Sweating the Small Stuff

• I continue to be impressed with Curt Pursell’s Beyond the Groovy Age of Horror. Yesterday, he posted a nice long consideration of four Donald E. Westlake/Richard Stark novels featuring that thuggish, one-named thief, Parker. Under consideration: The Hunter (the very first Parker book, from 1962), The Man With the Getaway Face (1963), The Outfit (1963), and The Score (1964). “It’s ridiculous that these novels don’t stay in print on a more regular basis ...,” writes Pursell. “It seems superfluous to recommend them, but in case I really wasn’t the last one to discover them, I can definitely say they’re worth some time, trouble, and money. I know I’ll be checking out some more of them!”

• If all that puts you in the mood to read more books about crooks, Bruce Grossman has your reading list picked out at Bookgasm. This week’s installment of “Bullets, Broads, Blackmail & Bombs” focuses on three novels starring that “bent-nosed bunch,” the American mafia. You’ll find his write-up here.

• Elizabeth Foxwell reminds me that today is William Faulkner’s birthday. As she explains, the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Sound and the Fury and Light in August was not only “an avid mystery reader,” but he also wrote crime fiction of his own, including Intruder in the Dust (1948) and the 1949 short-story collection, Knight’s Gambit. Faulkner would have been 110 today.

• Writing at Marshal Zeringue’s My Book, the Movie site, journalist-turned-author Matt Beynon Rees gives some background on the birth of his debut novel, The Collaborator of Bethlehem (published in the UK as The Bethlehem Murders), and says that Swiss actor Bruno Ganz might work best in any film portrayal of his Palestinian series sleuth, Omar Yussef. Read his comments here. And for more on Rees, check out Mystery Scene’s profile of the novelist.

• After having written 200 novels, Texan James Reasoner tells the western-fiction-oriented Web site Saddlebums that “I started out as a mystery writer [penning Texas Wind, in 1980], so I guess that’s really where my heart is. I get bored easily, though, so I’ve thoroughly enjoyed being able to write in many different genres.” Read the complete interview here.

• I’m still waiting to receive my copy of Edward Wright’s new novel, Damnation Falls, from Britain. (Hey, it’s not called “snail mail” for nothing.) But Material Witness’ Ben Hunt has the early word on Wright’s first standalone, calling this “story of old, dangerous secrets harboured in the Tennessee town of Pilgrim’s Rest” a “superior thriller with a plausible, compelling plot that burns slowly at first before exploding into life and holding the reader in a vice-like grip.” Read his full remarks here.

• And who in the hell is Yrsa Sigurdadóttir? (Don’t even suggest that the pronunciation challenged tackle that one.) Glenn Harper has the lowdown in his blog, International Noir Fiction.