Following the Clues

• “I think it’s a screenplay waiting to happen,” enthuses Victor Gischler as he considers, for My Book, the Movie, which actors and actresses might best portray the memorable characters in his latest novel, Shotgun Opera. Read his musings here. By the way, Gischler fans will be happy to note that their man has a new book, Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse, due in bookstores come June 2008.

• Today is the 80th birthday of Egyptologist and mystery writer Barbara Mertz, better known under her chief pseudonym, Elizabeth Peters. Her most recent Amelia Peabody historical whodunit is Tomb of the Golden Bird. (Hat tip to Elizabeth Foxwell.)

• Mike Ripley’s October “Getting Away with Murder” column has now been posted at Shots. This time out, the witty Mr. R. talks about Margaret Maron’s fondness for Dorothy L. Sayers; “king of French pulp (or pulpe) fiction” Léo Malet; a new “Crimefest” for Bristol, England; and a casebook of stories by the noteworthy Scottish-American detective Allan Pinkerton. Read the column in its entertaining entirety here.

• Steve Brewer’s new “The Home Front” column makes the case that “we who work at home are just as harried as the rest of you.” Click here to read it all.

• Material Witness’ Ben Hunt has some very nice things to say about R.J. Ellory’s new “mesmeric thriller,” A Quiet Belief in Angels (“it is beautiful, poetic and strangely uplifting and I was desperately sorry when I finished it”). In addition, Ellory answers 10 questions put to him by Hunt, over the course of which he reveals that it was Stephen King who first gave him the writing bug (“I sort of fell into writing thrillers after writing a lot of very long, very verbose supernatural novels.”).