Sweepings: The Not-Quite-My-Day-Off-Edition

This is my birthday, so I don’t want to spend a lot of time in front of the computer today, but I should mention at least a few crime-fiction-related tidbits.

• I don’t know which is worse, reading about how Japanese mystery novelist Jiro Akagawa has just seen his 500th novel published (while I’m still working on my first) or realizing that I have never read a single one of those books.

• I’d been cool up to now on Eric Lerner’s debut novel, Pinkerton’s Secret. But favorable reviews by both Bookgasm’s Rod Lott (see here) and Bill Peschel (here) suddenly have me coveting that novel, even though I already have a stack of books to read, and just took possession of a couple of new British novels--Philip Kerr’s A Quiet Flame and Frank Tallis’ Fatal Lies--for my birthday. An embarrassment of riches, indeed.

• In The Guardian, Sebastian Faulks--British author of the forthcoming James Bond novel, Devil May Care--talks about “adjusting to the pace of 007’s world.”

• The recent flurry of Australian Crime Fiction Snapshot interviews seems to be only the beginning of the Web’s fascinating exploration of Down Under crime and mystery fictionists. Damien Gay writes in his blog that he and his cohorts “are already compiling a list for a second round with authors we either were unable to contact this time or who were out and about at various Literary Festivals or meeting publisher deadlines.” If you didn’t catch all of those exchanges, go here and see the individual author links under the heading “Australian Crime Snapshot.”

• This has nothing to do with crime fiction, but I was saddened to read about the death of science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke. Best known for writing the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and co-writing, with Stanley Kubrick, the screenplay for the landmark film of that same name, Clarke passed away in his adopted home of Sri Lanka. He was 90 years old. He was also the first science-fiction writer whose work I remember reading. I included Clarke’s 1953 novel, Childhood’s End--which I’ve had the pleasure of reading several times already in my life--on January Magazine’s list of the most memorable books of the 20th century. Linda L. Richards has more on Clarke’s demise here, as does Salon’s Andrew Leonard.

• Finally, speaking of birthdays, I somehow missed observing Peter Robinson’s yesterday. The author most recently of Friend of the Devil, he turned 58 on Monday.