Bullet Points: Catching Up Edition

First of all, let me thank my colleague Linda L. Richards, who steered The Rap Sheet with impressive skill during my recent trip to Minneapolis. Second, there’s a little catching up to do, as far as recent developments are concerned. To wit:

• From the fine film blog, Cinematical: “How’s this for a shocking piece of news: Seventeen years after Kyle MacLachlan last appeared as Special Agent Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, WENN reports that the actor wants to resurrect the legendary show on the Internet. The actor says: ‘I have a crazy idea to bring back Twin Peaks on the net as five-minute webisodes.’ Should this become a reality, it will be without David Lynch, whose ‘focus is more on transcendental meditation now.’”

• It’s interesting to see, on a list of the Top 50 TV Westerns of All Time (compiled by the Western Writers of America), at least three vintage series that can also be classified as crime fiction: Have Gun, Will Travel (#5), The Wild Wild West (19), and the oft-overlooked 1972-1974 NBC Mystery Movie segment, Hec Ramsey (which, like Have Gun, starred Richard Boone). By the way, the top four places on the WWA’s roster are occupied by Gunsmoke, Maverick, Rawhide, and Bonanza. Deadwood placed 11th, but should’ve been higher.

• Here’s your Man from U.N.C.L.E. fix for the day.

• Over at Mysteries in Paradise, Kerrie Smith compares the recent nominees for a variety of high-profile crime-fiction awards. “Even if you are one that says you are not influenced by awards, and are often profoundly disappointed when you read the winner,” Smith writes, “it gives pause for thought when the same authors and titles crop up again and again doesn’t it?”

• I’m looking forward to seeing the film Whiteout, which debuts in September and stars the ever-lovely Kate Beckinsale as a deputy U.S. marshal investigating murder in Antarctica. My interest has been piqued further by the recently released trailer for that movie, which has been adapted from Greg Rucka’s 1998 comic-book series.

• Speaking of films, I am definitely adding this forgotten gem to my Netflix list: Hickey & Boggs (1972), which reunited I Spy stars Bill Cosby and Robert Culp in a plot about ill-fortuned gumshoes on the hunt for a missing girl. As author Duane Swierczynski remarks, “if you love your private eyes pushed to the point of oblivion, if you think the best crime films were made in the 1970s, and love a good neo-noir that plays out in broad daylight, I very much recommend tracking down Hickey & Boggs.”

• Amid rising tensions in Iran, following last week’s disputed re-election of the nation’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Tom Gabbay submits his third thriller, The Tehran Conviction, to the notorious Page 69 Test. The results are here.

• Funny. I had almost forgotten that espionage novelist Alan Furst (The Spies of Warsaw) once contributed football columns to Seattle Weekly, the “alternative newspaper” for which I also labored in a previous life. And I’m with Sarah Weinman in being puzzled as to why Furst prefers not to talk about his early novels. I liked both The Paris Drop (1980) and The Caribbean Account (1981).

• Over at Pulp Serenade, Cullen Gallagher assesses the “dark, brooding poetry” of David Goodis’ opening lines.

• “Readers should be warned that I am going to write a positive review of one of the most excoriated books in the thriller genre, and I should know since I have been among those excoriating it,” writes David L. Vineyard in Mystery*File. “That said, I think someone needs to point out why Sapper (Herman Cyril McNeile) and Bulldog Drummond have lingered so long in the public imagination and are still read today by some--myself included.” This is an excellent piece, well worth your reading.

• In a sprightly exchange for Pulp Pusher, Anthony Neil Smith and Victor Gischler “shoot the breeze ... about rural noir, tacos, and their literary heroes.” Quite the pair, indeed.

• Could Hawley Harvey Crippen, the American homeopathic physician found guilty of murdering his wife in London in 1910, have his name cleared 99 years later? The publicity would certainly be good for Martin Edwards, whose 2008 novel, Dancing for the Hangman, is finally due out in the States later this year from Five Star Press.

• Another thing I missed while I was away in the Midwest: Last week’s episode of the KSAV Web radio program TV Confidential featured a conversation with 82-year-old Emmy Award-nominated producer Everett Chambers, who worked on the original NBC series Columbo during four of its seven seasons (1971-1978). Fortunately, I--and you--can still listen to that exchange here.

• And among the books I saved from my father’s shelves after his death five years ago was a collection of the black-and-white, 1930s Secret Agent X-9 comic strips written by Dashiell Hammett and drawn by Alex Raymond. What I didn’t know, though, until reading about them in Christopher Mills’ Spy-fi Channel blog, was that two film serials were made from those strips. “The 1937 serial has Agent X-9 functioning pretty much as a standard movie G-Man, chasing after a ring of international jewel thieves ...,” Mills explains. “The 1945 serial, on the other hand, is a genuine espionage adventure. This one stars a young, up-and-coming Lloyd Bridges as Phil Corrigan, Secret Agent X-9. The charismatic and talented Bridges was a far better actor than most other serial heroes, and his nascent star quality really infuses the 13-chapter serial with energy. Unlike some other chapterplays of the era, you don’t get bored between fistfights and car chases.” Hmm. More DVDs to track down ...