Bullet Points: Inauguration Day Edition

I spent most of this day planted in front of a TV set, watching the history-making inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th U.S. president. What a moving presentation. I found myself tearing up at times, as I saw the new young chief executive greeted by an estimated two million well-wishers crowed onto the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and listened to his hopeful address to the nation. I confess, it was almost near as satisfying to see the execrable George W. Bush relinquish his hold on the White House and America’s future. But Bush is now in the past; the future of the United States at home and abroad is what concerns us still.

Well, that and what’s new in the crime-fiction world, of course. A few recent developments worth noting in that arena:

• In connection with this day’s historic events, Mystery Fanfare presents “a list of mysteries that feature U.S. presidents and presidential candidates.” Not mentioned, but also appropriate for that roster would be David Poyer’s 1995 thriller, The Only Thing to Fear, which features both President Franklin D. Roosevelt and a young Navy lieutenant, John F. Kennedy; No Safe Place (1998), by Richard North Patterson; and two novels starring Ulysses S. Grant--The Ambush of My Name (2001) and its sequel, A Good Soldier (2003), both by Jeffrey Marks.

• Permission to Kill suggests a movie, too, that might be right for showing today: The President’s Analyst (1967), “an unusual and amusing spy comedy” that stars James Coburn, Godfrey Cambridge, Severn Darden, and Joan Delaney.

• There’s a short but challenging presidential quiz posted in the Crime Scraps blog.

• Finally, blogger and editor Elizabeth Foxwell suggests that we commemorate this day by revisiting the history of U.S. presidential inaugurations with this video presentation, or watch again some recent inaugurations here.

• A couple of weeks back, I participated in what was then a new meme making the blog rounds. Writers were asked to list 16 random things about themselves, the expectation being, of course, that we had something interesting to say. Since then, more bloggers have joined in this rather fun exercise. Among the participants: Martin Edwards, Janet Rudolph, Bill Crider, Kelli Stanley, and Louise Ure.

• The latest short story to be posted in David Cranmer’s Beat to a Pulp is “Whiskey, Guns, and Sin,” by Louisianan Charles Gramlich.

• I didn’t remember that 20th-century pulp novelist Lester Dent wrote anything but the old Doc Savage novels. However, Hard Case Crime has acquired rights to a previously unpublished hard-boiled work called Honey in His Mouth, which it will bring to bookstores in October. A sample chapter can be enjoyed here. And it has a beaut of a cover, the work of Ron Lesser.

• Correspondent Ali Karim alerts me to the fact that two best-selling American crime novelists, Dennis Lehane and Tess Gerritsen, will speak at the Borders bookstore in Charing Cross Road, London, on Thursday, February 12 at 6:30 p.m. More information on that event can be found here.

• While we’re on the subject of Lehane, the author most recently of The Given Day-- one of January Magazine’s favorite books of 2008--the UK Telegraph published an interview with him this last weekend. Though the piece isn’t available online, a number of choice excerpts can be read here.

• It’s been a couple of years since I last heard rumors about a movie being made from the 1980s TV comedy-mystery series Moonlighting, but the project is being talked about once more. TV Squad reports that former series stars Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd are “both up for a reunion movie (this year marks the 20th anniversary of the show’s end), but they’ll only do it if creator/producer Glenn Gordon Caron is in charge of the show again.” Is this good news?

• Speaking of resurrecting cancelled TV shows, former Veronica Mars creator and former helmer Rob Thomas has announced that he’s working on a VM feature film. You’ll find more information in IFMagazine and at the TV Squad site.

• Raymond Chandler, cameo star? In his own blog, author and Rap Sheet contributor Mark Coggins recently posted three still shots from Double Indemnity (1944) in which private eye Philip Marlowe’s creator can be spotted in the background of a scene featuring lead Fred MacMurray. Check them out here. (Update here.)

• Evidently, Bill Crider has more clout than yours truly, for he’s managed to lay hands on an advance copy of Spade & Archer, by Joe Gores, one of the books I most look forward to reading this season. So what does Crider think of that forthcoming prequel to Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon? “Spade & Archer is prime stuff, with pretty much everything,” Crider writes in his blog. “Mysterious women, hidden treasure (sort of), lots of tough guys, and even a dying message. It’s a don’t-miss for any fan of the hard-boiled.”

• Max Allan Collins talks (again) about Mickey Spillane and the posthumous Mike Hammer novel, The Goliath Bone, this time with The Tainted Archive.

• As the Carnival of the Criminal Minds makes its second round of the crime-fiction blogosphere, Julia Buckley contributes the 30th installment in two parts--one focusing on cozies and crafts mysteries, the other mentioning three that have recently struck her fancy. Around the end of this month, the carnival is expected to move on to an Australian blog previously unknown to me, It’s Criminal.

• Terry Teachout remembers his 40 years of reading Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe novels.

• I’ve heard more than a few raves about Josh Bazell’s debut thriller, Beat the Reaper. Now the author submits his work to Marshal Zeringue’s Page 69 Test, with intriguing results.

• And after last week’s news that actor Patrick McGoohan had died at age 80, I posted the opening sequence from The Prisoner, his acclaimed late-1960s TV series. Undoubtedly more familiar for its introduction--if only because of its theme music--is another McGoohan show, Secret Agent (shown in Britain as Danger Man). To avoid slighting fans of that show, here is its main title sequence.