to compose a political thriller novel called The President Is Missing, noting that “special relationships between politicians and political novelists” have been quite common on both sides of the Atlantic. “So,” he explains, “Clinton, in co-authoring fiction, is making official a long informal arrangement. Politicians co-operate partly because they tend to be keen thriller-readers—perhaps an adrenaline-raising genre suits the temperament of those who seek power—but also because they can reveal details and incidents in the knowledge that they will be untraceably disguised, and which could not be confided to journalists or the ghost-writers of their memoirs. In this respect, Clinton might run the risk that every scene in The President Is Missing will be assumed to have happened to him.”

• Ben Terrall, the youngest child of crime novelist Robert Terrall, aka Robert Kyle (1914-2009), has penned a review for January Magazine of three recent books that show the darker, more diabolical side of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

• I’m always wary of pointing readers toward videos that suddenly show up on YouTube, because that Web site has the annoying habit of removing content whenever a film or TV company complains about copyright infringement—even when what has been posted is small and insignificant. But I would be doing Rap Sheet readers a serious disservice if I didn’t mention that the 1998 HBO-TV film Poodle Springs—based on the 1989 novel of that name, begun by Raymond Chandler and finished by Robert B. Parker—is now waiting for your attention on YouTube. I’ve heard mixed reviews of this production starring James Caan as Los Angeles gumshoe Philip Marlowe, but since I have never had a chance to see it before, it’s a sure bet I’ll be watching soon!

• Speaking of YouTube, I’ve recently made a few additions to The Rap Sheet’s page on that popular video site. Look for the main title sequences to the Scottish crime drama Shetland, William Conrad’s classic Cannon, the short-lived Burt Reynolds series Hawk, and Stephen J. Cannell’s oddball Broken Badges from 1990-1991. There are many more here.

• Nancie Clare’s latest guest on Speaking of Mysteries is Avery Duff, whose first novel, Beach Lawyer, “explores the dark side of sunny Santa Monica,” California. Get an earful of their conversation here.

• The program for the Deadly Ink conference, set to take place in Rockaway, New Jersey, during the weekend of June 16-18, has been announced. Those festivities will include a presentation of the 2017 David Award to one of five nominees.

• If you’ve hesitated to start watching Season 3 of the Amazon TV series Bosch, based on Michael Connelly’s best-selling police procedurals and starring Titus Welliver, then perhaps you need some incentive from this piece in Criminal Intent, which contends that “Bosch has transformed television mystery.” English professor Andy Adams goes on to argue: “For the first time, viewers can experience the closest approximation to a mystery novel as is possible on screen. The pacing, development of the characters, complexity of the plot, simultaneous themes, and detailed touches make Bosch the template for 21st-century mystery television.” Season 3 debuted in April and comprises 10 episodes. The show has already been renewed.

• Standards of U.S. presidential behavior have seriously slumped under Trump. The New York Times offers this “handy reference list” of new standards for Republicans to consult “should they ever feel tempted to insist on different standards for another president.”

• Melissa McCarthy does do a fabulous Sean Spicer!

• With the cult series Twin Peaks set to return to television next weekend, following a quarter-century absence, the timing of Michael Parks’ demise at age 77 could hardly have been more unfortunately timed. Parks—who starred in the 1969-1970 NBC-TV adventure drama Then Came Bronson before taking guest roles on series from Get Christie Love! and Ellery Queen to Fantasy Island and The Colbys—enjoyed a career revival when he was cast in the original Twin Peaks, playing a murderous French-Canadian drug-runner by the name of Jean Renault. In the decades since, recalls Deadline Hollywood, Parks “would appear in [director Quentin] Tarantino’s From Dusk Till Dawn and Kill Bill films, Django Unchained, the Tarantino/[Robert] Rodriguez [picture] Grindhouse, Kevin Smith’s Red State and Tusk, and Andrew Dominik’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, among others.” Blogger Toby O’Brien’s offers video clips of Parks’ work in Inner Toob.

• Capitalizing on Twin Peaks’ return, Seattle Met magazine has assembled this daytrip plan for fans who want to get a first-hand look at the area around tiny North Bend, Washington, which served as a setting for David Lynch’s original series.

• And I can’t argue with this assessment, from the Classic Film and TV Café, of the 1969 private-eye film Marlowe: “At first blush, James Garner may not seem like the ideal Philip Marlowe. But in screenwriter Stirling Silliphant’s update of [Raymond] Chandler’s The Little Sister (1949), Garner channels his dry wit into an enjoyable, effective performance. It’s just a shame that the producers selected one of the lesser Marlowe novels for their movie.”

Tube Talk

• So can we look forward to a Twin Peaks revival, or not? Fans of that ABC-TV cult series were quite excited when news broke last fall that Peaks’ co-creator, director David Lynch, would be resurrecting the 1990-1991 drama for a nine-episode run on cable channel Showtime in early 2016. But now, Business Insider says Lynch has exited the project, and the director is trying to tamp down talk that Showtime has cancelled the revival altogether. If you’re still craving “a damn fine coffee and a piece of cherry pie” from the Double R Diner, your appetite might not be satisfied at any time soon.

• Meanwhile, Tipping My Fedora reports that Season 3 of the acclaimed Inspector Morse prequel, Endeavour, starring Shaun Evans, is currently in production, with this latest run of episodes to be set in 1967. “Our next quartet of mysteries,” explains creator-writer Russell Lewis, “will take the audience on a psychedelic Summer of Love fairground ride, filled with twists and turns, shrieks and scares.”

