Bullet Points: Cinco de Mayo Edition

• It was 50 years ago tomorrow, May 6, that Raymond Burr won the first of two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, given to him for his role in CBS-TV’s Perry Mason.

• I’m a bit late in mentioning this, but the latest short-story offering in Beat to a Pulp is Jay Stringer’s “The Hard Sell.”

• A couple of months back I noticed that publisher Crippen & Landru had added to its roster of coming attractions The Columbo Stories, a collection by William Link, who with Richard Levinson created the NBC Mystery Movie’s most popular series, Columbo. Checking this week, I find that the C&L Web site says Link’s book is “now being typeset.” As a longtime Columbo fan, I’m hoping to have a copy in my hands ASAP.

• Patti Abbott has mounted a new flash-fiction contest, this one built around the concept of “a wedding cake in the middle of the road.” Go here for details. Contest results to be posted on June 4.

• Barry Eisler is guest-blogging today at Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Magazine, talking about his new high-tech thriller, Fault Line. You will find his contribution here.

• The perpetually elusive “James Church” (the pseudonym of a 60-something intelligence agent turned author) talks with the Los Angeles Times about how he started writing contemporary mystery novels set in North Korea.

• In the Busted Flush Press blog, Reed Farrel Coleman recalls how he came to collaborate with Ken Bruen on the forthcoming (in September) novel Tower. Read all about it here.

• Spinetingler Magazine launches a tie-in blog, but there’s still no word on the winners of this year’s Spinetingler Awards.

• Here’s a book jacket I wish I’d discovered first for Killer Covers.

• Is Ruth Rendell really done with Inspector Wexford, the protagonist about whom she’s written 22 books, the newest being October’s The Monster in the Box, which recounts Reginald Wexford’s roots as an investigator?

• Mark Coggins points me to a quite thorough profile of author Joe Gores (Spade & Archer), which appears in the current issue of Stanford Magazine. Click here to read the whole article.

• Dick Adler endorses Brian D’Amato’s “amazing new thriller about the end of the world,” In the Courts of the Sun.

• I should learn never to become too fond of network TV shows. Every time I do, it seems, those shows are canceled (e.g., Life on Mars, Crossing Jordan, Raines, etc.). The latest casualty is NBC’s satisfyingly quirky Life, which isn’t going to be renewed for a third season. There will come a time, I suspect, when the U.S. networks no longer have anything I consider worth tuning in to every week. Already, more than half of the decreasing time I spend in front of the boob tube is devoted to watching either DVDs or cable series such as Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Burn Notice, and In Plain Sight. All that’s left on the nets, it seems, are insipid game shows and tedious “reality” programs. Too bad ...

• Disgraced former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich has now gone searching through spy novels for ways to scare the American public. Is this part of the Republican’t’s nascent bid for a presidential nomination in 2010, or just another example of how Gingrich and his shrinking party live in an alternative reality?

• Anyone for the “new traditionalist” crime fiction?

• Mike Ripley’s May “Getting Away with Murder” column in Shots focuses on new fiction from Lee Child and Deryn Lake, the reissuing of old works by Antony Trew, and an unusual Brittany mystery, Tom Macauley’s The Warning Bell. Oh, and check out that photograph of Dutch writer Saskia Noort. Whoa! Read the whole lot here.

• Bill Crider caught sight of this copycat cover.

• And of course, this being Cinco de Mayo, Janet Rudolph celebrates with a list of associated mystery tales.