Prizes and Surprises

• Debra Ginsberg has won the 2009 T. Jefferson Parker Mystery Award for her novel The Grift. This commendation is given out annually by the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association (SCIBA). To see a full list of nominees in the Mystery category, click here. If you’re looking for a rundown of all the SCIBA winners for 2009, click here.

• It looks as if the third set of Columbo telefilms (1991-1992) on DVD is working its way to stores, though there’s no release date yet.

• Meanwhile, Crippen & Landru’s compilation of new Columbo short tales seems to be sloooowly moving toward publication. What was originally titled The Columbo Stories, featuring 14 new cases for Los Angeles’ scruffiest but smartest police lieutenant--all penned by William Link, co-creator of the 1970s Peter Falk series--is now being promoted as The Columbo Collection, and is said to be in the “proofs” stage. Is Crippen & Landru trying to build up anticipation for this book, in the same way that producers of the TV series built up suspense around just how Lieutenant Columbo would catch his man ... or woman? Not a bad idea.

• Sad news from The Gumshoe Site: “Ray Browne died on October 22 at his home in Bowling Green, Ohio. He was a professor at Bowling Green State University, who was credited with coining the phrase ‘popular culture’ and establishing the first academic department of popular culture in the U.S. at Bowling Green in 1973. He and his wife, Pat Browne, launched several publications devoted to popular culture, such as Clues: A Journal of Detection. When Clues started with the Spring/Summer 1980 issue, it was published semi-annually by Bowling Green Popular Press and edited by Pat Browne, with academic articles on mystery fiction and writers by academic professors including Ray Browne. (Now Clues is published by McFarland & Co. and edited by Elizabeth Foxwell.) He was 87.”

• Actor Benjamin Bratt, who played New York Detective Rey Curtis on TV’s Law & Order from 1994 to 1999, is set to return to that series--but only briefly. And another member of the L&O alumni, Angie Harmon, who portrayed Abbie Carmichael of the District Attorney’s Office for three years, has been cast as Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli in a possible series based on Tess Gerritsen’s novels. Let’s hope it’s better than her last TV venture, in the short-lived Women’s Murder Club.

• Boston novelist George V. Higgins, who died 10 years ago next month, is honored in a report by Beantown’s WBUR-FM radio.

• There’s more talk that the recently cancelled NBC-TV series Southland may be headed to TNT--and soon.

• New at Beat to a Pulp: “Hunter’s Moon,” by Charles Gramlich.

• And in this week leading up to All Hallows’ Eve, blogger Craig Clarke of Somebody Dies is posting a series of “reviews ... of Halloween-related stories: five books, one movie, and one novelty that can only be called ‘other.’” Look for the whole series here.