Deadlines, Designs, and Disappointments

Sorry for the sparse posting over these last few days. While things seemed slow in the crime-fiction world, I decided to write a couple of pieces for my other blog, Limbo--one heralding the centennial of Seattle’s first world’s fair, and the other about what would have been my mother’s 85th birthday, had she not died 20 years ago. But with those now in the can, it’s back to business here.

• The deadline for submissions to the 2009 Shamus Awards competition is Friday, June 19. “Eligible works must feature as a main character a person paid for investigative work but not employed for that work by a unit of government,” Robert J. Randisi explains in PWA News and Views. “These include traditionally licensed private investigators; lawyers and reporters who do their own investigations; and others who function as hired private agents. These do not include law-enforcement officers, other government employees or amateur, uncompensated sleuths. Not eligible for consideration are self-published works, e-books, or works for which the author is not paid. All submissions must be in hard copy.” To find more information, click here.

• Stefanie Pintoff, author of the fine new Simon Ziele historical novel, In the Shadow of Gotham, is this week’s guest blogger at Moments in Crime. Catch up with her posts here.

• Did I mention already that Joe R. Lansdale has fired up a blog of his own? If he just keeps posting photos of his daughter, country singer Kasey Lansdale, I for one will keep tuning in.

• Designer Joe Montgomery, who was hired by Vintage/Black Lizard to create the latest paperback reissues of half a dozen Ross Macdonald novels (and what a wonderful job he did, if I may proffer an opinion), comments on the task and shows some of his rejected concepts at the Web site FaceOut Books. (Hat tip to The Casual Optimist.)

• James Bond takes his licks. ’Nuff said on that subject.

• Richard Lange, the Los Angeles writer whose 2007 short-story collection, Dead Boys, brought out the effusiveness in many book critics, will see his first novel, This Wicked World, published by Little, Brown at the end of this month. In the meantime, blogger-critic Clayton Moore (who remarked on This Wicked World in his latest Bookslut column) has obtained three copies of Dead Boys that he’s giving away to readers. All you have to do to enter the contest to win one of those copies, Moore says, is “Tell me your favorite Los Angeles-based book or film, and why.” Full details of this contest can be found here.

• More Hercule Poirot to come from actor David Suchet.

• I admit to being disappointed in the brand-new Akashic Books release, Seattle Noir. Although there are a few high points (such as Thomas P. Hopp’s “Blood Tide” and Brian Thornton’s “Paper Son,” the latter of which ought to inspire the creation of a new historical series), too many of the tales in that volume could have been set anywhere; they capture the geographical picture of Seattle, without really portraying the city’s character--they could have been set anywhere. Which runs somewhat counter to editor Curt Colbert’s intention, as he explains in an essay for Criminal Brief.

• I forgot to mention that there’s an excellent interview with 73-year-old Swedish author Maj Sjöwall, available in The Wall Street Journal and conducted by Ross Macdonald biographer Tom Nolan. Between the mid-1960s and mid-’70s, Sjöwall and her husband, Per Wahlöö (who died in 1975), penned 10 novels featuring Stockholm police inspector Martin Beck--all of which are now being reissued in America by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. (Hat tip to Petrona.)

• Yet another John Harvey book, so soon?

• Salon senior writer Laura Miller “recommends four addictive novels to add intrigue and treachery to your beach book.” It’s nice to see George Dawes Green (of The Caveman’s Valentine fame) back with a new novel, but I think I can pass on the latest vampire thriller, this one by director Guillermo del Toro and novelist Chuck Hogan.

• David Liss, who has a new Benjamin Weaver historical mystery (The Devil’s Company) due out next month, and has just signed on as a contributor to the blog Contemporary Nomad, writes that he has “no idea how I am going to understand the experience of a new novel without the traditional ritual of the book tour.” It seems that his publisher, Random House, “decided to skip the tour this time around, in part because I toured for my previous novel nine months earlier, and in part because they are freaking out about money.”

• Bill O’Reilly should be ashamed of himself. Every day.

• Robert B. Parker has revised the previously recorded history of his famous series protagonist, Boston private investigator Spenser, in his “Young Spenser Novel,” Chasing the Bear. That according to avowed Parker fan Bill Crider.

• Did you know that Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1885 University of Edinburgh dissertation, “An Essay upon the Vasomotor Changes in Tabes Dorsalis,” is available online? (Hat tip to Elizabeth Foxwell.)

• And happy birthday to Mike Hammer ... well, at least to the actor who played Mickey Spillane’s famous Manhattan private eye on television: Stacy Keach, who turns 68 years old today.