Bullet Points: The First 100 Days Edition

Tomorrow is going to be a big day, indeed, what with the announcements of this year’s Edgar Award winners. So let’s clear the decks of some smaller subjects that have been gathering in my to-be-mentioned pile:

• Only three months after the last update of Kevin Burton Smith’s The Thrilling Detective Web Site was posted, here comes the Spring 2009 edition. Nearly record time, I think. Highlights include Josef Hoffmann’s thoughtful non-fiction piece, “A Man Must Do What He Must: Hammett’s Pragmatism,” an excerpt from Mark Coggins’ forthcoming novel, The Big Wake-up, and fresh fiction from Robert Petyo (“Love Is for Suckers”), Robert Stevens (“Terra Bella”), and Rap Sheet contributor Jim Winter (“Love Don’t Mean a Thing”). In addition, there’s the usual complement of new and updated files on sleuthing characters such as Kitty Pangborn and Dexter Theroux (Death Was in the Picture), Quinn (Krapp’s Last Case), and Julie Collins (Snow Blind). There are lots of terrific opportunities here to expand your mind while avoiding work.

• Yesterday, I received my copy of the latest Mystery Scene magazine. Oline H. Cogdill contributes the cover piece, which focuses on Laurie R. King and her new Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes novel, The Language of Bees. Elsewhere in this issue, Cheryl Solimini profiles Olen Steinhauer (The Tourist), H.R.F. Keating remembers author Christianna Brand, the ubiquitous Kevin Burton Smith casts familiar fictional detectives for the movies and television (Claire Danes as Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone? Harvey Keitel portraying Loren D. Estleman’s Amos Walker?), and Art Taylor looks back at romantic crime films such as To Catch a Thief and French Kiss.

• Also found in the mail: the April/May issue of Mystery News. The front page is dominated by a profile of police-procedural writer John Sandford (Wicked Prey), but inside can be found interviews with Cassandra Clark (Hangman Blind) and Rap Sheet contributor Patrick Lennon, as well as a look back at the work of John D. MacDonald and MN’s usual abundance of book reviews.

• Short-story writer Patrick Shawn Bagley is the latest subject of Brian Lindenmuth’s terrific series at Blogspot Central, “Conversations with the Bookless.”

• Congratulations to Randy Johnson on his 300th post at his smartly redesigned blog, Not the Baseball Pitcher. And while I’m handing out attaboys, let’s hear it for Philadelphia’s Peter Rozovsky, who recently filed his 1,000th post at Detectives Beyond Borders.

• Simon Lewis (Bad Traffic) chooses his favorite noir crime novels.

• Robert Crais explains his transition from television to crime-fiction-writing. I think he made a good switch, don’t you?

• Britain’s Guardian newspaper is becoming famous for its creative (read “obscure”) literary lists. The latest is John Mullan’s rundown of “ten of the best floggings” in fiction. Ninth place goes to Ian Fleming’s 1953 novel, Casino Royale. In that book, writes Mullan, “The villainous, sadistic Le Chiffre is bent on nastiness to James Bond not only because he is a British agent but also because he has beaten him at baccarat. His men capture Bond and take him to his villa, where he tortures him with a cane carpet beater. Fleming is clinically precise about the effects.” Marshall Zeringue from the Campaign for the American Reader notes that “Casino Royale also made Meg Rosoff’s top 10 adult books for teenagers list and Peter Millar’s critic's chart of top spy books.”

• Meanwhile, in The Guardian’s blog, Stuart Evers argues that “it’s time E.W. Hornung’s great crime creation”--cricket player and gentleman thief Arthur J. Raffles--“emerged from the shadow of Sherlock Holmes.” He writes, in part:

Hornung, I believe, saw a new kind of crime story on the horizon: those of the hard-boiled pulp novelists, and of the more psychologically acute writers such as Patricia Highsmith. The games Hornung plays with his reader’s expectations are every bit as much of a riddle as the cases of Holmes, yet never become too tricksy not to be convincing. Perhaps this is why I find them more complete and more involving.

Over the years, Raffles’s influence has survived in films, television programmes and other novels (there is much of him in Patrick Hamilton’s [Ernest Ralph] Gorse, for example), but the original stories have been unfairly overlooked. Their off-kilter plotting and sometimes hysterical style, which Hornung uses to great effect to show Bunny [Manders]’s emotionally erratic state, may date them. But the constant inventiveness and sly wit of Hornung make every one a real joy. They are among the great treasures of crime writing, and should be cherished as such.

For more on Raffles, see Chris Ewan’s review of Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman, which was posted earlier this month as part of The Rap Sheet’s “The Book You Have to Read” series. (Hat tip to Elizabeth Foxwell.)

• In his latest look back at Edgar Awards history, French blogger Xavier Lechard recalls the winners and trends of the 1980s.

• Hard Case Crime publisher Charles Ardai talks with the Indiana Jones-centered Web site TheRaider.net about his new Gabriel Hunt adventure series. You’ll find the results here.

• Over at Poe’s Deadly Daughters, former journalist and public-relations man turned author Chester D. Campbell talks about his new series private eye, Sid Chance, introduced earlier this month in The Surest Poison.

• Is it my imagination, or is short-story writer Paul D. Brazill suddenly all over the place? He has a new story posted at A Twist of Noir (“Bingo Master’s Breakout”) and Cullen Gallagher voices high praise for his tale “This Old House,” which appeared earlier this month at Thrillers, Killers ’n’ Chillers.

• And just one day after U.S. Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania abandoned the demoralized Republican Party to become a Democrat, President Barack Obama celebrates his 100th day in office--phenomenally popular and now one step closer to the 60-vote majority he needs to avoid GOP filibusters of his plans for reforming the nation’s economy, health care system, and civil rights laws.