• Author Lee Goldberg turned me on to the nostalgic TV Web site Modcinema--and I may never forgive him, because it promises to blow a big ol’ hole in my budget. In addition to offering myriad forgotten theatrical films, the site has for sale many (and I do mean many) made-for-TV movies from the last half of the 20th century. I haven’t located everything on my wishlist yet, but I did find The Judge and Jake Wyler, a 1972 pilot starring Bette Davis and Doug McClure, and written by Columbo creators Richard Levinson and William Link; another Levinson and Link pilot, Charlie Cobb: Nice Night for a Hanging, with Clu Gulager playing a private detective in the Old West; Beg, Borrow or Steal, a 1973 crime drama featuring familiar series stars Mike Connors, Michael Cole, and Kent McCord as “three ex-cops, disabled while on duty,” who “team up to steal a valuable statue from a museum”; and The Crime Club (1975), the second and last pilot of that name, both about elite crime-solving organizations, this one starring Scott Thomas, Eugene Roche, and Robert Lansing. (The previous Crime Club pilot was broadcast in 1973.) I used to love teleflicks, and I’m sorry that the networks no longer invest their time and money in making them, so Modcinema is a site destined to receive many of my hard-earned dollars, a place where I can finally see those small-screen pictures I failed to watch the first time around.

• If you’ve missed William Petersen, formerly the star of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, this is excellent news: The Los Angeles Times reports that “he’ll be part of the main cast of WGN America’s Manhattan in the drama’s second season. Petersen will play Col. Emmett Darrow, described as an ‘enigmatic new ranking military officer at Los Alamos’ [New Mexico] who is also ‘a deeply religious and patriotic man’ who sees himself as anointed by God to bring America’s nuclear power across the planet. Sounds like exactly the wrong person to be anywhere near nuclear weapons.”

• Did you know that William J. “Bill” Koenig, managing editor of The Spy Command, also maintains a couple of fine online TV episode guides? The first looks back at The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964-1968) and its one-season spin-off, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., while the second focuses on The F.B.I., the 1965-1974 Quinn Martin crime drama. Both are worth exploring.

• Finally, the third season of Ripper Street--the British crime drama set in London in the wake of Jack the Ripper’s 1888 killing spree--is scheduled to return to BBC America with eight new episodes, beginning on Wednesday, April 29. You may recall that Ripper Street, starring Matthew Macfadyen, was cancelled in late 2013 as a result of “low viewing figures.” Soon after that, Amazon Prime Instant Video agreed to take the show on, and a completed Season 3 was made available last November--but only in the UK. Responding to widespread viewer support, and now without having to foot all the bills for its production, BBC America has decided to bring back this historical-thriller standout. You can watch a trailer for the coming new season here, and learn more about what else the show has in store, by clicking here.

Bullet Points: Wheeling Around the Web

• Today brought the opening, at the Museum of London, of an exhibit called “Sherlock Holmes: The Man Who Never Lived and Will Never Die.” As Mystery Fanfare explains, this show “celebrates the world of the greatest fictional detective of all time. The exhibit will run through April 12, 2015, with a variety of rare treasures,” including “the original manuscript of ‘The Adventure of the Empty House’ (1903).”

• We’re still almost two weeks out from Halloween, but blogger Janet Rudolph has already posted a lengthy list of mystery and crime fiction associated with that celebration.

• The All Hallows’ Eve posts keep on coming. Following the success of their recent “Summer of Sleaze” series at Tor.com, bloggers Will Errickson and Grady Hendrix have launched a brand-new series called “The Bloody Books of Halloween” (which I presume will continue through October 31). Today’s entry, by Errickson, looks back at Ray Bradbury’s 1955 short-story collection, The October Country.

• A belated “happy birthday” to Sir Roger Moore! The former James Bond star celebrated his 87th birthday this last Tuesday.

• Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Tana French’s In the Woods, Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, and Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale--they all feature prominently on Flavorwire’s list of “50 of the Greatest Debut Novels Since 1950.”

• While we’re on the subject of Casino Royale, Ian Fleming’s first Bond thriller, let me refer your attention to The HMSS Weblog’s “reappraisal” of CBS-TV’s early, much-maligned adaptation of that 1953 novel. As I’ve mentioned previously, this small-screen version of the tale starred American actor Barry Nelson alongside Mexico-born actress Linda Christian and the familiar Peter Lorre. It was first broadcast on October 21, 1954--60 years ago next week--as part of the CBS-TV series Climax! “While Ian Fleming’s first novel was short, it still covered too much ground to be covered in a 60-minute time slot,” opines blogger Bill Koenig. “Excluding commercials and titles, only about 50 minutes was available to tell the story. … This version of Casino Royale’s main value is that of a time capsule, a reminder of when television was mostly done live. Lorre is suitably villainous. If you find him fun to watch on movies and other television shows, nothing here will change your mind.” You can watch the whole show here.

• I’m pleased to see Moonlighting and Hill Street Blues included in this piece about “The Top 20 Theme Songs of the 1980s.” But really, Highway to Heaven made it, too?

• And this latest addition to The Rap Sheet’s YouTube page should inspire happy memories of 1970s television programming.

• This Sunday night, October 19, will bring to PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! series the last installment of Inspector Lewis’ latest, three-episode season. It’s titled “Beyond Good and Evil,” and the plot synopsis reads: “Thirteen years after [Robbie] Lewis’ first successful arrest as a Detective Inspector, the forensics have been called into question and the case reopened for appeal. Lewis fears the worst, but nothing can prepare him for the resumption of the original murders with the original weapon. Did he arrest an innocent man? With Lewis’ reputation in jeopardy, [DI James] Hathaway and [DS Lizzie] Maddox race to catch the killer.” The episode is set to begin broadcasting at 9 p.m. on Sunday. You should find a video preview here.

