Short Subjects

• The Rap Sheet’s own Mark Coggins (Runoff) is the latest author to try podcasting at Seth Harwood’s CrimeWAV.com. He’s up this week with the first part of a story called “Ride a Red Dragon.” “It’s set in 1920s San Francisco,” he writes, “and features speakeasies in Half Moon Bay and gambling parlors in Chinatown, both of which are also settings in Hammett’s Continental Op stories from Black Mask.” Click here to listen to Coggins read from “Ride a Red Dragon.”

• Speaking of Coggins, he’s one of the two most recent interviewees at the Behind the Black Mask site. Listen to his comments here. Oh, and the other Behind the Black Mask subject? It’s George Pelecanos (Turnaround), who can be heard here.

• If you missed hearing the recent radio discussion on TV Confidential about both actor William Conrad (Cannon) and the more recently deceased composer Isaac Hayes, you can still listen to it via the TV Confidential archives page. Well worth your time.

• Oh, and there’s still more on the subject of radio broadcasts, from Elizabeth Foxwell’s blog, The Bunburyist: “Sara Paretsky’s Chicago private investigator V. I. Warshawski appears this Thursday and Friday on BBC Radio 7 in “Publicity Stunts” (from V.I. x 2). Go here for the schedule or to listen.”

• Could a Veronica Mars theatrical film really be in the works? TV Squad says “yes.”

• The thoroughly fetching Sarah Shahi, who plays Damian Lewis’s cop partner in the soon-to-return NBC-TV series Life, gets the “Women We Love” treatment in the September issue of Esquire magazine. And it’s about time!

• Award-winning novelist Laura Lippman reports in her blog that her “15-chapter serial, The Girl in the Green Raincoat,” is “slated to begin in The New York Times Sunday Magazine on September 7. Oh, and it’s a Tess Monaghan story. And she’s pregnant.” Sheesh! How’s that for a teaser?

• The Sacramento Bee carries a joint interview with long-married crime writers Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller. You can read it here.

• If you happen to be in London on September 11, you’ll want to catch a presentation at the Italian Cultural Institute by the pair who write historical mysteries under the pseudonym “Michael Gregorio” (Critique of Criminal Reason and Days of Atonement). More information in Karen Meek’s Euro Crime blog.

• Will our fascination with James Bond never end?

• The London Times gives P.D. James considerable attention in anticipation of the release of her latest suspenser, The Private Patient. Read the profile here.

• Finally, the latest two subjects of National Public Radio’s excellent “Crime in the City” series are Jason Goodwin (The Janissary Tree, The Bellini Card) and Colin Cotterill (Curse of the Pogo Stick).