Bullet Points: Pre-Turkey Dinner Edition

The rest of this week will be a slower-than-normal time here at The Rap Sheet, as some of us take time off for American Thanksgiving celebrations. But we should be back up to full strength next week. In the meantime, here are a few newsy tidbits to chew on:

• I don’t know how reliable Amazon.com’s “best books of the year” picks are anymore, now that most of the knowledgeable editors there have been let go. But for what it’s worth, here are Amazon’s top 10 choices of crime novels released in the States in 2008:

1. The Likeness, by Tana French
2. Duma Key, by Stephen King
3. The Bodies Left Behind, by Jeffery Deaver
4. Sweetheart, by Chelsea Cain
5. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson
6. The Dirty Secrets Club, by Meg Gardiner
7. The Fifth Floor, by Michael Harvey
8. The Black Tower, by Louis Bayard
9. The Cold Spot, by Tom Piccirilli
10. Blackman’s Coffin, by Mark de Castrique

So far, only two of those 10 have shown up among the “best of 2008” selections being made by contributors to The Rap Sheet and January Magazine--choices that will be made public next month.

• Sisters in Crime Australia has given its 15th Scarlet Stiletto Award to a murder story in verse, “Undeceive,” by Evelyn Tsitas, a former senior journalist at Victoria’s Herald Sun. AustCrime has more on this commendation.

• David Corbett’s “Pretty Little Parasite” is the 20th short yarn to become a podcast at CrimeWAV. You can listen to it here. And I failed to mention that Sarah Weinman’s “Blooming” was last week’s installment in the series.

• It seems that Scott D. Parker has finally discovered the wonderful British TV series Foyle’s War, set during World War II. His bottom line: “The Dark Knight is, by far, the best thing I’ve seen this year. Foyle’s War ranks as Number Two. It’s that good.”

• At My Book, the Movie, UK author Charles Cumming ponders the prospects of casting a film from his novel The Spanish Game. His choices can be found here.

• Release of the DVD set of Mannix, Season Two--the first season in which P.I. Joe Mannix goes out on his own--is due on January 6. Meanwhile, Simon & Simon: Season Two is due out on February 10.

• Ed Pettit, who I had the honor of meeting during October’s Bouchercon convention in Baltimore, has begun writing “a series of posts about the best and more interesting Edgar Allan Poe sites on the Internet.”

• In association with next month’s release of his third “Rat Pack” mystery, Hey There (You With the Gun in Your Hand), Robert J. Randisi talks with Shots about the roots of his interest in private-eye fiction, his civilian stint with the New York Police Department, his time at Mystery Scene magazine, and much more. That interview can be found here.

• And Leonard Cassuto, author of the recently published book Hard-Boiled Sentimentality: The Secret History of American Crime Stories, has an interesting piece in The Wall Street Journal about Patricia Highsmith’s 1950 novel, Strangers on a Train. The piece, titled “Bound for Perdition,” describes how Highsmith’s book became popular by tapping into rampant Cold War anxieties.