Bullet Points: Sunday Stimulus Edition

• Blogger-scriptwriter Lee Goldberg has been loading his blog Main Title Heaven with some long-forgotten treasures of late. Those include the opening sequences for The Rookies, Harry O, the NBC Sunday Mystery Movie, Cannon, Barnaby Jones, Vega$, In the Heat of the Night, Delvecchio, and the first season of Magnum, P.I., which evidently boasted a different theme song from the more familiar Mike Post number. Take an appreciative gander, before YouTube does its best to make all of these unavailable.

• I’m with blogger Ivan G. Shreve Jr. in lamenting the passing of veteran film and TV actor James Whitmore. Although the Los Angeles Times says he’s best remembered for having brought “Will Rogers, Harry Truman and Theodore Roosevelt to life in one-man shows,” my first memory of Whitmore comes from the first season of a 1970s sitcom called Temperatures Rising, in which he played the chief of surgery at a hospital in Washington, D.C. Only later did I enjoy his performance as a troubled chief inspector in the 1968 Richard Widmark film, Madigan. Whitmore made a considerable variety of appearances on the small screen, including in Judd, for the Defense, The Name of the Game, Gunsmoke, The Practice, and Mister Sterling. He never came off as anything less than professional and at the top of his game. In his last year of life, Whitmore spoke out strongly in favor of Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy. He was 87 years old when he died of lung cancer on Friday. We should all feel richer for having had him to entertain us all these years.

• I, too, have to get my hands on a copy of this book.

• It seems that Busted Flush Press has begun reissuing the works of A.E. Maxwell--the joint nom de plume of Ann and Evan Maxwell--who in the 1980s and ’90s produced eight action-filled books about a Los Angeles-based troubleshooter named Fiddler. The first entry in that series, Just Another Day in Paradise (1985), is due out again in paperback on February 23, with other entries to follow. I remember these books fondly, with good dialogue, tight plots, and a couple of sexy protagonists. I am glad to see them back in print.

• Submissions are now being sought for the Short Mystery Fiction Society’s 2009 Derringer Awards competition. A notice from awards organizers states that “members of the Short Mystery Fiction Society as well as editors/publishers of short mystery fiction may submit according to the Derringer Awards procedure.” Commendations will be given in four categories: Best Flash Story (up to 1,000 words); Best Short Story (1,001 to 4,000 words); Best Long Story (4,001 to 8,000 words); and Best Novelette (8,001 to 17,500 words). Submissions will be accepted until March 15, with Derringer winners to be announced on May 1. Click here for complete information.

• The “first ever” collection of South African crime-fiction short stories, Bad Company, is due out in March from Pan Macmillan. It’s edited by Joanne Hichens. I am very much hoping to get my hands on a copy. Author and serial-blurber Lee Child apparently liked it. His front-jacket blurb reads, “They told me there were gold mines in south Africa ... look what just came out!”

• ThugLit editor-creator Todd Robinson wrote the latest short story to be featured in David Cranmer’s still-new Webzine, Beat to a Pulp. Robinson’s yarn is called “ Caveat Venditor, Caveat Emptor.”

• Diamond Dagger Award-winning British author John Harvey (Cold in Hand) joins the online-blathering ranks with his Mellotone70Up Blog, which he says he began in January as one of five new things he wanted to do after turning 70 years old the month before.

• Stephen Booth (The Kill Call) tries not to be offended by readers who take offense at the views expressed by his fictional characters. “Well, let’s face it,” he remarks in his blog, “if you’re going to abuse a writer for the views of a fictional character, you might as well write to Thomas Harris and ask him to justify his cannibalism.”

• Medieval mystery novelist Jeri Westerson (Veil of Lies) has posted “a never-before-seen Crispin Guest short story” here.

• Eastern Michigan University professor David Geherin submits his new non-fiction book, Scene of the Crime: The Importance of Place in Crime and Mystery Fiction, to Marshal Zeringue’s famous Page 99 Test. The result makes clear James Lee Burke’s connection to another Southern writer, William Faulkner.

• “What is it about snow that fascinates the British--or perhaps specifically--the English mind?,” writes author Jim Kelly, as he muses on the importance of snow in his new novel, Death Wore White, which introduces series star Detective Inspector Peter Shaw. Kelly’s essay can be found in Declan Burke’s Crime Always Pays blog.

• Material Witness’ Ben Hunt interviews Alan Bradley, Canadian author of the Debut Dagger Award-winning novel The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, which was made available recently in Britain and will reach U.S. bookstores in April.

• How could you not buy this book for its cover alone?

• My bad. I forgot to mention the two newest podcast episodes at CrimeWAV.com. Most recently, Michael Connelly read a deleted chapter from his second Mickey Haller novel, The Brass Verdict. Prior to that, Craig Clevenger read “The Numbers Game,” which is featured in the new anthology San Francisco Noir 2: The Classics.

• And in his other blog, Existentialist Man, The Rap Sheet’s Ali Karim assesses the new Liam Neeson film, Taken. He finds it “wonderfully cathartic to watch the villains getting their butts kicked good and proper. The film is wickedly amoral as there’s even a torture scene, and a few innocents get hurt along the way ...” But on the question of whether Neeson’s character in the movie is too similar to Donald E. Westlake’s professional thief, Parker, Karim opines: “Well not really. The only similarity is the dispassionate way in which both Parker and Neeson are workman-like in their methods of despatching their opponents. Though saying that, if you like the Parker books (and films), you will enjoy seeing Neeson deploying Parker’s tactics to restore order with not a single flinch of remorse or empathy to those who block his path.”