Bullet Points: “Is It 2009 Yet?” Edition

After a few days spent away from Rap Sheet headquarters, visiting with family and consuming inordinate amounts of turkey and au gratin potatoes, I’m back at my desk and preparing for a month’s worth of special treats. But first, there’s a little catching up to do on recent news events and Web postings.

• ’Tis the season of James Bond, it would seem. With the 22nd Bond flick, Quantum of Solace, still attracting audiences all over the world (though I haven’t yet found time to see it), bloggers are doing their little bits to add to the excitement. Double O Section has displayed a wonderfully retro-style film poster by comic-book artist Francesco Francavilla (also featured at right). And Lee Goldberg has two posts up of particular interest to Bond followers. The first features video presentations of rejected Bond themes over the years (including Johnny Cash’s Thunderball theme). The other is a TV interview with ex-Bond portrayer Roger Moore, who’s out promoting his still-new autobiography, My Word Is My Bond.

• The pseudonymous James Church, “a former Western intelligence officer with decades of experience in Asia” and the author so far of three crime novels featuring North Korean Inspector O (A Corpse in the Koryo, Hidden Moon, and the brand-new Bamboo and Blood), is the latest guest blogger at St. Martin’s Minotaur’s Moments in Crime. You’ll find his entries here.

• I don’t read Swedish, so I’ll have to put my faith in Crime Scraps’ Uriah Robinson (aka Norman Price) when he reports that author writer Johan Theorin has won the Swedish Academy of Crime’s 2008 Best Crime Novel of the Year Award (Basta Svenska Kriminalroman) for his second book, Nattfåk. Theorin picked up last year’s Best First Novel Award from the same group for Echoes from the Dead, which appeared earlier this year in an English translation.

• Happy birthday to the electronic mouse, which turns 40 this month. Can those computer gizmos really be that old?

• The Fall 2008 issue of Plots with Guns has been posted, with contributions from Kieran Shea (“Proxy 529”), Robert McClure (“Elmo’s Hunger”), and Kyle Minor (“Goodbye Hills, Hello Night”), among others. And Bill Crider alerts us to a special future-forecasting edition of PWG, due out in May of next year. Sounds like fun.

• Reed Farrel Coleman and Ken Bruen are going to collaborate for the first time on a thriller called Tower, which will also be “the first original novel published by Busted Flush Press”? More info here.

• We’ve written many times here about book covers, especially about the ways in which designers reuse images. But author Ron Fortier looks closely at the making of a pulp comic-book cover, and explains how a bit of stealing from great minds here and there can produce something special. (Hat tip to Paul Bishop.)

• What has Linda Barnes (Lie Down with the Devil) been reading lately? Marshal Zeringue gives us the lowdown.

• Peter Rozovsky’s fourth Noir at the Bar event will be held this coming Sunday at Philadelphia’s Tritone bar, beginning at 6 p.m. The guest this time will be Sandra Ruttan, the author of What Burns Within and The Frailty of Flesh. More information here.

• After pretty much ignoring his popular fictional Detroit private eye, Ben Perkins, for a few years, author Rob Kantner finally published a new Perkins novel, Final Fling, in late 2007. Now he has a fresh Perkins short story available for free viewing at his Web site. It’s called “Down Home Blues.”

• In the very first issue of The Rap Sheet, I noted that John Peyton Cooke (Torsos [1995], The Chimney Sweeper [1996]) had two finished novels in search of a publisher, both of them featuring his gay private eye, Greg Quaintance. Since that time, there’s been no more news about those books. But then, just yesterday, Cooke dropped me an e-mail note saying that “earlier this year I published [the books] myself. Although no mainstream NY publishers were interested (25+) and small press publishers also took a pass, I think they’re good books and published them myself via CreateSpace, and they are available via Amazon.com (only). The titles are The Rape of Ganymede and The Fall of Lucifer.” He’s promised to send me review copies. I will let you know later what I think.

• I wasn’t around on Friday to post about the latest selection of “forgotten books” being touted by crime-fiction-oriented blogs. But you’ll want to check out project organizer Patti Abbott’s personal blog for a rundown of the books mentioned. They included: The Invisible World, by John Smolens; The Girl Who Loved Crippen, by Ursula Bloom; Salem’s Lot, by Stephen King; Get Carter, by Ted Lewis; and of course The Grifters, by Jim Thompson, reviewed here at The Rap Sheet by Chris Knopf.

• The London Times has posted its new Christmas gift list of crime fiction. It includes Mark Billingham’s In the Dark, Val McDermid’s A Darker Domain, John Harvey’s Cold in Hand, and Die a Little, from The Rap Sheet’s own Megan Abbott. By the way, Megan’s short story “Cheer,” which originally appeared in the Crime/Noir Issue of Storyglossia, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

• And I only wish I could be in Columbus, Ohio, next August for the opening of PulpFest 2009.