Bullet Points: Prizes and “Prisoner” Edition

• Nominations are open for the second annual Spinetingler Awards, organized by Sandra Ruttan, the editor of course of Spinetingler Magazine. She’s looking for public suggestions in the following categories: Best Cover, Best Editor, Best Reviewer, Best Publisher, and Special Services to the Industry. There’s also a short-story category. More specifics can be found here. Interestingly, though, there are fewer categories open for 2008 work than there were for 2007 efforts. Send your suggestions to sandra@sandraruttan.com, and write “Spinetingler Awards Submissions” in the subject line.

• The recent news that London’s Murder One Bookstore will close at the end of January, after nearly 21 years in business, has inspired a number of teary-eyed encomia. Sarah Weinman highlights a few in her blog. In addition, Martin Edwards looks back fondly on the shop in “Do You Write Under Your Own Name?” I agree with most commentators, that it simply won’t be the same visiting London’s Charing Cross Road without being able to pop in to Maxim Jakubowski’s bookstore for a long perusal of the shelves or else a quick fix of Ian Rankin, Sophie Hannah, or maybe the latest from Peter Lovesey. Thank you, Murder One, for more than two decades of exceptional book-selling.

• Earlier this week, I mentioned Patti Abbott’s flash-fiction challenge (the rules of which she has already changed slightly). But Julia Buckley has posed a challenge of her own at Poe’s Deadly Daughters. This one asks you to choose one of 14 photographs and “write a ‘first sentence’ of the story of that photograph.” More on Buckley’s challenge here.

• We’re still two months away from this year’s Left Coast Crime convention, to be held in Hawaii. But there’s already news of a special award to be given out during the event: the Hawaii Five-O Award for police procedurals. Janet Rudolph has the scoop.

• Here’s the full list of the books chosen on Kerrie Smith’s Mysteries in Paradise blog as readers’ favorites of 2008.

• Bill Cameron submits his latest novel, Chasing Smoke, to Marshal Zeringue’s notorious Page 69 Test. The results are here.

• Everything you always wanted to know about James Bond, and well, so bleeping much more.

• AMC has resurrected all 17 episodes of Patrick McGoohan’s classic, 1960s British TV show, The Prisoner, and is making them available for free viewing on the Web. More on that here.

• Finally, Mother Jones writer-blogger Kevin Drum lists his “top ten whiny, blog-related pet peeves.” Fortunately, I don’t think The Rap Sheet is guilty of any of these.