Bullet Points: Plucky 13

Although so much of the news today seems to have been concentrated around former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s fervent endorsement of Barack Obama as the next president of the United States, and Obama’s record-breaking fundraising total for September ($150 million!), there are also various crime-fiction-related developments worth passing along.

• Sean Chercover (Trigger City) is the focus of January Magazine’s latest “author snapshot.”

• Just the thing for chills-prone crime-fiction fans.

• More than a year after the death of author Donald Hamilton, Double O Section has more on the chances of his fictional creation, government operative and assassin Matt Helm, making his movie comeback. “In a sidebar to the print version of an article about Paramount streamlining its slate to produce only twenty films in 2009 (bad economy, sign of the times, etc.), The Hollywood Reporter lists how Paramount and former partner DreamWorks will divide custody of properties formerly in development as part of the partnership,” explains blogger Tanner. “They say, ‘Paramount will develop another group of films that DreamWorks will have the option to co-finance and co-distribute, such as Matt Helm and Imaginary Friends.’ That’s it. That’s all the info. But it’s interesting, because this is the first we've heard in a while of this project being alive at all!” The full item can be found here.

• Speaking of movie deals, Lee Goldberg notes that the pseudonymous author Boston Teran (whose 1999 thriller, God Is a Bullet, is already being adapted by Hollywood) has a new western due out soon, the rights to which have been bought by Universal.

• Tim Maleeny, author of the forthcoming Greasing the Piñata, tells Crime Always Pays that, of all the characters from crime fiction, he’d most like to be Travis McGee. Hey, wouldn’t we all.

• In case you haven’t been keeping track, Chapter 5 of Laura Lippman’s serial novel, The Girl in the Green Raincoat, appears in today’s New York Times Magazine.

• In its profile of former James Bond portrayer Roger Moore, The Scotsman newspaper remarks: “Moore is wearing well for a man of 81. Crisp shirt and tie, navy blazer--gold buttons, obviously--deeply mellifluous voice still edged with that slightly sardonic wit, suggesting little in life should be taken seriously. Certainly not his performance as Bond. He used to joke that he relied on two basic expressions: left eyebrow raised or right eyebrow raised. Why did he scoff at his own performance? ‘I beat the critics to it.’”

• Interviewed in the November issue of Esquire, Marc Foster--director of the forthcoming James Bond film, Quantum of Solace--responds to the question, “And did you really piss off the entire nation of Bolivia during filming?” Says Foster: “The Bolivians and Chileans have a tension going on for a very long time. There was a war a while back, and because of that, Bolivia doesn’t have access to the sea, while Chile does. Bolivia didn’t like it that we shot in Chile, saying it was Bolivia. It’s as if you were to shoot in Paris and say it’s London. The French wouldn’t like that.” Sorry, but I don’t see the whole piece available on the Esquire Web site.

• Is anybody really surprised that this year’s big-screen adaptation of Get Smart, starring Steve Carell and the fetching Anne Hathaway, will generate a sequel? Yeah, I thought not.

• Lin Anderson casts the movie version of her new novel, Easy Kill.

• Michael G. Jacob and Daniela De Gregorio, who write excellent historical mysteries (Critique of Criminal Reason, Days of Atonement) under the joint pseudonym “Michael Gregorio,” have organized “an international event featuring writers of crime and mystery,” scheduled to take place November 1-2 in Trevi, Umbria, Italy. Their news release about this “Trevi Noir” gathering explains:

Famous names in the world of ‘noir’ will be discussing the issues in a small medieval town perched on top of a mountain in one of the most beautiful areas of Italy. Andrew Taylor, Laura Wilson, R.N. Morris, and Maxim Jakubowski are coming over from England. Italian specialists Patrick Fogli, Simone Sarasso, Guglielmo Pispisa, Diego De Silva, Ben Pastor and the Kai-Zen writing-team will be talking with UK literary agent, Leslie Gardner, and crime editors from Marsilio, Faber & Faber, Robin and Einaudi.

A full schedule of events can be found here.

• The Baltimore Sun’s Read Sheet books blog delivers an early reminder that “the 200th anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe’s birth” is coming up on January 19, 2009.

• And for anyone who actually cares, TV Squad says that blood-spatter analyst and serial killer Dexter Morgan pulls down an annual salary of $47,680.