Good News and Debuts

It seems the gifts just keep on coming this holiday season. Not only did Christmas bring me a few choice titles I look forward to reading (including Edward Marston’s new Christopher Redmayne mystery, The Painted Lady), but I see today that the January issue of Tony Burton’s Crime and Suspense e-zine is out a bit early. Among the contents are a (brief) interview with Elmore Leonard, new short stories from Dennis Vickers (“The Revengeful Crow”), Chad Kushins (“Lilies”), and C. Rochelle Weidner (“The Oracle of 22nd Street”), and the premiere of a four-part serial, “No Motive for Murder,” with the first installment penned by Gary R. Hoffman. Oh, and more good news: While last month’s edition was introduced on the Crime and Suspense front page by the theme from The A-Team, this month’s musical accompaniment is the classier theme from The Avengers. Quite an improvement!

And if that isn’t enough of a gift for this festive season, Bill Crider also alerts me to the fact that editor Steve Lewis--who three months ago put his wonderful research journal, Mystery*File, on an indefinite hiatus--has reintroduced himself on the Web as a blogger. “I’m now retired from my day job, which was teaching mathematics at Central Connecticut State University, which occupied my time for the better part of 34 years,” Lewis writes by way of explaining this format switch, as well as his newfound free time. The new Mystery*File blog comes out of the gate slowly, with a post answering questions put to him about author Erle Stanley Gardner and director Alfred Hitchcock. I always enjoyed Mystery*File, the Web site (which is still available for browsing), and I look forward to seeing how Lewis will entertain and inform us in the blogosphere.