• Spicy Detective magazine must have drawn a great deal of (male) attention during its years of publication 1934-1942). If you’re interested in ogling more Spicy Detective fronts, you can do so here.

• Speaking of covers--though of the book sort this time--have you been keeping up with Killer Covers’ month-long tribute to renowned paperback illustrator Robert McGinnis? You can see all the daily posts here. This series will conclude on October 31.

• The new, 600th post for the blog In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel suggests some nominees for the “Top Five Underappreciated Books.” I’ve read all but one of those listed, and would certainly have come up with far different choices, had I been assigned to the project. But each reader has his or her own preferences. So be it.

• Reassessing Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry.

• I wasn’t aware of this until today, but Poe’s “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether,” a short story published in 1845, has been adapted for the big screen as Stonehearst Asylum. This movie stars the ever-divine Kate Beckinsale and is scheduled for release on October 24. Criminal Element offers the trailer.

• On top of the news that director David Lynch plans to revive Twin Peaks, the 1990-1991 cult TV series, for cable channel Showtime in early 2016, comes word that series co-creator Mark Frost is writing a book titled The Secret Lives of Twin Peaks. According to a press release, “The novel reveals what has happened to the people of the iconic fictional town since we last saw them 25 years ago, and offers a deeper glimpse into the central mystery from the original series.” It’s set for release in late 2015.

• Meanwhile, the great Twin Peaks rewatch continues.

• And novelist Megan Abbott comments, in New York magazine’s Vulture blog, on how Twin Peaks influenced her own writing.

• After an unplanned three-year hiatus, The Trap of Solid Gold--Steve Scott’s excellent blog about author John D. MacDonald and his works--has suddenly reappeared. Scott reports here that his extended quiet was attributable to family health problems. But he’s moved quickly to dust off his site and begin posting again, including on the subject of MacDonald’s 1957 novel A Man of Affairs (the paperback cover of which was illustrated by the great Victor Kalin). Let me just welcome The Trap of Solid Gold back into the blogging fold.

• This comes from The New York Times: “Elmore Leonard died in 2013, but now some of his signature Hawaiian shirts will be preserved forever at the University of South Carolina, which has acquired more than 150 boxes of Mr. Leonard’s archive.”

• Who would have imagined it? “Publicity makes for strange bedfellows,” writes Jake Hinkson in Criminal Element. “So does crime. So does religion, for that matter. Add publicity, crime, and religion together, and you get the fascinating story of how the Reverend Billy Graham set out to save the soul of the most notorious gangster in the history of Los Angeles: crime lord Mickey Cohen.”

• And I must say good-bye to an old friend, Geoffrey Cowley. Many years before he took up his post as Newsweek’s health editor and was later hired as a national writer for MSNBC, Geoff attended college with me. He was also the editor of our school’s newspaper, in the year I served as its managing editor. (Most everyone on the staff called him “Gee-off,” in order to distinguish between us.) I went on to succeed him in the editor’s post. Geoff and I had not stay in close touch in recent years; there are undoubtedly many people who knew the older Geoff Cowley better than I did. But I always remember him as a fine, bright, and generous human being. We need more people like him in this world, not fewer. According to this obituary in The New York Times, Geoff died of colon cancer on October 14. Very, very sad.

Bullet Points: Another Beautiful Day Edition

• The last I heard from John Kenyon, the editor of Grift Magazine, he was delivering his favorite books of 2013 list. That was back in early December of last year. Since then, the word went out that Grift had folded--which seemed a damn shame. But suddenly, the print periodical is back. “Things will creak into operation here online in the next couple of weeks,” he writes. “In the meantime, what I’m really excited to announce is that plans are underway for a third print issue. I’m going to try a theme issue this time around, with the content focusing however tangentially on MUSIC. As we explain in the freshly revised submission guidelines, ‘the fiction should include some element of music. Maybe it’s a (literal) roving band that commits crimes, maybe there is a concert, or a favorite song … or a musical instrument used as a weapon. Be inventive. The non-fiction ought to deal at least in part with this subject as well.’” Kenyon will begin accepting submissions again in July.

• This last weekend’s mail brought me a copy of Black Scat Review, the quite handsome, “irregularly” published magazine, which includes in its latest, “Lit Noir” issue an essay I wrote about my fascination with vintage crime and detective novels. It includes remarks on works by Erle Stanley Gardner, Ellery Queen, Ed Lacy, O.G. Benson, Talmage Powell, and others. Also among the contents of this edition are contributions by Kelli Stanley, Michael Hemmingson, Susan Siegrist, Tom Larsen, and others. You can snag a copy for yourself here.

• A year ago, I installed the opening from Return of the Saint on The Rap Sheet’s YouTube page. (You can find that here.) But I don’t remember ever watching that 1978-1979 British TV series, which brought new vigor to Leslie Charteris’ do-gooder series character, Simon Templar, portrayed in this case by Ian Ogilvy rather than Roger Moore (who’d starred in the 1962-1969 ITC series, The Saint). Apparently, it was no easy thing to bring Templar back to the small-screen, as the blog Cult TV Lounge explains:

The idea of reviving The Saint had been around almost from the time that production ceased on the original series. A major problem was of course casting. The problem was not just that Roger Moore was so completely identified as Simon Templar, it was also that Moore had very much defined the character. Any new actor stepping into the role was going to have to be to some extent in the same style, otherwise the new series would simply be another generic action series rather than an authentic Saint series. Ian Ogilvy proved to be the best possible choice. He even slightly resembled Roger Moore and he had no difficulty adapting to the role. Perhaps he does not have quite as much charisma as Roger Moore but he does fit the character as defined in the later Saint stories pretty well.

