Bullet Points: Sweating in Seattle Edition*

I’m working on something larger for tomorrow, and dealing with a remarkable new project for next week. So postings today will be more limited than usual. Let’s begin with a round-up of news bits:

• This is surprising news: Variety reports that David Shore, the creator and executive producer of House, has been signed to “shepherd a redo of the classic 1974-80 gumshoe drama [The Rockford Files] that starred James Garner and put Stephen J. Cannell on the map as a writer-producer.” The paper adds that “Shore’s just starting to think about an approach to bring The Rockford Files into the present day, but he intends to stick with the basic foundation of a private eye in L.A. just trying to make a living.” Who knows? Maybe this won’t be the disaster of a TV remake that The Night Stalker and Knight Rider both were. But I won’t bet on its success, even with Shore in charge. And frankly, I’d prefer that my fond memories of Rockford not be disturbed by somebody else’s interpretation of the material. (Hat tip to Lee Goldberg.)

• Just last night, while watching the latest episode of TNT’s Leverage, I was thinking about the 1970s TV series Switch. It seems to me that, as much debt as Leverage obviously owes to Mission: Impossible and It Takes a Thief, it’s also indebted to Switch, which starred Eddie Albert and Robert Wagner as private eyes who employed con games to solve crimes--not unlike the premise of Leverage, right? Switch started out strong in 1975, its stories of illegalities and investigations tinged with humor. But sometime in the second season, the show started to become more conventional, and I lost interest. Anyway, I bring this up because this morning, when I clicked over to Marty McKee’s blog, Johnny LaRue’s Crane Shot, what should I find but the main title sequence of Switch. (Actually, it’s not the original opening, which I thought was more playful, and which can be seen here in French translation; this is the one that was substituted early on in the series.) Pardon me for a few minutes while I get all weepy and nostalgic ...

• Dan Wagstaff’s The Casual Optimist points me toward this collection of vintage Swedish book fronts that includes what he calls a “vampiric cover for Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep” and more dramatic jackets from novels by Ed McBain, Cyril Hare, and others.

• Be on the lookout for a new blog called Do Some Damage, which promises “an inside look at crime fiction” (as if this and every blog listed in the right-hand column of this page isn’t determined to bring you that very same thing). Steve Weddle, Jay Stringer, John McFetridge, Dave White, Russel D. McLean, Scott D. Parker, and Mike Knowles are all on tap as posters. Parker writes in his own blog that regular contributions to Do Some Damage will begin running on Monday of next week. Welcome to block, guys.

• They’re getting small: Allan Guthrie and Ray Banks talk in Pulp Pusher about their respective short novels for Crime Express.

• It sounds as if Steven Spielberg might be interested in directing a new movie based on Donald Hamilton’s famous Matt Helm spy novels. More on that here. Meanwhile, Ron Howard has signed up to direct a film based on Robert Ludlum’s 1982 novel, The Parsifal Mosaic. And Sony Pictures will adapt Michael Dobbs’ 2007 thriller, The Lord’s Day, for the big screen--the first in a series of pictures featuring Harry Jones, an ex-SAS member of the British Parliament.

• The UK version of Life on Mars is now available on DVD.

• If Elmore Leonard can have his 10 rules for writing, then why not Irish blogger-novelist Declan Burke? Number 6 on Burke’s list:

2. Use Simple Grammar
Go easy on complicated sentence construction. Ration yourself to three commas per page and you won’t go far wrong. Apostrophes are the Devil’s own invention--first-time writers should always try to avoid plurals and possession. Unless your story is about multiple exorcisms. Or multiple orgasms.

• Speaking of Leonard, it seems that “FX Networks has ordered 13 episodes of Lawman, a series based on a character, U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens,” that Leonard used in his novels Pronto (1993) and Riding the Rap (1995). The show will star Timothy Olyphant of Deadwood fame. Click here for more info.

• Thanks to Bill Crider for the reminder that today happens to be the 76th birthday of Edd Byrnes, who played hipster and private-eye wannabe Gerald Lloyd “Kookie” Kookson III on 77 Sunset Strip.

• Apparently, the Kindle just can’t get respect. From Barbara Fister, I hear about a humorous project, mounted by San Francisco’s Green Apple Books: a video “smackdown” between the Kindle and traditional books. And over at The New Yorker, Nicholson Baker launches an assault on Amazon’s electronic reading device that’s guaranteed to upset Jeff Bezos’ carefully planned sales projections.

• PulpFest 2009 begins tomorrow in Columbus, Ohio.

• We’re more than a year away from NoirCon 2010, but Lou Boxer is already writing hard on a new associated blog, NoirCon.

• Here’s another show that ought be out on DVD, but isn’t.

• I didn’t know until today that my friend Gary Phillips was writing a regular column, Donuts at 4 a.m. (great title!), for the Web site Four Story, but he is. His latest contribution insists that “ Drawing Comics Ain’t for Sissies.”

• Two talents at one low price: Beginning today in the Author Interviews blog, Timothy Hallinan (Breathing Water) and Brett Battles (Shadow of Betrayal) quiz each other about their respective series and their individual writing processes. A second part of that exchange is still to be posted.

• And it was on this date in 1975 that Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again.

* That’s right, it’s been frickin’ hot at Rap Sheet headquarters.