Bullet Points: Memorial Day Edition

• Swiss crime fiction? I didn’t even know there was such a thing. Fortunately, Bob Cornwell is helping to fill that hole in my education with his third nation-focused special for Crime Time, this one focusing on Switzerland. There’s a fine overview of the field, a list of useful Web sites, a selection of Swiss contributors to the genre, and much more. Cornwell tells me that this information was “compiled by Paul Ott, Swiss novelist and short story writer (as Paul Lascaux), critic, bibliographer, and founder of Mordstage, Switzerland’s major crime-fiction festival.” To read Crime Scene: Switzerland, click here. And if you’d like to catch up with the two previous installments of this series--about France and The Netherlands--simply go here.

• Did you know that author William Landay (Mission Flats, The Strangler) has begun writing a blog of his own? “I have always avoided writing for the Web because I was afraid it would suck away some of the creative energy I need for my novels,” he explains in his debut post. “Novel-writing is grueling. It demands long periods of quiet and concentration. The Web, an endless stream of flashing, hyperlinked calls for your attention, is lethal to that sort of sustained focus. ... But, after The Crash in publishing, midlist (or downlist) writers like me simply cannot afford to ignore the Web. Toxic as it is to book-writing, the Web is essential to book-selling.”

• More Moore, please. That would be Donna Moore, the author of ... Go to Helena Handbasket, who has just thrown the doors open on another new blog, Big Beat from Badsville. She’s styling it as “the home of Scottish crime fiction--news, interviews, reviews, book-related stuff, non-book-related stuff, and any other random nonsense that takes my fancy (there, that should stop me getting done under the Trade Descriptions Act).” Drop in here and have a few pints. (Hat tip to Peter Rozovsky.)

• See what you can learn by reading?

• In her new column for the Baltimore Examiner Web site, Sandra Ruttan coaxes Craig McDonald into talking about “the intrigue of writing about other writers” in his new book, Rogue Males. You’ll find Ruttan’s column here.

• Meanwhile, New Jersey novelist Jeffrey Cohen yaps it up with Jen Forbus of Jen’s Books Thoughts on subjects ranging from his lifetime interest in writing (“I’ve always had an internal story going on, and at some point, it has to come out”) and his sense of humor to his attention to character development and his pun-titled mysteries (the latest of which is A Night at the Operation).

• After seeing his 100th book published, the novel Far Cry, This Is Nottingham apparently couldn’t wait to ask 70-year-old British author John Harvey when readers can expect the appearance of his next book. Laughing, Harvey says, “It does get harder, I’ll be honest. To think of a different story and a different angle. I think it’s one of the things about writing crime fiction. This year I’m taking a sabbatical. I have done a book a year since the first [Charlie] Resnick [novel, 1989’s Lonely Hearts]. And I’d like to slow down to the point where I’m doing a book every two years. ... There are other things I want to do.” You’ll have to read the full article to see what those are.

• And for Pulp Pusher, Ray Banks interviews Edinburgh journalist David Lewis about his new book, Beast of Burden.

• This week’s CrimeWAV podcast comes from UK writer Gary Dobbs. It’s called “Rhonda Noir,” and CrimeWAV honcho Seth Harwood says it “will make you think of Guy Ritchie, Tarantino, and all the goods!”

• In the lead-up to spy novelist Eric Ambler’s 100th birthday next month, Sarah Weinman reconsiders Ambler’s A Coffin for Dimitrios, “which 70 years after its 1939 publication holds up as a startling, elegant masterpiece of espionage fiction.” That same book was reviewed not long ago as part of The Rap Sheet’s “forgotten books” series. (Hat tip to Patrick Balester.)

• By the way, were you aware that Christopher Fowler, author of Bryant and May mysteries, has been writing a series for Britain’s Independent newspaper about “forgotten authors,” some of whom--like Robert Van Gulik and H.R.F. Keating--are crime writers? You can find that whole series reproduced in Fowler’s blog.

• I can’t believe I’ve never seen this movie.

• Not content with producing one award-nominated blog, Crime Always Pays, Irish author and Rap Sheet contributor Declan Burke writes today that he’s “been thinking strongly about starting a new blog ... called Green Streets, as in, ‘Down those green streets a man (or woman) must go ...’ and making that one the news/gossip/slander venue for Irish crime writing, while I toddle on with Crime Always Pays as a personal blog. It probably all sounds a bit messy, but in the long run I want to establish Green Streets as an online magazine, and a proper Web site, for Irish crime writing--novels, movies, journalism, non-fiction/true crime, and theatre.” He’s now looking for writers to lend him a hand. Any takers? Let him know here.

• Speaking of the able Mr. Burke, I really ought to follow up on a story from earlier this week about his conducting a poll to identify “the sexiest Irish crime writer.” The full results are here, but you might as well know up front that John Connolly and Alex Barclay came in their respective sex categories. (Is that a proper way to phrase it?)

• Ken Bruen’s 2008 novel, Once Were Cops, appears headed for big-screen Hollywood treatment.

• And Philadelphia is the place to be this coming Halloween.