Bullet Points: April Fool’s Day Edition

• This being the traditional day for making light of human foibles and exploiting mankind’s persistent gullibility, let me point you to a few occasion-appropriate sites. The Museum of Hoaxes (yes, there really is such a thing) has put together a list of the top 100 April Fool’s Day hoaxes of all time, including everything from disgraced Republican President Richard M. Nixon’s alleged 1992 comeback attempt and Taco Bell’s announcement that it was purchasing the historic Liberty Bell (soon to be rechristened the Taco Liberty Bell) to the 1976 radio announcement that a once-in-a-lifetime planetary alignment in our solar system would result in Earthlings losing their gravity. Meanwhile, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography’s Web site has assembled a rundown of history’s foremost hoaxers. (Hat tip to Elizabeth Foxwell.) The Baltimore Sun’s Read Street blog has developed a quiz having to do with famous literary hoaxes. And, neatly drawing us back into the crime-fiction realm, Janet Rudolph has put together a short list of April Fool’s-related mysteries.

• The Short Mystery Fiction Society has announced its 2009 Derringer Award finalists. Nominees include Gary Hoffman, B.V. Lawson, Sophie Littlefield, Robert S. Levinson, and O’Neil De Noux. Winners in four categories will be chosen by members of the Society. There doesn’t seem to be a date specified as to when their favorites will be announced, but we’ll keep you posted.

• Sarah Weinman brings the sad news that Michael Cox, author of the historical thrillers The Meaning of Night (2006) and The Glass of Time (2008), died yesterday at age 60, following a bout with cancer. More Cox obituaries here and here.

• After much consideration, Jim Winter, who’s a regular contributor to both January Magazine and The Rap Sheet, as well as being the author of that too-fast-disappearing novel Northcoast Shakedown, has decided to offer his hard-to-sell new novel, Road Rules, for free online. It sounds as if he’ll introduce it both in podcast and blog post chunks, beginning on April 16. Stay tuned.

• Our faithful Dublin correspondent, Declan Burke, reports that the crime-fiction shortlist for this year’s Irish Book Awards features Alex Barclay (Blood Runs Cold), Arlene Hunt (Undertow), Tana French (The Likeness), and Brian McGilloway (Gallows Lane). Members of the reading public are invited to vote for their favorite titles in this and other categories. Just click here.

• Michael Sims, editor of the new anthology The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime: Con Artists, Burglars, Rogues, and Scoundrels from the Time of Sherlock Holmes, talks with the Art & Literature blog’s Art Taylor about the value of nostalgia, con games past and present, and his inclusion of authors’ work not normally associated with the crime-fiction genre. You can read their exchange here. (Sims also talks with Bookslut about the cover design on his new anthology.)

• Over at Tina Brown’s The Daily Beast, Walter Mosley (The Long Fall) recommends five of his favorite books--none of which is a crime novel. (Hat tip to Campaign for the American Reader.)

• Yet another list, this one from The Guardian: Georgina Turner identifies half a dozen of her favorite amateur sleuths from television, including Miss Jane Marple, Jonathan Creek, and Dick Van Dyke’s Dr. Mark Sloan (Diagnosis: Murder). Additional suggestions come from the Petrona blog.

• Once of the greatest book titles ever conceived.

• I hear that today is the 11th birthday of that excellent crime-fiction resource, The Thrilling Detective Web Site. Congratulations to editor-creator Kevin Burton Smith, fiction editor Gerald So, and all the rest of the TDWS gang.

• The March/April 2009 issue of ThugLit has been posted.

• Six-time Swedish novelist Camilla Läckberg (The Preacher)--last heard from on this page choosing her 10 favorite Swedish books--has submitted to a rather lengthy interview by Shots contributor Ayo Onatade. Results here.

• Further proof (as if we need any) that Dashiell Hammett once lived in San Francisco, courtesy of Mark Coggins’ blog.

