Bullet Points: Mistakes and Cheesecake Edition

• Robert B. Parker was interviewed this morning on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. It was a pretty entertaining segment, all in all, though not terribly illuminating for those of us who are familiar with Parker’s prolific prose career. Much of Lynn Neary’s piece is concentrated around the author’s affection for Boston and its various venues, and private eye Spenser’s good life in his not-quite-realized old age. Listen here.

• As an alternative to Time magazine’s list of the 100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME, Illinois copywriter and film/TV critic Marty McKee has put together his own idiosyncratic rundown of small-screen faves. Not surprisingly, there are a whole bunch of crime dramas on the list, including The FBI (No. 19), The Rockford Files (21), Murder One (30), 77 Sunset Strip (42), Magnum, P.I. (43), Mannix (48), Harry O (55), I Spy (64), and Homicide: Life on the Street (73). But I have to protest his low rankings of Columbo (99) and Hawaii Five-0 (92), especially when he awards the No. 4 spot to Quark, a science-fiction sitcom that most viewers never even knew existed during its two-month run in 1978, and hands No. 5 honors to Chris Elliott’s insipid Get a Life (1990-1992). Curious, too, is McKee’s choice for the No. 1 TV show of all time: The Defenders (1961-1965), which starred E.G. Marshall and Robert Reed as a father-and-son team of lawyers. He writes:

[W]hat put The Defenders into the upper echelon of lawyer shows was its insistence upon tackling big social issues. Vigilantism, abortion, Red-baiting, capital punishment, religious freedom--all were subjects of Defenders episodes. Sponsors may have been worried, but audiences weren’t, nor were Emmy voters, who awarded the series at least a dozen trophies, including two for Best Drama. You won’t see network series of today using drama to tackle big issues, but The Defenders proved it could be done with class, style and, most importantly, ratings success.

• An “Ultimate James Bond Edition” of Monopoly, anyone?

• From the front lines of ThrillerFest, David J. Montgomery compiles “ the six biggest mistakes even bestselling writers make.”

• Meanwhile, the anonymous agent-author of the Mysterious Musings blog has some additional writing suggestions, all having to do with character creation.

• At Crime Always Pays, Irish journalist-author Darragh McManus laments the limitations placed on modern writers. “[P]ublishing and media (and in a broader sense, society) don’t want the Renaissance man or woman,” he writes, “the versatile epicurean of letters who can dip their quill into just about area they choose. They want to pigeonhole writers.” Read more here.

• A “round-robin novel of murder and mesmerism that features chapters by Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker, Florence Marryat, Frances Eleanor Trollope, and other Victorian writers”? And it was originally published in 1892? Sign me up. Thanks go out to Elizabeth Foxwell for the alert.

• Kevin Burton Smith muses humorously on the employees and customers at modern bookstores. Minuscule independent shops “that smell of old cat pee and smug pretension”? My, Kevin, you do know all the best places to take a date, don’t you ...

• There’s nothing like a little self-plagiarism, eh, Frank Kane?

• Finally, one of the values of blogging is that you can sound witty and erudite on the screen, and nobody has to know you’re really a troll with three thumbs. This isn’t television, after all. But apparently Playboy thinks there are enough familiar faces among the female posting crowd to hold a hottest blogger contest. The “most click-worthy candidate” is going to be offered the opportunity to pose for Playboy.com. If forced at the pointy end of a knife to choose one of these fair femmes, I’d have to go with Brigitte Dale, but mostly because I used to enjoy her daily reports for TV Squad. Fortunately, I wouldn’t be the one having to ask her to strip for the cameras.