Bullet Points: Post-Spooks Edition

Halloween turned out to be a lot more exciting at my house than I’d expected. We welcomed at least 45 trick-or-treaters, which is about twice as many as we usually see. (Maybe it was the double pumpkins and Christmas lights that drew those crowds.) Fortunately, I had plenty of sweets on hand--enough to give everybody generous helpings (which led one tyke in superhero garb to bellow out to his compatriots on the street, “This guy’s giving away handfuls of candy!”). During the height of the night’s frenzy, I saw robots and vampires and the occasional ballerina, but it was the pretty long-legged blond teenager, maybe 19 years old and dressed in a skimpy outfit not dissimilar from the one topping this post, who really made me glad to have gone all-out for the occasion.

Now, though, it’s time to return to the “real world” of crime fiction. A few developments worth mentioning:

• As the free-TV Web site Hulu prepares to begin charging its customers (perhaps as early as next year), another similar site--AOL’s SlashControl--enters the market. SlashControl’s offerings are pretty skimpy right now (unless you’ve been dying to gander at old episodes of Scarecrow and Mrs. King, Spenser: For Hire, or CHiPs), but maybe with some expansion it can make up for the loss of Hulu. And I do mean loss. I have enjoyed revisiting such Hulu-hosted programs as Peacemakers, The Fall Guy, Deadline, Charlie’s Angels, Hill Street Blues, It Takes a Thief, K-Ville, Raines, Moonlighting, L.A. Dragnet, Miami Vice, Simon & Simon, The Rockford Files, and Lou Grant. But would I pay to keep it up? Not a chance. I may be watching lots of Hulu before January 1.

• National Public Radio’s Glen Weldon examines the current boomlet in crime-centered comic books for adults.

• Fans of the 1965-1966 British TV show The Baron, which was based on stories by John Creasey and starred Steve Forrest as “an antiques dealer and undercover agent working in an informal capacity for the head of the fictional British Diplomatic Intelligence,” will be glad to hear that the complete series has been released on DVD.

• I was sorry to hear about the recent death of UK thriller writer Lionel Davidson. Although not well known on this side of the Atlantic, he won three Gold Dagger Awards from the British Crime Writers’ Association, the first of those for his 1960 novel, The Night of Wenceslas. There’s more on Davidson and his career here and here.

• Bill Crider directs my attention to a new site called iPulp Fiction. There you can purchase short fiction by well-known writers at very minimal cost online. The multiplicity of genres covered is pretty impressive already, with more tales to come.

• I didn’t even know there were words to the theme song for Kojak, Telly Savalas’ 1973-1978 TV series, much less that Sammy Davis Jr. could have been persuaded to sing them.

• Brian Lindenmuth is right when he says that artist Aly Fell ought to get more work from publishers of pulpish paperbacks. Wow!

• I don’t know about you, but I’ve certainly been enjoying the chance to listen to classic Sam Spade radio adventures, courtesy of Evan Lewis at Davy Crockett’s Almanack. The latest installment is called “The Vaphio Cup Caper.”

• This 1960s TV commercial makes the game Twister look all innocent. I guess it wasn’t really meant to be played in the nude ...

• Sarah Weinman brings the news that Don Winslow, the California author of last year’s “surf noir” novel, The Dawn Patrol, has been tapped to write the prequel to Trevanian’s 1979 thriller, Shibumi.

• Frankly, I’d be overjoyed simply to watch Chuck actress Yvonne Strahovski unscrew a can of peanut butter. But she gives us considerably more in this video clip from TV Squad, talking about her surprise that Chuck was renewed and filling us in a bit on where the comedy-spy series is headed in its coming third season.

• Two new crime novels have been put through the Page 69 Test at Campaign for the American Reader: Derek Nikitas’ The Long Division and Charles Kipps’ Hell’s Kitchen Homicide.

• There’s a nice, if short, profile of novelist Philip Kerr in The Scotsman. Kerr, who just picked up the British Crime Writers’ Association’s Ellis Peters Historical Award for his 2009 Bernie Gunther novel, If the Dead Rise Not, tells the paper: “This is my best book, to be honest. Some of them have been better than others. The CWA is the first crime-writing award I have won in this country. I’ve been at it for 19 years.”

• Ali Karim has collected all of the video trailers for the forthcoming Martin Scorcese film adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s creepy 2003 novel, Shutter Island. He has also posted a few other videos of Lehane speaking. See them all here.

• And I don’t think I mentioned this before, but that the Fall 2009 issue of Mysterical-E has been posted. The contents include short stories by Stephen D. Rogers, Dave Siddall, and Dee Stuart; Gerald So’s look at recent animated crime films; and Byron McAllister’s advice on avoiding dated-ness in fiction.