• New York writer Jason Starr is John Kenyon’s interview subject this week at Things I’d Rather Be Doing. Starr talks about his new book, The Follower; his forthcoming second collaboration with Ken Bruen, Slide; and whether he’ll ever pen a series. Read more here.
• Gary Phillips’ serial mystery, “The Underbelly,” gets some more nice press in Robert J. Randisi’s new blog, PWA News and Views. (See here.) And if you haven’t been keeping up, Parts II and III of Phillips’ yarn are available at the FourStory site.
• Elizabeth Foxwell notes the birthdays today of two late crime novelists: Dorothy B. Hughes (In a Lonely Place, 1947) and the less well-known Frances Noyes Hart (The Bellamy Trial, 1927). Also of note in Foxwell’s blog is her rundown of mysteries, once deemed essential reading (by Howard Haycraft and Ellery Queen), that are no longer easily found. She writes that “approximately one-third (55) of the entries on the list (181 books) are out of print in the United States.” One can’t help but wonder how many of the novels that could be considered modern classics--say, Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River, James Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia, P.D. James’ An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, or Michael Connelly’s The Concrete Blonde--will still be widely available to readers 50 years from now. Perhaps very few. You’ll find Foxwell’s findings here.
• Novelist-blogger James Reasoner (Dust Devils) has plenty of favorable things to say about British-Australian crime writer Alan G. Yates, who wrote under the pseudonym “Carter Brown,” and was most popular
during the 1960s and ’70s. “Of course, [Brown’s books] didn’t get much respect even back then,” Reasoner recalls. “They just sold and sold and sold some more, and there was a reason for that--sex. [Robert] McGinnis covers. Provocative plots. Racy dialogue. The fact that they were often pretty funny, sometimes had surprisingly complex mysteries, and read extremely fast probably had something to do with it, too.” Unfortunately, the Brown books--including The Bump and Grind Murders, The Ice-Cold Nude, The Blonde, The Girl Who Was Possessed, and The Hang-up Kid, which Reasoner uses as his jumping-off point for comment--seem to have been forgotten by everyone except Bookgasm columnist Bruce Grossman, who makes regular forays into the Brown oeuvre. (UPDATE: More on Carter Brown here.)• We’ve been remiss in not congratulating Lori G. Armstrong, whose novel Hallowed Ground walked away with the 2007 WILLA Literary Award for Original Softcover Fiction. Those commendations are “awarded annually for outstanding literature featuring women’s stories set in the West,” according to the awards Web site, with winners “chosen by a distinguished panel of twenty-one professional librarians.” (Hat tip to the First Offenders blog.)
• Indiana-based publisher Point Blank Publishing, which brought Allan Guthrie’s debut novel, Two-Way Split, to American readers, long before it picked up the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, is profiled at some length in the Louisville, Kentucky, Courier-Journal newspaper. Read the piece here. (Hat tip to Independent Crime.)
• Barry Forshaw delivers a fine overview of Ruth Rendell’s career and authorial talents in The Times of London. “Reading her is like watching one of Alfred Hitchcock’s better movies, in which we are drawn into the lives of people whose world is coming apart because of one ill-considered action,” remarks Forshaw, the editor of Crime Time magazine. “Rendell’s jaundiced (but bracing) view of human nature is matched only by the late, great Patricia Highsmith.” You can read more here.
• Excellent writer and FOTRS (Friend of The Rap Sheet) Megan Abbott, the author of this year’s The Song Is You and Queenpin, is interviewed at the Mystery Readers International site by fellow novelist and former traveling companion Theresa Schwegel. Read their exchange here.
• Graphic novel writer Christopher Mills (Gravedigger: The Scavengers) and comics artist Joe Staton (E-Man, Green Lantern) have signed with Ape Entertainment to turn their popular “webcomic,” Femme Noir--which has been running online for the last half-decade--into a four-issue, full-color miniseries, Femme Noir: The Dark City Diaries. More here.
• The July-August issue of Cozy Times, focusing on the softer side of crime fiction, is now available online. (Via Bill Crider.)
• And why can’t they make books covers like this anymore?
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