Cult TV Lounge is a recent discovery of mine, and I’ve been quite enjoying it. In addition to that Saint post, check out this one about Stefanie Powers’ 1966-1967 NBC series, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.

• British critic/wit Mike Ripley is out a wee bit early with his July installment of “Getting Away with Murder,” his column for Shots. Among the topics being considered this time: London’s recent “More Bloody Foreigners” event; the return to print of “two of spy fiction’s hard men--David Callan and John Craig”; and new works by C.J. Sansom, Dominique Manotti, James Ellroy, Deon Meyer, Stella Rimington, David Downing, and “Sam Alexander.”

• A quick reminder: The Wolfe Pack, the New York-based Nero Wolfe/Rex Stout fan group, is soliciting entries to its ninth annual Black Orchid Novella Award competition. As a Pack news release explains, “Entries must be 15,000 to 20,000 words in length, and must be postmarked by May 31, 2015. The winner will be announced at The Wolfe Pack’s Annual Black Orchid Banquet in New York City, December 5, 2015.” More details about entering your work are here.

• The New York Times’ Dan Saltzstein takes a spin through San Francisco’s noir side, led by Hammett tour guide Don Herron.

• Who remembers Silk Stalkings?

• Salon’s Julia Cooke isn’t impressed by American television’s growing contingent of female spies, the lot of them trying to balance work and family. As she remarks,

Sex appeal, instincts, singularity of mission: the necessary traits of a female spy on TV. And another characteristic unites these shows: They are male-generated worlds populated by women conceived of by men.

The male-drawn women of TV spyland seem to point toward a singular, blunt perspective on the debates dominating American feminism today. No, they say, you can’t have “it all.” Yes, they say, you will be forever swapping hats, though by occasionally dipping into the “simpler” pleasures of domestic life, you may find relief. Yes, you will be expected to be beautiful. These characters are television clichés, but they are also feminine clichés, bundled together and then pulled apart piece by piece: they can’t be controlled or entirely understood, they are electroshock-therapy-crazy, dangerously seductive, a collection of body parts to be ogled.

• Friend of The Rap Sheet Michael G. Jacob, who with his wife, Daniella De Gregorio, penned five novels about early 19th-century Prussian magistrate-cum-sleuth Hanno Stiffeniis (including 2009’s A Visible Darkness), wrote recently to say that he’s hard at work on a fresh project: “Well, we have just sold the first one in a brand-new series, Cry Wolf. Severn House Crime will publish it in England in November and on March 1, 2015, in the States. We are planning to do at least three of them. We’re halfway through number two at the moment (entitled Marzio Dies), having a lot of fun. The central theme is the Calabrian mafia--the ’Ndrangheta--and its rapid spread throughout Italy, bringing violence and corruption to sleepy places like the town in Umbria where we live, and totally devastating the lives of anyone who gets involved with them.” I look forward to seeing Cry Wolf and its sequels in my local bookshop.

• John “J.F.” Norris has posted, in his blog Pretty Sinister Books, a fine assessment of A Sad Song Singing (1963), one of my favorite Thomas B. Dewey novels starring his Chicago private eye, Mac.

• That’s a shame. Eighty-one-year-old actor Robert Vaughn, who starred in the 1964-1968 NBC-TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., “told fans during an appearance at the Dean Martin Expo in New York that he was never approached about doing a cameo” in director Guy Ritchie’s forthcoming Man from U.N.C.L.E. feature film. The HMSS Weblog notes that when Vaughn was asked what sort of cameo appearance he’d have liked to do, he joked, “I would have wanted to be the guy pressing the clothes.”

• Crimespree Magazine’s Jeremy Lynch reports that Stuart Neville’s 2013 thriller, Ratlines, is being developed as a TV program by Ireland-based Ripple World Pictures and Los Angeles-based KGB Films. “Neville will not just handle writing duties, but will also act as an executive producer for the proposed series,” Lynch adds.

• Meanwhile, happy 10th anniversary to Crimespree!

• Which are the 10 episodes that show Peter Falk’s Columbo to be “the most iconic TV detective of all time”? A.V. Club’s Gwen Ihnat’s picks include the pilot, Prescription: Murder, “Étude In Black” (starring John Cassavetes), “A Friend in Need” (starring Richard Kiley), “Try and Catch Me” (starring Ruth Gordon), and “Butterfly in Shades of Grey” (the second episode featuring William Shatner). Sadly, one of my personal favorites, “Negative Reaction” (which featured Dick Van Dyke as a murderous photographer), didn’t make the cut.

• And though 1950’s The Drowning Pool isn’t one of my favorites among Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer P.I. novels, I’m pleased to see it win favorable notice in blogger NancyO’s The Crime Segments.

• Did the often bizarre, 1990-1991 ABC-TV series Twin Peaks really prepare the stage for what some critics call our present “golden age” of television? That’s the case

proffered by Salon’s James Orbesen, who contends that “Many of the defining aspects of Twin Peaks can seem clichéd today: Its narrative intricacy, its darkness, its reliance on antiheroes. But that’s just because we are by now so used to the show’s sensibility in our televised diet. What set this show apart has so thoroughly been assimilated that talking about it is like pointing to the sky and calling it blue. But this engaging, surreal and occasionally frustrating, 30-episode series about the hunt for a prom queen’s killer was ahead of its time. Many of today’s modern classics owe it a debt audiences might not be aware of.”

