Bullet Points: Friday Distractions Edition

• Today’s crop of “forgotten books” runs heavily toward non-fiction (at organizer Patti Abbott’s suggestion), but there are also a few novels being touted. Among the reading suggestions of interest to crime-fiction fans: Bloodletters and Bad Men, by J. Robert Nash; Bitter Blood, by Jerry Bledsoe; A Catalogue of Crime, by Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor; Fatal Vision, by Joe McGinnis; and Killing for Pleasure, by Debi Marshall. Abbott has a few more entries in her own blog, plus a list of all of today’s participants.

• Someday, I’m really going to have to get my hands on a copy of Dan J. Marlowe’s 1962 novel, The Name of the Game Is Death, which introduced the anti-hero character, killer and bank robber Chet Arnold, later renamed Earl Drake. A few years back, Mystery*File’s Josef Hoffmann looked back at Marlowe and his “masterpiece.” Now, novelist Wallace Stroby takes his own whack at The Name of the Game Is Death, summing it up as “the good stuff, 100 proof.” You can read his assessment here.

• In case you missed hearing about this, Catholic nun-turned-mystery writer Sister Carol Ann O’Marie died last week of Parkinson’s disease at age 75. As editor Janet Rudolph recalls in Mystery Fanfare, O’Marie “wrote 11 mystery novels featuring sleuth Sister Mary Helen, a gray-haired, crime-solving nun. O’Marie said her San Francisco-based character was based on the principal of a grammar school where she had taught, and she used people and situations she experienced during her life in her novels, even going to the Calistoga mud baths for ‘research’-a bit out of the ‘order.’” There’s more on O’Marie here.

• Look out, Thomas Magnum!

• Australian-born Scottish writer Tony Black (Gutted) is Crime Squad’s latest “Author of the Month.”

• It seems that independent publisher Stark House Press, usually known for reprinting overlooked books by Harry Whittington, Gil Brewer, Wade Miller, and others, has purchased its first original novel: New York writer Charlie Stella’s Johnny Porno, an “often humorous, sometimes violent, action-packed page turner” set in 1973, when the banned “porn chic” flick Deep Throat was still drawing large audiences. Ed Gorman, who often wrangles books for Stark House, writes about the Stella acquisition here. (Hat tip to Nathan Cain’s Independent Crime.)

• Huh. I didn’t know that Ed McBain’s 1956 novel, Cop Hater, was turned into a movie. Another entry for my Netflix list.

• Further proof that Rush Limburger is a big fat idiot.

• Permission to Kill’s David Foster alerts me to a pretty cool project from UK illustrator/designer Leighton Jones, who has “retro-styled” the jacket on Charlie Higson’s first “Young Bond” novel, SilverFin (2005). Jones’ solution (recounted in five successive posts--here, here, here, here, and here) is considerably more interesting than the original cover. Won’t Higson’s publisher, Puffin Books, please hire this guy to remake all of the Young Bond novel fronts?

• For the Los Angeles Times, Sarah Weinman interviews Lawrence Block on the subject of his new “anti-memoir,” Step by Step.

• David J. Montgomery has joined Tina Brown’s Web site, The Daily Beast, as a weekly crime-fiction columnist. His initial book assessments are on offer here.

• While looking up some facts this morning about the old NBC Mystery Movie series Columbo, I found myself completely engrossed in the cyberpages of The Ultimate Columbo Web Site. What a trove of information significant and trivial!

• From Elizabeth Foxwell’s blog, The Bunburyist: “Lisa Rosner, author of The Anatomy Murders (due out in October), has developed an online slideshow dealing with the 19th-century Edinburgh murderers William Burke and William Hare. Rosner discusses the Web site and her book here.”

• IDW Publishing has bought rights to 100 stories by author Robert Bloch (The Scarf, Psycho, etc.) with the intention of developing them “as comic books, graphic novels and feature entertainment.” There’s more information here.

• Two interviews worth listening to in your spare time, both coming from BBC Radio 5’s Daily Mayo program: one with David Simon, creator of The Wire and the forthcoming HBO-TV series Tremé; and the other with Philip Glenister, who has played chauvinistic, violent Detective Chief Inspector Gene Hunt in both the UK version of Life on Mars and its spin-off, Ashes to Ashes.

• Here are your nominees for the David Award, given out by Deadly Ink Press. A winner will be announced later this month during the Deadly Ink Conference, to be held June 27-28 in New Jersey.

• Oh, yeah, this is a good idea, because what can possibly go wrong when you mix alcohol and loaded weapons in the same room?

• British author Matt Hilton submits his new thriller, Dead Man’s Dust, to the infamous Page 69 Test.

• To help celebrate Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 150th birthday last month, Time magazine put together this brief recap of some of the actors who’ve played Sherlock Holmes over the decades.

• Today is Ken Follett’s 60th birthday.

• Was Kung Fu actor David Carradine’s death yesterday the result of an accident, rather than suicide? Read here and here.

• And here’s an unusual book-giveaway contest. To promote its brand-new thriller, Chaos, by the Dutch husband-and-wife writing team of Esther and Berry Verhoef (aka Escober), Portland, Oregon-based publisher Underland Press is asking readers to “tell us about the biggest thing you ever done to spread ‘chaos’” and anarchy. The winner will receive a “military-issue map bag” containing such items as a “compass with sighting mirror,” a “camouflage T-shirt, suitable for disappearing without a trace,” and a “grenade (deactivated--you think we’re crazy?).” The deadline for telling the Underland folks about your deliberate deeds of disorder is June 30. Click here for full contest details.