Of Spies, Sherlock, and Sequels

• The blog Notes from Hemingway’s Lounge has turned me on to a podcast series called Cocktail Nation, which recently put together a terrific show about jazzy spy-fiction-related themes from years past. You can listen to it here.

• Declan Burke is going to be rampant on this page today. I’d forgotten that he is also hosting the latest Carnival of the Criminal Minds installment. Interestingly, rather than offering a smörgåsbord of crime-fiction-oriented links, Burke muses at rewarding length on whether the blogosphere is really the right place for critical literary assessments. His answer seems to be a qualified yes, though he cites only one example, from Glenn Harper’s International Noir blog. A good example it is, though.

• Ruth Rendell champions Sherlock Holmes.

• Rafe McGregor (author of the forthcoming The Architect of Murder) is working on his own, multi-part tribute to the works of Arthur Conan Doyle and his output for 1893. McGregor’s first post on this subject can be found here, the second here.

• Alafair Burke submits her second Detective Ellie Hatcher novel, the new Angel’s Tip, to Marshal Zeringue’s “Page 69” Test.

• The deadline for submissions to issue two of Gerald So’s crime poetry anthology, The Lineup, is Tuesday, September 30. Complete details are available here.

• Courtesy of Patti Abbott’s blog comes word that the state of Michigan will be celebrating this month the 50th anniversary of the publication of Anatomy of a Murder, the courtroom drama written by Michigan Supreme Court Justice John D. Voelker under the pseudonym “Robert Traver.” A series of events is planned. Click here for more information.

• For the Los Angeles Times, Richard Rayner applauds the reissuing of the first three novels featuring Parker, Richard Stark’s (really Donald E. Westlake’s) professional thief. Meanwhile, Euro Crime’s Pat Austin weighs the success of Ian Rankin’s first post-John Rebus novel, Doors Open, and finds it less of a “belter” than she’d hoped, but a rewarding invitation to await Rankin’s next big blockbuster.

• Sebastian Fitzek (Therapy) is the latest “new blood” author put under the microscope by Crime Squad.

• Here’s a 1980s British crime series I barely remember.

• Anyone in the market for a James Bond watch?

• Michael Cox, whose first Victorian-era novel, The Meaning of Night, won such acclaim back in 2006, talks with The Sydney Morning Herald about its sequel, The Glass of Time, and the “rare, slow-growing brain tumour” that has already affected his sight and threatens his life.

• And when even Fox News is now questioning the truthfulness of Republican’t presidential candidate John “100 Years War” McCain and his unqualified, culture-warrior running mate, Sarah Palin, you know that the narrative about McCain building his campaign on lies and distortions is really sinking in with the American electorate. (More on these matters from thriller writer Barry Eisler. The McCain-Palin deceptions have even become the basis of a new ad. And there is a new McCain-Palin lie counter online.)