• If you haven’t noticed yet, Kevin Burton Smith has refreshed his Thrilling Detective Web Site with new stories by Frederick Zackel (looking back at the 1974 film Chinatown), Thomas Pluck (doing his own reassessment of Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye), Ben Solomon (reminding us of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation), and others. Click here to find Smith’s comments on this latest update.

• This September conference looks like great fun!

• The Cult TV Blog is busy now, looking back fondly at Danger Man (aka Secret Agent), the 1960-1962 UK series featuring Patrick McGoohan as secret agent John Drake.

• By the way, if you haven’t seen the opening title sequence from that show in a while, it’s one of the latest additions to The Rap Sheet’s YouTube page. You can see it here.

• Megan Abbott dreamcasts the film to be made someday from her new novel, The Fever (Little, Brown). “I never think of specific people while writing a book,” she remarks in My Book, the Movie. “It would feel too specific, maybe limiting. But, as a movie-lover since childhood, once the book is complete, I often imagine the possibilities. And so I find myself doing that with The Fever.”

• In today’s Guardian, Melanie (aka M.J.) McGrath, author of The Boy in the Snow and the forthcoming The Bone Seeker, muses on why it is that women enjoy reading rater explicit crime fiction. “For women required in youth to be decorous and in maturity to be invisible,” she writes, “crime fiction gives us permission to touch on our own indecorous feelings of rage, aggression and vengefulness, sentiments we’re encouraged to pack away somewhere, along with the big underwear and the tampons, where they won’t offend.”

• Nineteen things you may not know about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, from The Daily Telegraph. No. 3: “He wasn’t knighted for his fiction. In 1902, the writer was knighted by King Edward VII. He was also appointed a Deputy-Lieutenant of Surrey. However, he wasn’t knighted for having created Sherlock Holmes. He was made a knight for his work on a non-fiction pamphlet regarding the Boer War.”

• A fine review of Philip Kerr’s Prayer.

• In a new interview with Neal Thompson of Amazon, Alan Furst talks about his work on Midnight in Europe (Random House), his 13th historical spy thriller.

• Finally, organizers of PulpFest 2014 have announced their latest set of eight nominees for the Munsey Award, “annually presented to a deserving individual who has given of himself or herself for the betterment of the pulp [fiction] community …” In addition, one person--convention “grunt work” expert J. Barry Traylor--has been put forward as a possible recipient of the Rusty Hevelin Service Award, “designed to recognize those individuals within the pulp community who have worked long and hard for the pulp community with little thought for individual recognition.” Winners will be presented on Saturday, August 9, during PulpFest in Columbus, Ohio.

Bullet Points: Prizes, Poirot, and Porizkova

Sorry for the scarcity of “Bullet Points” wrap-ups lately, but thanks to a recent Firefox redesign, the Bookmarks feature of my Web browser has become more difficult to use. Bookmarks now appear in a sidebar, rather than a drop-down menu, and I can’t easily open several of them at a time (using the highlighting feature) the way I used to do. Therefore, assembling these wrap-ups is a bit harder. Bear with me.

Today's edition of quick hits:

• People sure do seem to love lists, so critics are more than willing to deliver them. But trying to assemble a rundown of “The 20 Best Crime Novels of All Time”--as Britain’s Daily Telegraph did recently--is a no-win proposition. There’s too much room for argument. Featured on the Telegraph’s roster are: Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White, Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, and James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential. But Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood also finds a place there, and it’s not really a novel. Neither is Kate Summerscale’s The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher. And why not include there Ross Macdonald’s The Chill, Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, Sara Paretsky’s Indemnity Only, Ellery Queen’s Calamity Town, or … well, you see where I’m going. I have commented before on the difficulty of compiling these lists, and Crime Watch’s Craig Sisterson has a few thoughts to share on the Telegraph list, specifically.

• The 2014 edition of CrimeFest began yesterday in Bristol, England. Tomorrow night, Saturday, we’ll learn which books and authors have won prizes at that event. Stay tuned.

• Meanwhile, Ayo Onatade has put together this report from CrimeFest, Day 2.

• The fall schedule for PBS’ Masterpiece series features not only an adaptation of P.D. James’ 2001 novel, Death Comes to Pemberley, but also a seventh season of Inspector Lewis (yay!), three new episodes of Miss Marple, and a couple of follow-ups to the political thriller Page Eight, starring Bill Nighy as MI5 spy Johnny Worricker. Learn more here.

• For Criminal Element, Jake Hinkson has put together what he calls “a nice beginner’s guide to some of the critical/historical literature that’s sprung up around crime fiction over the years. This isn’t a comprehensive list, just a nice jumping-off place for fans of the hard-boiled stuff.” Not surprisingly, I have most of these books on my shelves already. You will find all of Hinkson’s choices here.

• “Are they the best TV couple of all time?” asks The Guardian’s Darragh McManus in this tribute to the ABC-TV private-eye spoof series Moonlighting. “From the mid to the late 1980s, the world looked on in delight as Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis fought, made up, fought some more, had amusingly rambling conversations, and then fell in love, sort of, while solving mysteries along the way.” In the mood for more Moonlighting nostalgia? Check out this site devoted to the show.

• Since when did “spox” become an acceptable abbreviation for “spokesperson”? Really, do modern-day news gatherers not have enough time to spell out whole English words?

• And the next time I receive press materials promoting a book that’s described as a “fiction novel,” I’m just going to scream!

