Sweepings: “Is It the Weekend Yet?” Edition

• After picking up two Derringer Award nominations, editor Richard Helms’ Webzine, The Back Alley, has gone live with its third issue. Included this time are new stories by Tim Wohlforth (“Alvin’s Choice”), Clair Dickson (“Missing, But Not Missed”), and Jochem van der Steen (“ ... And Rock and Roll”); plus Bruce Stirling’s “analysis of Carroll John Daly’s seminal crime novelette Three-Gun Terry and why Daly, the acknowledged father of hard-boiled crime fiction, has been eclipsed by Dashiell Hammett in the annals of crime fiction” (read that essay here); and part two of a seven-installment serialization of Frank Norris’ “classic noir,” McTeague (1899).

• The fourth issue of Matthew Louis’ “modern journal of pulp fiction and degenerate literature,” Out of the Gutter, is now out on the street. Its “Hard Times” theme could hardly be more timely, given financial downturns under wildly unpopular George W. Bush and concern over an elderly presidential candidate’s lack of economic knowledge. Louis has got to love Bookgasm editor Rod Lott’s characterization of OOTG #4 as “200 pages of stories and articles so rough-and-tumble dirty, you’ll need a shower afterward ... during which it will come back and rape you.” Lott hastens to add, “This is all a good thing, of course, being made a book’s bitch.”

• Meanwhile, the new April 2008 issue of Damien Gay’s The Outpost, “The Magazine of Australian Crime Short Stories,” has just been posted. “We’ve got one or two stories among this lot that sound distinctively Australian,” Gay writes in his editor’s introduction, “but the dilemmas, twists and dirty dealings will all have a slight ring of familiarity about them ... right up until the last few paragraphs.” Among the contents are tales by Tony Black (“Crate-Load of Grief”), Pat Johnson (“Miss Andrews”), and Peter Lingard (“Cooked Under Pressure”).

• Damien Seaman interviews Sandra Ruttan--novelist (What Burns Within), blogger, and editor of Spinetingler Magazine--for Pulp Pusher. Over the course of their conversation, they talk about the “unpleasant characters” in Ruttan’s tales, her decision to abandon her church, and the therapeutic uses of crime fiction.

• Speaking of interviews, Mick Halpin takes on K.T. McCaffrey, author of The Cat Trap, at the Critical Mick site. Click here.

• In Reference to Murder offers a bevy of opportunities for not-yet-famous writers hoping to submit their manuscripts to established U.S. contests “with deadlines imminent.”

• I didn’t previously mention Duane Swierczynski’s blog postings from the recent NoirCon in Philadelphia, so I shall do so now.

• Declan Hughes (The Price of Blood) is the latest interviewee in New Mystery Reader Magazine. Check out the conversation here.

• I was suspicious of Amazon.com’s new Omnivoracious books blog, but it seems to be shaping up quite nicely, with Lisa Lutz (Curse of the Spellmans) doing a recent turn there as a guest blogger.

• Leighton Gage, whose first Brazil-set novel, Blood of the Wicked, continues to stare wantonly at me from my great teetering to-be-read pile, is quizzed by copy editor-blogger Peter Rozovsky at Detectives Without Borders. Part I of their exchange can be found here, with Part II waiting to be read here.

• Mystery Scene magazine posts its “Gifts for Young Sleuths” feature on the Web. Crime-fiction-loving parents take note.

• To Matlock, or not to Matlock--that is the question. I was never a big fan of Andy Griffith’s 1986-1995 Hollywood-star-studded legal drama, Matlock (and it’s not just because I am not a senior citizen). But I did watch the first couple of NBC-TV seasons, on and off, and I remember those being rather interesting for their time. Contributing to the series’ initial appeal were co-stars Linda Purl, playing Ben Matlock’s younger daughter, Charlene, and Kene Holliday as private eye (and would-be venture capitalist) Tyler Hudson. I won’t be putting the new DVD set Matlock: Season One on my gift wish list, but it might be a future Netflicks selection. Just for nostalgia’s sake.

• Now, this is what I call creative DVD packaging.

• I’ve heard that Lawrence Block has been so prolific over the years, under so many pseudonyms, that even he might not remember all of the books he’s written. But paperback publisher Hard Case Crime seems intent on plumping his backlog for gems. The latest find is Killing Castro (1961), which Hard Case publisher Charles Ardai calls “by far the rarest of all Block’s books. He wrote it under a pseudonym he never used before or since, it’s never been published under his real name (or this title), and he couldn’t even locate a copy of it himself for 30 years!” An excerpt can be found here.

• Finally, Gerald So brings the unfortunate news that 65-year-old actor Stanley Kamel, best recognized of late for his role as detective Adrian Monk’s psychiatrist in the USA-TV series Monk, was “found dead of a suspected heart attack” in his Hollywood Hills home on Tuesday afternoon. So notes that Kamel landed “his first roles on shows like Mission: Impossible and The Mod Squad in the late 1960s,” but television viewers will also remember him for his appearances on The West Wing, Mister Sterling, Murder One, L.A. Law, Cagney & Lacey, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Beverly Hills 90210. More on Kamel from Monk novelizer Lee Goldberg.