Bullet Points: All Over the Map Edition

• CrimeFest 2009 concluded yesterday in Bristol, England. Undoubtedly, the wrap-up posts will continue for a while yet (I’m expecting Ali Karim, for one, to recount highlights in The Rap Sheet at some time soon), but a few have already trickled in. Ayo Onatade drops a sixth report into Shotsmag Confidential (the rest of her coverage can be found here), while Peter Rozovsky covers the doings of Day IV here (with all of his CrimeFest posts available here), and Uriah Robinson offers the first of his related posts at this location. UPDATE: Petrona blogger Maxine Clarke has some things to say about her own “three special highlights” from CrimeFest.

• Fans of the late George C. Chesbro should be on the lookout for the June 2009 issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, if they don’t have a copy already. It contains the author’s last short story, “Home Inversion,” featuring Garth Frederickson.

• Bury Me Deep, the latest novel from Rap Sheet contributor Megan Abbott, is among New York Magazine’s picks of the best books to read this summer. Carl Rosen summarizes the plot thusly:

In 1931, a young wife, Marion Seeley, is deposited by her husband on the steps of a TB ward in Phoenix. Eager to escape her job as a medical secretary among the “lungers,” as patients are known, Marion quickly falls in with the wrong crowd: fading flappers with marcelled bobs and blank eyes. Enter Gentleman Joe, a married “wet druggist” who is all about the “business of ruin.” He unlocks a dark obsession in Marion, and, true to noir style, desperate passions lead to despicable actions. In this novel based on the true-life case of the “Trunk Murderess,” Abbott turns the stuff of sensational confession magazines into a rich meditation on the unclouded depths of the soul.

Bury Me Deep is due out in early July. Also chosen by New York: Gillian Flynn’s Dark Places. Two more books I must find time to read in the coming months.

• It hardly makes up for the bad news that NBC’s Life has been cancelled after only two seasons. But fans of that distinctive TV cop series starring the quirky Damien Lewis and the fetching Sarah Shahi will be happy to learn that a five-disc set of Season 2 is scheduled for DVD release on August 25.

• Looking for reading recommendations? Acclaimed British writer John Harvey (Far Cry) has posted a list of “20 crime, or close, novels from which I have derived more than usual pleasure, and which I’ve re-read at least once if not several times.” I’m feeling pretty smug that I have read most of his selections. Harvey’s list is here.

• Making the publicity rounds: Reed Farrel Coleman (Empty Ever After) is interviewed by National Public Radio’s Maureen Corrigan, while Laura Lippman (Life Sentences) chats it up with late-night TV host Craig Ferguson.

• Derringer Award-winning writer John Weagly is the author of this week’s short story at Beat to a Pulp, “Oral Eruptions.”

• From the “Fun Facts to Know and Tell” file: Chris Knopf, author of the new Sam Acquillo, Hard Stop, was “‘personally rejected from graduate school in writing’ by none other than novelist John Barth”--or so he informs the Hartford Courant.

• Jeremy Duns, author of the new Cold War thriller Free Agent, “reveals his ten favorite real espionage inventions” to the London Times. Read all about them here.

• Along the same lines, but strictly for amateurs ...

• Author and old movie buff Arthur Lyons may have passed away in March 2008, but his name lives on. What used to be known simply as the Palm Springs Film Noir Festival has been rechristened the Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival, and will begin this year on May 28.

• John Hart, the Edgar Award-winning author of the new novel The Last Child, is the guest all this week at Minotaur Books’ Moments in Crime blog. You can keep up with his posts here.

• Castle Freeman Jr. (All That I Have) is interviewed by John Kenyon at Things I’d Rather Be Doing.

• Blogger Jen Forbus of Jen’s Book Thoughts interviews Stanley Trollip and Michael Sears, who under the combined pseudonym “Michael Stanley” wrote last year’s A Carrion Death--introducing Botswanan detective David “Kubu” Bengu--and next month follow up with The Second Death of Goodluck Tinubu.

• Readers who enjoyed Philip Kerr’s fifth Bernie Gunther novel, A Quiet Flame (one of January Magazine’s favorite books of 2008) will be pleased to hear that Kerr has another installment of that series, If the Dead Rise Not, planned for release by Quercus in September of this year. The write-up at Amazon UK casts it as a prequel:

Berlin 1934. The Nazis have been in power for just eighteen months but already Germany has seen some unpleasant changes. As the city prepares to host the 1936 Olympics, Jews are being expelled from all German sporting organizations--a blatant example of discrimination. Forced to resign as a homicide detective with Berlin’s Criminal Police, Bernie is now house detective at the famous Adlon Hotel. The discovery of two bodies--one a businessman and the other a Jewish boxer--involves Bernie in the lives of two hotel guests. One is a beautiful left-wing journalist intent on persuading America to boycott the Berlin Olympiad; the other is a German-Jewish gangster who plans to use the Olympics to enrich himself and the Chicago mob. As events unfold, Bernie uncovers a vast labour and construction racket designed to take advantage of the huge sums the Nazis are prepared to spend to showcase the new Germany to the world. It is a plot that finds its conclusion twenty years later in pre-revolution Cuba, the country to which Bernie flees from Argentina at the end of A Quiet Flame.

• Will you be attending the 75th anniversary celebration of the killings of Depression-era robbers Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker this weekend in Gibsland, Louisiana? As the Associated Press reports, the place where those larcenous lovers made their last stand “will again buzz with activity on Saturday when actors re-create the ambush that pumped more than 100 bullets into the couple. It’s one of four re-enactments planned for the festival, which will also include a pancake breakfast, parade, Bonnie and Clyde look-alike contest.”

• Lee Child is Molly Pesce’s latest guest on the Barnes & Noble video series Tagged! What may be most interesting about their exchange is the estimation that Child (Gone Tomorrow) sells “a book a second.” Absolutely astonishing!

• Stephanie Pintoff, winner of the 2008 St. Martin’s Minotaur/Mystery Writers of America Best First Crime Novel Award, talks with blogger Lesa Holstine about her debut historical thriller, In the Shadow of Gotham.

• Being rather modest, I tend to downplay compliments to me or the products with which I am associated. However, veteran novelist Ed Gorman had such a nice comment about The Rap Sheet recently that I’d like to share it with the other people who have helped make this now almost-three-year-old blog a success. To quote:

If there’s such a place as the indispensable mystery site, it has to be The Rap Sheet. This week editor-writer Jeff Pierce demonstrates his talent for constantly giving his readers the kind and quality of material they won’t find anywhere else. I’m referring here to his interview with the son of the late paperback writer Robert Terrall. A good share of Jeff's material should be preserved in book form and this piece is just one example.

• And two more books go through the Page 69 Test ringer: Rebecca Cantrell’s A Trace of Smoke and Philip Baruth’s The Brothers Boswell.