• Not long ago I finished reading Robert B. Parker’s Cheap Shot (Putnam), the third of Ace Atkins’ efforts to extend the late Mr. Parker’s popular Spenser series. What’s most remarkable about Atkins’ contributions is how much they focus on Spenser’s investigative procedures. Parker’s later entries in this series downplayed the often time-consuming and frustrating steps a private eye would have to go through in trying to solve a case, and highlighted instead Spenser’s macho run-ins with tough guys/mobsters and the lovable quirkiness of his core players. I’m partial to Atkins’ approach, because it brings at least a modicum of realism to this series (which has never been very realistic). But mine may be a minority viewpoint. I wish that either of the two most recent online interviews with Atkins that I’ve spotted had included a question about this change in storytelling approach, but they don’t. Still, they’re worth reading. The first appears on the MysteryPeople site, while the other can be found in Jim Wilsky’s new blog, The Write Answers.

• MysteryPeople has also posted this short Q&A with Philip Kerr about his new (in the States, anyway) standalone thriller, Prayer.

• Speaking of interviews … Having recently published a lengthy exchange with Max Allan Collins about King of the Weeds (Titan), his latest posthumous collaboration with Mickey Spillane on a previously unfinished Mike Hammer novel, I was interested to read Collins’ comments--in his own blog--about the difficulties he faced in getting that sixth “new” Hammer tale to market. Read more here.

• Curtis Evans has had a good deal to say of late about U.S. writer Cornell Woolrich (1903-1968), whom he calls “one of the great twentieth-century masters of the crime short story (and the king of the crime novelette).” He writes here about the first volume in Centipede Press’ new series of Woolrich story collections, and here about “the legend of Cornell Woolrich, dark as his darkest fiction.”

• The UK release earlier this spring of John Connolly’s 12th Charlie Parker outing, The Wolf in Winter (Hodder & Stoughton), has prompted Crime Fiction Lover to recap “Parker’s bloodstained past,” tracing the books all the way back to Every Dead Thing (1999). Unfortunately, The Wolf in Winter isn’t due out in the States till late October.

• If you happen to be in Ireland this coming Monday evening, May 19, don’t miss dropping ’round to see our friend Declan Burke (Crime Always Pays) moderate a conversation between his fellow crime novelists Brian McGilloway, Sinead Crowley, and Arne Dahl--part of the Dublin Writers’ Festival. Details here.

• If you don’t know already, the new, authorized Hercule Poirot novel penned by British poet-novelist Sophie Hannah will be titled The Monogram Murders. It’s due out in U.S. bookstores from Morrow in early September; HarperCollins is publishing the UK edition, to be released at the same time. Learn more from Hannah about the project in this short YouTube video.

• In what we’re told is Part I of a who-knows-how-many-postings series about “Mystery TV Theme Songs,” the blog Mystery Playground looks back at the opening sequences from Charlie’s Angels, The Rockford Files, and Simon & Simon. More, please!

• It seems I’ve spent a lot of time recently cruising through the depths of YouTube, looking for episodes of older crime dramas. And in the course of that, I happened across the video below--a December 2010 episode of the BBC-TV documentary series Timeshift, “investigat[ing] the success of Scandinavian crime fiction and why it exerts such a powerful hold on our imagination.” Enjoy!



• Timeshift later did a study of Italian noir fiction, viewable here.

• During the 1980s, I was a thoroughly devoted fan of Czech-born model Paulina Porizkova, who appeared on a number of Sports Illustrated covers (including this one) and now ranks as No. 10 on SA’s list of the “50 Greatest Swimsuit Models.” (I’d have ranked her higher!) Porizkova also did a few turns in films and TV shows, including her co-starring role in the 1989 romantic comedy Her Alibi, in which she played a murder suspect who’s caught the eye of a mystery novelist, Phil Blackwood (Tom Selleck). I remember going to a screening of Her Alibi, shortly after it was released, but hadn’t seen it since. So imagine my surprise at discovering the full 90-minute picture available on YouTube. It is not a must-catch film; in fact, Porizkova’s performance earned her a Golden Raspberry nomination for Worst Actress (though she ultimately lost out to Heather Locklear in The Return of Swamp Thing). However, Porizkova--then in her mid-20s--is well worth watching, if only for her captivating smile.

• The cinema blog The Dissolve reports that a Blu-ray set of the fascinatingly weird ABC-TV drama series Twin Peaks--containing “not just the entire run of the show and [the 1992 prequel film] Fire Walk With Me, but also 90 minutes of material that was cut from the movie”--will be released on July 29. “This is great news for two reasons,” remarks Dissolve staff writer Noel Murray. “For one, all of the previous Twin Peaks VHS and DVD collections have been lacking in one way or another, missing the pilot movie and/or the prequel, and frequently beset with technical snafus and subpar presentation. So even if the Blu-ray set just contained nice-looking transfers of every Twin Peaks episode plus the movies, it’d be welcome. But the Fire Walk With Me outtakes … elevate The Entire Mystery to event status.” You can order Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery here.

• Just when you think CBS-TV’s CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) franchise might finally be petering out, along yet omes another spinoff. CSI: Cyber, starring ex-Medium lead Patricia Arquette as the head of the Cyber Crime Division at Quantico, Virginia, will debut as a mid-season replacement series in January 2015.

• Even most readers of The Rap Sheet--and you are obviously a knowledgeable bunch--probably don’t remember Henry Kuttner (1915-1958), but he was a California-born author of fantasy, horror, and crime fiction. Among Kuttner’s numerous protagonists was the smart and compassionate Michael Gray, a psychoanalyst and amateur sleuth in San Francisco. Gray starred in a quartet of novels: The Murder of Ann Avery (1956); The Murder of Eleanor Pope (1956); Murder of a Mistress (1957); and Murder of a Wife (1958). Haffner Press is currently planning to release a 712-page omnibus edition of those four works, The Michael Gray Mysteries, in late July. It might be worth checking out. (Hat tip to Ed Gorman.)