• British novelist Philip Kerr (A Quiet Flame) tells the Powell’s Book Web site that the fictional character he’d most like to date is James Bond’s Miss Moneypenny.

• Jared Case, author of the blog A Case of Murder, has an interesting project underway. He explains his intent in an e-mail note: “I have been frustrated with the absence of a true definition for film noir for a while now, and have decided to go back and watch the original 10 films that the French named as noir. I’m tracking this little odyssey on my blog ... I call it the 10-Day Film Noir Challenge, and I hope to come out the other end with a better understanding of what the French originally saw and identified as noir, helping to form my own definition.” Case’s latest movie choice (and a film I recently had the chance to watch again) is This Gun for Hire (1942). But you’ll enjoy looking through his whole series of posts. Just click here.

• The Guardian asks that immortal question, Why are there no fictional sleuths based in Iran? Explains Saeed Kamali Dehghan: “Iranians are enthusiastic about Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie’s Poirot, and many other western detectives such as Georges Simenon’s Maigret partly because for Iranians these stories evoke popular images of the West but also because Iran--despite having a huge amount of poetry in its literature--has virtually no history of detective fiction.”

• The latest short-story offering at Beat to a Pulp is “No Hands,” by Albert Tucher. And over at CrimeWAV.com, Allan Guthrie reads his story “The Turnip Farm.”

• Gerald So announces the roster of writers whose work will appear in the second edition of The Lineup: Poems on Crime, due out sometime soon.

• The Spring 2009 edition of Mysterical-E has just been posted, with contributions by Jim Harrington, Annette Dashofy, Patti Abbott, and Brian Haycock. In addition, Jim Doherty has put together a tribute to members of the crime-fiction community who died in 2008.

• Yikes! Another author I’ve never heard of before.

• Here’s something else I didn’t know: Rain Fall (2002), the first of Barry Eisler’s Junichi “John” Rain thrillers, has been filmed in Japan and opens there on April 25. The cast is mostly Japanese, but Gary Oldman headlines as the CIA bureau chief in Tokyo. UPDATE: The Hungry Detective’s Dan Wagner has posted the trailer for Rain Fall.

• Publisher William Morrow is naturally trying to build up reader anticipation of the release (come May 12) of Elmore Leonard’s new novel, Road Dogs, a story featuring three characters from previous works: Cundo Rey (last seen in LaBrava), Jack Foley (from Out of Sight), and Dawn Navarro (from Riding the Rap). But its game plan is not typical, says blogger Scott D. Parker: “The first eight chapters are now available online over at Entertainment Weekly. Boo-yeah! But wait! There’s more. The publisher is making these chapters available as part of a contest to see who can come up with the best fan-produced book trailer. How synergistic is that? Details on the contest here.” Leonard himself will choose this contest’s winner.

• Another pop-culture touchstone disappears.

• Finnish blogger-editor Juri Nummelin interviews American author Duane Swierczynski about his writing and specifically his work on The Wheelman (2005), which has just been released in Finland as Keikkakuski. (Yeah, I don’t know how to pronounce that either.) Read the results of their exchange here.

• Last week brought the 50th anniversary of Raymond Chandler’s death. But that’s no reason to stop celebrating this author’s work. In a follow-up to his fill-in-the-blanks quiz on Chandler’s trademark descriptive phrases, Baltimore Sun writer David Rosenthal put together another quiz that allows folks to imagine how the creator of Philip Marlowe might have completed descriptions on the order of “as ---- as a Dick Cheney sneer.” You can try your own hand at the task here and read how others have filled in the blanks. UPDATE: Rosenthal summarizes the responses to his latest contest here.

• The London Times probes the sex lives of Cold War-era spies.

• And I hope this isn’t another April Fool’s joke. In fact, I’m quite looking forward to such a fashion trend reaching Seattle, though--like midriff-bearing blouses--this style is not for every body.

READ MORE: “April Fools,” by Jeri Westerson (Getting Medieval).