Of Swans, Sopranos, and Splits

• William Landay, author of the John Creasey Dagger-winning novel Mission Flats (2003) and this year’s The Strangler, tells what he’s been reading lately over at Marshal Zeringue’s Writers Read blog. While one might expect that he’s had his nose in a crime novel lately, Landay has actually been reading David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green and assorted other books that have absolutely nothing to do with this genre. See his picks here.

• Meanwhile, Canadian author Maureen Jennings applies Zeringue’s popular Page 69 test to her seventh and latest Detective William Murdoch historical mystery, A Journeyman to Grief, which was published earlier this month by McClelland & Stewart. Related to that, The Rap Sheet mentioned last month that a new series of Murdoch Mysteries has been slated for production by Shaftesbury Films of Canada. Jennings now brings news that cameras will start rolling on those 13 one-hour episodes come June 11, and that two new stars have been chosen for the series: Yannick Bisson will play Murdoch, while Hélène Joy has been cast as Toronto coroner Dr. Julia Ogden.

• Ian Rankin is writing an opera? Not surprisingly, notes The Guardian, it’s going to be “a grisly historical tale of betrayal and murder.” And no, there’s no part for John Rebus.

• Since I wrote last May about novelist-critic G.K. Chesterton’s birthday, I wasn’t going to make a big deal of the occasion this time around. (I live under the conviction, obviously not endorsed by advertisers, that Americans are smart enough to know something, without being hit over the head with it repeatedly.) But Elizabeth Foxwell this morning pointed out that the 26th annual Chesterton Conference is scheduled for June 14-16 at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. Special attention during the conference will be given to Chesteron’s The Man Who Was Thursday, a metaphysical thriller (lacking Chesterton’s usual protagonist, Father Brown) that was published originally in 1907, a century ago. You can register for the convention here. If you’ve never read The Man Who Was Thursday, download it for free here.

• I know exactly how this guy feels. Enough, already!

• Demolition magazine editor Bryon Quertermous missed contributing to The Rap Sheet’s recent celebration of overlooked and underappreciated crime fiction. (Hey, it’s not as if he wasn’t invited.) However, he suggests a few titles in his own blog that might have qualified, among them The Night Men, by Keith Snyder. See Quertermous’ other nominations here.

• And, tooting my own horn just a bit, I posted a piece earlier today at January Magazine about what seems to be a recent proliferation of “split covers,” book jackets “that use not just one photograph, but two, often separated by titles and author names.” A number of such covers can be found in the crime-fiction racks. See my collection here.