• The latest edition of Crime Review features, among other things, a brief interview with Sara Paretsky (Critical Mass).

• Ah, I do love San Francisco …

• Having just written for Kirkus Reviews about Loren D. Estleman’s new Western/detective novel, Ragtime Cowboys--which features Old West sometime lawman Wyatt Earp in a secondary role--I couldn’t help but notice this piece in Criminal Element about the various big-screen portrayals of Earp over the years.

• The Big Click is back with a new edition. It features an essay by Barry Graham (“Scary Decorations: The Comfort of Bad Things”) and a short story, “Gorge,” by Heather L. Nelson. And as of May 20, it will add Gary Phillips’ brief tale, “Tobin and Gagarin,” set amid San Francisco’s 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

• Patti Abbott’s “forgotten books” spotlight today shines on crime fiction published during the 1950s, including worthy works by Michael Avallone, Holly Roth, Gil Brewer, Charity Blackstock, Harry Whittington, and Wade Miller. Catch the links here.

• Winners of the 2013 Bram Stoker Awards were announced at the World Horror Convention in Portland, Oregon.

• And Omnimystery News has brought us the winners of this year’s Independent Publisher Book Awards (the IPPYs). These prizes will be handed out in New York City on May 28, the evening before the BookExpo America convention begins. Oddly, I don’t think I have ever heard of the crime and thriller works being honored.

• Who remembers Judd, for the Defense?

• Finally, I’m not sure why (perhaps I missed seeing his introduction to all of this), but San Franciscan Ronald Tierney--author of the Deets Shanahan P.I. novels--has recently been posting a succession of “Observations” in his blog, Life, Death and Fog. Each of those looks back at what I guess is a year from his life (he was born in 1944), recalling noteworthy events, book publications, and automobile debuts. You should be able to access the whole series by clicking here.

Bullet Points: Downbeat Thursday Edition

• Although it was broadcast for less than a full year, Darren McGavin’s 1974-1975 TV series, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, is still broadly--and fondly--remembered. In 2012, Peter Enfantino and John Scoleri put together a terrific blog devoted to the show, It Couldn’t Happen Here. And now the Cult TV Lounge revisits that modern horror drama, calling it “a great deal of fun.

The good episodes outnumber the bad ones by a healthy margin and McGavin is delightful.”

• Amazon Studios has commissioned four original TV series to stream through its Amazon Prime service, one of which is Bosch, a police procedural based on Michael Connelly’s Hieronymous “Harry” Bosch novels and starring Titus Welliver. There’s more information about the four programs here, and specifically on Bosch here. A clip from the pilot is on the right. But I don’t see any word on when this series might debut.

• What do Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, and World War I all have in common? This piece in The Atlantic reveals all.

• For anyone planning to attend this year’s CrimeFest in May, note that the program schedule has now been posted. Someday I hope to make it over to Bristol, England, to attend one of these conventions.

• Wow, I used to own all of the Major Matt Mason figures and their space gear, as well. I wonder what my mother did with that stuff …

• Have you been following the posts in Criminal Element, by author Jake Hinkson (Saint Homicide), that look back at the 1990-1991 TV drama Twin Peaks? Hinkson reintroduces the show, and then leaps quickly to the first episode. His reassessments of the second and third eps have followed. You can keep track of them all here.

• Really? A sequel to the 2005 neo-noir film Sin City? Crimespree Magazine offers a trailer for this new picture, which it says opens in theater on August 22.

• Another unnecessary remake. From New York magazine: “According to The Hollywood Reporter, our generation’s Chevy Chase, Jason Sudeikis, is in talks to take on the reporter role Chase made famous in the upcoming film Fletch Won, featuring the character I.M. Fletcher from the Gregory Mcdonald mystery series. Fletch Won will apparently be based on an original story, but Mcdonald did write twelve Fletch books in total, meaning Sudeikis could have his very own James Bond or Indiana Jones if he plays his cards right.” First off, Mcdonald penned 11 Fletch novels, one of which was in fact titled Fletch Won (1985). So is New York’s write-up wrong, or are this film’s supporters using the title, but telling a different story?

• I really must read Solomon’s Vineyard someday.

• For the first time, says author Robert J. Randisi, all three of his private eye Nick Delvecchio novels--No Exit From Brooklyn (1987), The Dead of Brooklyn (1992), and The End of Brooklyn (2011)--will be available in print at the same time.

• The Nick Carter & Carter Brown Blog is focusing on crime, mystery, and thriller fiction book covers this month, all of which contain the word “murder.” (Thankfully, that word is ubiquitous among crime novels, publishers being convinced that readers need such easy cue terms if they’re to recognize new entries in the field.) This “Murder in March Madness” celebration began with The Murders in the Rue Morgue, by Edgar Allan Poe, and has gone from there. You should be able to see all the book fronts at this link.

• Singer Debbie Harry--paperback cover model?

• Crime Fiction Lover’s rundown of “The 20 Best [TV] Crime Shows of All Time” doesn’t feature The Rockford Files, which it of course should, but at least it includes Columbo, Foyle’s War, and the British version of Life on Mars. In addition to The Wire.

• Congratulations to Tipping My Fedora for its first 400,000 visits.

