Bullet Points: Oldies and Goodies Edition

• Don’t forget that this is the last day to enter The Rap Sheet’s contest to win a free copy of Jerry Stahl’s fourth and latest novel, Pain Killers. All you have to do is answer one simple question:

In which other of Stahl’s novels did ex-junkie turned codeine-popping detective Manny Rupert also appear?

If you need a clue, click here. Once you have the answer, send it in an e-mail note--along with your snail-mail address--to: jpwrites@wordcuts.org. And write “Pain Killers Contest” in the subject line. The deadline for entering is midnight tonight. One winner will be announced on Monday. Unfortunately, this contest is only open to U.S. residents.

• The first-season DVD set of Veronica Mars has recently received enthusiastic acclaim from not just one, but two sources. First, from Pajiba (which is forthrightly subtitled “Scathing Reviews for Bitchy People”). And second, from The Groovy Age of Horror. Writes Pajiba’s Daniel Carlson: “[I]t’s Season One that remains the sharpest crystallization of what ‘Veronica Mars’ promises: A show about a girl solving the mysteries and exploring the dangers of her own life, from the death of her best friend to the truth about her own family.”

• Pajiba’s Veronica Mars write-up, by the way, is just one of its critical looks back at “The Best 20 Seasons of the Past 20 Years” of American television. That series also includes: Murder One, Season One, Twin Peaks, Season One, The West Wing, Season Two, The Wire, Season Two, and Deadwood, Season One.

• Almost two years ago, author George Pelecanos chose to include Don Carpenter’s 1966 novel, Hard Rain Falling, in The Rap Sheet’s expansive rundown of overlooked, criminally forgotten, and underappreciated crime novels. He called it “a stunning, brutally honest entry in the social realist school of crime fiction.” Now, Pelecanos has written the introduction to a long-overdue new edition of Hard Rain Falling, coming from Random House in September. Good for him for reminding readers of this extraordinary novel. (Hat tip to Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind.)

• Uriah Robinson (aka Norman Price) reminds me of another older book worth rediscovering, The Polish Officer (1995), by Alan Furst.

• Judith Freeman, author of the biography The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved (more on that here), writes in today’s Los Angeles Times about meeting Chandler’s former secretary, Dorothy Fisher, who died in December 2008. You’ll find the Times piece here.

• Tom Bale (aka David Harrison) submits his latest novel, the cinematically told Skin and Bones, to Marshal Zeringue’s Page 69 Test. Click here for the results.

• For Pulp Pusher, Seth “Soul Man” Ferranti interviews gangbanger Terrell C. Wright, author of the new 2 Live and Die in L.A. and Home of the Body Bags (2005).

• And in case you haven’t noticed, novelist Alexandra Sokoloff (The Price) has been writing a terrifically thorough analysis of Roman Polanski’s 1974 private-eye film, Chinatown. “[T]here’s a good reason instructors love to talk about this movie--there’s just no film better to cover ALL the elements of filmic and dramatic structure with one single movie,” she explains. “I never watch it without seeing new things in it, and I always benefit from hearing what other people see in it.” If I have the parts in order, they are here, here, and here, with a character study of detective Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) here. It all makes me wants to watch Chinatown again--for what I think must be the 10th time.