Random Shots

Not that I was watching obsessively, or anything … but at precisely 6:17 p.m. (Pacific Time) last night, the little red counter at the bottom of this page’s right-hand column recorded the 200,000th visit to this blog. That probably wouldn’t be significant for some of the larger political blogs operating today, but we’ll take it here as cause for celebration. Especially knowing that, while it took us 11 months to clock our 100,000th visit, only six more months were required to double that number. Thanks everyone.

To commemorate this memorable occasion, we give you a Friday feast of crime-fiction-related links:

• There’s obviously no keeping James Bond down. With the centenary of his creator, Ian Fleming’s birth coming up at the end of May, we’ve already heard about a Bond-related exhibition at London’s Imperial War Museum and the release of Sebastian Faulks’ new 007 novel. But now even the French are getting into the act. CommanderBond.net. reports that the original Bond novels are being reprinted by publisher Bragelonne in handsome, translated editions. Casino Royale is already available, with Live and Let Die (its cover shown above) due to appear on Parisian bookstores in November, and Moonraker due out next June.

• The Fall 2007 edition of Spinetingler Magazine is up, filled with short fiction, interviews, and reviews. Among the authors showing off their work are Patricia Abbott, Patrick Shawn Bagley, and Daniel Hatadi. You’ll also find here exchanges with Rick Mofina and George Pelecanos. At her own blog, Spinetingler editor Sandra Ruttan recounts a series of problems that led to this issue’s tardiness, as well as to its redeployment on the Blogger system (though you can still find back issues here). A clearly frustrated Ruttan writes:

The next few months will involve a lot of careful consideration of the future of the e-zine. It comes down to me being able to handle it on my own, and I have to consider how much time that takes from other things. We’re already full for the Winter Issue, which is edited by Jack Getze, and something special is in the works for the Spring/Summer Issue in May.

Frankly, I’m wiped out from this, but now I have to give my head a shake and get on with doing the interviews for the next issue … Once I start feeling like this is all I do and I have no time left for writing, it’ll be the beginning of the end for the e-zine. I’m not actively trying to recruit a technical volunteer to help, because my experience with all other contributors is that life all too often gets in the way. And I can’t be upset when volunteers have other legitimate demands pressing on their time, so they can’t review/edit/read. That’s part of the deal from the outset, but that means the same thing for a technological support person. And to be blunt, there’s enough bloody drama with the divorce already. Part of the reason I was behind was also because of my October deadline on the last manuscript. I feel like my brain was already mush and now someone took blenders to it.

We wish Ruttan and her Spinetingler minions the best of luck. But we wonder if they might not have seen trouble coming. After all, this new issue of the e-zine is No. 13.

• Crimespace reminds us that only a couple more days remain for folks to enter this year’s “Next Great Crime Writer” contest, sponsored by Court TV in association with the social-networking site Gather. “The chosen author will receive a Borders publishing contract with a $5,000 cash advance. The deadline to apply is November 11, 2007,” explains Crimespace member Diane F. Details on how to enter the competition are available here.

• The latest issue of Library Journal runneth over with stories about mystery and crime fiction. In addition to reviews of new and forthcoming short-story collections and novels (including David Lawrence’s Down into Darkness, which I am just now finishing), there’s a regrettably abbreviated interview with San Francisco writer Cara Black, whose next Aimée Leduc mystery is Murder in the Rue de Paradis (due out in March from Soho Crime).

• Anyone who’s read Peter Robinson’s novels is familiar with his frequent references to music. This week, New York Times books blogger Dwight Garner requested from Robinson a playlist of his favorite albums and songs. His 19 selections are quite impressive, although we can’t decide whether the misspelling of “The Greatful Dead” was accidental, or deliberate. Clearly, Robinson is a Dead fan--which would explain the title of his latest Alan Banks mystery, Friend of the Devil, due out in February.

• I completely passed by this item when it appeared in Elizabeth Foxwell’s blog, The Bunburyist. But the collection to which it refers is a great resource:

For those of us who may have missed the actual exhibit earlier in the year, there’s now an interesting online retrospective of the multifaceted career of the late author, journalist, attorney, and ardent Red Sox fan George V. Higgins, most celebrated for The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1972; film 1973). It’s available via the University of South Carolina Libraries, which now holds his papers.

• Here’s something I didn’t know: According to Slate, “Although gun violence is very rare in Finland, the country has the highest rate of firearm ownership in Europe and the third highest in the world, behind only the United States and Yemen.” This might not fully explain the high-school shootings in southern Finland earlier this week, but it could help us make sense of Finland’s long tradition of violent crime fiction.

• And on the, er, gumheels of the release of a 20th-anniversary special edition of Chinatown (accompanied by some hopeful talk of another sequel), Crimespree Cinema’s Jeremy Lynch brings news of another crime film’s commemorative release: the 40th-anniversary edition of In the Heat of the Night, starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger. This new edition is due out on January 15, 2008.