• Finally, a new survey has found that “half the books stockpiled on shelves in British homes remain unread” and that “many people hoard books which they become emotionally attached to.” The Daily Telegraph adds that “the average home has 138 books.” First off, I must shake my head at the idea that there are a mere 138 books in most homes; mine probably contains 5,000. Far fewer than half of those remain unread, but I’ll confess to having a couple of hundred waiting for me to be in the right mood to pick them up and begin digesting their wonders. I don’t at all consider having myriad books in a home hoarding. Bookshelves, even of the jam-packed variety, bring elegance and life to any room. I’ve always been suspicious of people who don’t have books around. What the hell do they do with their spare time, watch Modern Family? I have almost all of the books I’ve read since I attended high school. Books were my friends long before I had many acquaintances of the human variety, and they remind me of the intellectual and imaginative variety I have enjoyed over these many years. Am I emotionally attached to them? Damn straight! And I am proud of the fact. As anyone should be.

Bullet Points: Catching Up Edition

First of all, let me thank my colleague Linda L. Richards, who steered The Rap Sheet with impressive skill during my recent trip to Minneapolis. Second, there’s a little catching up to do, as far as recent developments are concerned. To wit:

• From the fine film blog, Cinematical: “How’s this for a shocking piece of news: Seventeen years after Kyle MacLachlan last appeared as Special Agent Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, WENN reports that the actor wants to resurrect the legendary show on the Internet. The actor says: ‘I have a crazy idea to bring back Twin Peaks on the net as five-minute webisodes.’ Should this become a reality, it will be without David Lynch, whose ‘focus is more on transcendental meditation now.’”

• It’s interesting to see, on a list of the Top 50 TV Westerns of All Time (compiled by the Western Writers of America), at least three vintage series that can also be classified as crime fiction: Have Gun, Will Travel (#5), The Wild Wild West (19), and the oft-overlooked 1972-1974 NBC Mystery Movie segment, Hec Ramsey (which, like Have Gun, starred Richard Boone). By the way, the top four places on the WWA’s roster are occupied by Gunsmoke, Maverick, Rawhide, and Bonanza. Deadwood placed 11th, but should’ve been higher.

• Here’s your Man from U.N.C.L.E. fix for the day.

• Over at Mysteries in Paradise, Kerrie Smith compares the recent nominees for a variety of high-profile crime-fiction awards. “Even if you are one that says you are not influenced by awards, and are often profoundly disappointed when you read the winner,” Smith writes, “it gives pause for thought when the same authors and titles crop up again and again doesn’t it?”

• I’m looking forward to seeing the film Whiteout, which debuts in September and stars the ever-lovely Kate Beckinsale as a deputy U.S. marshal investigating murder in Antarctica. My interest has been piqued further by the recently released trailer for that movie, which has been adapted from Greg Rucka’s 1998 comic-book series.

• Speaking of films, I am definitely adding this forgotten gem to my Netflix list: Hickey & Boggs (1972), which reunited I Spy stars Bill Cosby and Robert Culp in a plot about ill-fortuned gumshoes on the hunt for a missing girl. As author Duane Swierczynski remarks, “if you love your private eyes pushed to the point of oblivion, if you think the best crime films were made in the 1970s, and love a good neo-noir that plays out in broad daylight, I very much recommend tracking down Hickey & Boggs.”

• Amid rising tensions in Iran, following last week’s disputed re-election of the nation’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Tom Gabbay submits his third thriller, The Tehran Conviction, to the notorious Page 69 Test. The results are here.

• Funny. I had almost forgotten that espionage novelist Alan Furst (The Spies of Warsaw) once contributed football columns to Seattle Weekly, the “alternative newspaper” for which I also labored in a previous life. And I’m with Sarah Weinman in being puzzled as to why Furst prefers not to talk about his early novels. I liked both The Paris Drop (1980) and The Caribbean Account (1981).

• Over at Pulp Serenade, Cullen Gallagher assesses the “dark, brooding poetry” of David Goodis’ opening lines.

• “Readers should be warned that I am going to write a positive review of one of the most excoriated books in the thriller genre, and I should know since I have been among those excoriating it,” writes David L. Vineyard in Mystery*File. “That said, I think someone needs to point out why Sapper (Herman Cyril McNeile) and Bulldog Drummond have lingered so long in the public imagination and are still read today by some--myself included.” This is an excellent piece, well worth your reading.

• In a sprightly exchange for Pulp Pusher, Anthony Neil Smith and Victor Gischler “shoot the breeze ... about rural noir, tacos, and their literary heroes.” Quite the pair, indeed.

• Could Hawley Harvey Crippen, the American homeopathic physician found guilty of murdering his wife in London in 1910, have his name cleared 99 years later? The publicity would certainly be good for Martin Edwards, whose 2008 novel, Dancing for the Hangman, is finally due out in the States later this year from Five Star Press.

• Another thing I missed while I was away in the Midwest: Last week’s episode of the KSAV Web radio program TV Confidential featured a conversation with 82-year-old Emmy Award-nominated producer Everett Chambers, who worked on the original NBC series Columbo during four of its seven seasons (1971-1978). Fortunately, I--and you--can still listen to that exchange here.

• And among the books I saved from my father’s shelves after his death five years ago was a collection of the black-and-white, 1930s Secret Agent X-9 comic strips written by Dashiell Hammett and drawn by Alex Raymond. What I didn’t know, though, until reading about them in Christopher Mills’ Spy-fi Channel blog, was that two film serials were made from those strips. “The 1937 serial has Agent X-9 functioning pretty much as a standard movie G-Man, chasing after a ring of international jewel thieves ...,” Mills explains. “The 1945 serial, on the other hand, is a genuine espionage adventure. This one stars a young, up-and-coming Lloyd Bridges as Phil Corrigan, Secret Agent X-9. The charismatic and talented Bridges was a far better actor than most other serial heroes, and his nascent star quality really infuses the 13-chapter serial with energy. Unlike some other chapterplays of the era, you don’t get bored between fistfights and car chases.” Hmm. More DVDs to track down ...