Back Up at Bat

Sorry to have been so quiet over the last week (thank goodness Ali Karim was available to pinch-hit), but I’ve been jamming on a couple of non-fiction books with short writing deadlines. I took these assignments because I was tired of having people ask me whether I was done yet with work on my novel. (As Nathaniel Hawthorne once said, “Easy reading is damn hard writing.”) I needed something new out there in the stores. Fortunately, I seem to have reached a comfortable pace in my book-writing that leaves me a bit more time for blogging and editing reviews for January Magazine. Let’s hope it lasts. For now, here are a few tidbits worth sharing:

• Author-editor Ed Gorman, a longtime reader of work by the recently deceased author Stephen Marlowe, has been rerunning some of the pieces Marlowe penned for his blog over the years. You’ll find the first two of those here and here. Meanwhile, novelist Bill Crider (who, we should note, has a new Sheriff Dan Rhodes novel out) has put together a slideshow of Marlowe’s book covers. There are some real gems, especially Danger Is My Line, Terror Is My Trade, and Drum Beat: Madrid. Check ’em all out here.

• Speaking of Bill Crider, he’s noticed some interesting differences between Hard Case Crime’s new release, Zero Cool, by “John Lange” (aka Michael Crichton), and the 1969 edition of that novel.

• In anticipation of next spring’s Left Coast Crime convention in Hawaii, organizers have put together a roster of mysteries set in the former island kingdom. I’m glad to see that there are so many such books out there.

• Pulp Pusher interviews Frederic Lindsay, “the Godfather of Tartan Noir,” who turns 75 years old this year, and is celebrating with the publication of his eighth novel featuring Edinburgh Detective Inspector Jim Meldrum, The Stranger from Home. When asked what advice he would offer to aspiring crime novelists, Lindsay said:

If you have any thought at all of aiming for the long haul, make your central character someone who will hold your interest over a series. This doesn’t mean he has to be strikingly novel (a one-legged homosexual with a gambling problem), but that he has the capacity to evolve from however seemingly stereotypical a starting point into being a real person. Worth saying, too, that the best crime books have the best villains. As for the writing itself, try to avoid a progress from A to Z. A novel isn’t a route march. Make it a dance and listen for the music.

The full interview can be found here.

• Both Sarah Weinman and Jeri Westerson have now noted that the well-loved Los Angeles bookstore Dutton’s in Brentwood is closing at the end of April. “It is no secret that the store today is a shadow of its former self,” laments owner Doug Dutton in a statement about this drastic move. Sad news, indeed.

• It seems logical that the American TV networks should want to dust off their older series and try to drum up some new interest, if not also make a buck off the venture. Both NBC and CBS have announced that they’ll begin streaming “classic” shows on the Web. The opportunities are so far minimal for crime-drama lovers--just Miami Vice, Kojak, Hawaii Five-O, and Simon and Simon. But on top of the programming already available on AOL’s In2TV site, there’s plenty to see, while the nets go through their latest too-many-reality-shows-and-game-shows phase, and return to scripted dramas, following the lengthy writers’ strike.

• Sarah Ruttan’s At Central Booking site hasn’t even been up a full month, and already there are changes in the works. She explains everything here.

• I missed chiming in on the hubbub over Matt Beynon Rees’ debut novel, The Collaborator of Bethlehem, but I am determined not to miss reading his sequel, A Grave in Gaza, which the author puts through Marshal Zeringue’s famous Page 69 Test here.

• Finally, B.V. Lawson at In Reference to Murder talks up a new piece in the California Literary Review “about oddly-named sleuths in detective fiction, basically pointing out that many detectives’ names are carefully chosen by their creators to send signals to the reader.” Those crafty darn writers! Read the full CLR article here.