A Wee Bit of Everything

It’s nice to see things starting to pick up again in the crime-fiction blogosphere. The last couple of months have been pretty darn dry, post-wise, in many quarters. I have watched a few sites go on virtual vacations (notably, the Deadly Pleasures magazine Web page, Aldo Calcagno’s Mystery Dawg, and Christopher Mills’ Guns in the Gutters), while others appear to have ceased activity altogether (such as Sarah Stewart Taylor’s Gravestone Girl, Bill Peschel’s previously lively blog, and Steve Steinbock’s Vorpal Blade Online). It may be time for some more housecleaning in the blogroll column on the right edge of this page.

Fortunately, there’s still plenty of stuff around worth reading.

• Even as other blogs fade, Curt Purcell’s Beyond the Groovy Age of Horror stakes out a spot on my daily must-read list. Author-blogger Bill Crider turned me on to this delightful harbor of pulp crime fiction, which Purcell says was “formerly devoted to ’60s-’70s horror in paperbacks, fumetti, Groschenromane, comics, and movies.” The blogger’s tastes have recently changed, and now he’s busily reviewing the works of Ed McBain and Richard Aleas, resurrecting Gold Medal paperbacks, and remarking on some pretty weird stuff in between. Definitely worth a visit.

• Also new is B.V. Lawson’s In Reference to Murder, which appears focused around an extensive list--some 1,500 entries strong, according to the author--of links useful to writers and readers of crime fiction. You’ll find everything here from mystery-oriented bookstores and forensic science resources, to online discussion groups and sites concentrating with the business side of wordsmithing. I don’t know how Lawson intends to keep the front page of her blog lively, but there’s certainly much to see in the background pages.

• British author Sebastian Faulks (Engleby), who has been commissioned to write a brand-new James Bond novel, The Devil May Care, for next spring, reveals to the Associated Press what ultimately convinced him to tackle that assignment:

Faulks said he enjoyed the discipline of writing the Bond book.

“I’d spent nearly five years in psychiatric hospitals and medical libraries writing an immensely long and difficult book (‘Human Traces),” he said.

“It’s possible there are no two books in publishing history more dissimilar than ‘Human Traces’ and ‘Devil May Care.’ And that was really the attraction of it.”

Read the full AP piece here.

• Is Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974) “the perfect film”? That’s the question David N. Meyer ponders in the Noir of the Week blog. Actually, his entry is an excerpt from his 1998 book, A Girl and a Gun: The Complete Guide to Film Noir on Video. Reading this, and taking in the movie trailer at the end of the post, makes me want to watch Chinatown all over again. For maybe the 15th time ...

• In a two-part interview with InkSpot’s Joanna Campbell Slan, UK novelist Lee Child (Bad Luck and Trouble) talks about his “fondness for strong, smart, sassy women,” his boyhood experiences with bullies in Birmingham, and how a lack of outlining often leaves him stuck in storytelling corners. You’ll find part one here, and part two here. If you want to hear more from this author, read Ali Karim’s extensive Rap Sheet feature on Child, beginning here.

• Elizabeth Foxwell points out the popularity of crime novels in prisons. Hmm, whaddya think? Could there be ulterior motives in jailbirds reading this genre?

• John Sutherland writes in New Statesman that “the best U.S. geography lesson could be taught using crime novels, the cities in which they’re set, and the urban characters they bring with them.” His further ruminations can be found here.

• More crime-fiction contributions to Marshal Zeringue’s book exams: Parnell Hall submits his new Stanley Hastings gumshoe yarn, Hitman, to the Page 69 Test; meanwhile, James R. Benn puts his second Billy Boyle World War II mystery, The First Wave, through the Page 99 wringer.

• And felicitations are overdue to author Robert B. Parker. The creator of Boston private eye Spenser (Now and Then) yesterday celebrated his 75th birthday. Gerald So, who among other things moderates the discussion list Spenser’s Sneakers, has an opinion on “the most crucial element missing from [Parker’s] recent books,” and explained it in his blog on Monday.