• AustCrime announces the winners of this year’s Scarlet Stiletto Awards, given out by the Australian branch of Sisters in Crime.
• This note comes from Russell Atwood, author of the recent Hard Case Crime release Losers Live Longer: “I was looking around Amazon.com recently and came across a blog announcement from Chris Fischer, the son of Peter S. Fischer, announcing the publication of his father’s first novel, The Blood of Tyrants.” If the name Peter S. Fischer doesn’t ring a bell, then you obviously haven’t been watching enough classic mystery and crime fiction on television. Fischer is an Emmy-nominated TV writer and producer whose credits include scripting episodes of Columbo, Ellery Queen, Blacke’s Magic, McMillan & Wife, The Eddie Capra Mysteries, Griff, and Murder, She Wrote (which he co-created with Richard Levinson and William Link). I haven’t yet seen a copy of The Blood of Tyrants (Grove Point Press), but its Amazon description certainly sounds promising:
A crowded restaurant in Washington, D.C. A powerful Congressman is lunching with a wealthy contributor who suddenly rises and shoots the Congressman dead in front of a hundred witnesses. Quietly, he resumes his seat, placing the gun on the table as he awaits the authorities. Thus begins ten days of terror, ten days in which the nation teeters on the brink of anarchy. Inadvertently drawn into this murderous conspiracy is Paul Castle, a once promising newspaper reporter, now the host of a third-rate cable show that deals in sleaze and scandal. Castle suddenly finds himself a pawn in a series of bizarre murders that have gripped the nation in fear. Secretly aided by an avuncular New York homicide detective and hounded by an ambitious FBI agent, Castle seeks to get to the bottom of the mystery and in the process, regain his lost self-respect. With the future of the country at stake, he knows he cannot afford to fail.The Blood of Tyrants was apparently released in mid-October.
• Travel back with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear and another fine episode of radio’s The Adventures of Sam Spade, hosted by Davy Crockett’s Almanack. This week’s investigation: “The Stopped Watch Caper.”
• The latest short-story offering in Beat to a Pulp is “Brotherly Love,” contributed by New Hampshire author J.E. Seymour.
• Mark Coggins submits his fifth and latest P.I. August Riordan novel, The Big Wake-Up, to Marshal Zeringue’s fabled Page 69 Test. The results are here.
• First-novelist Roy Chaney does the same thing with The Ragged End of Nowhere, his Tony Hillerman Prize winner.
• Raymond Chandler’s 1953 novel, The Long Goodbye, turned 56 years old on Friday. (Hat tip to In Reference to Murder.)
• Another fine tribute to the late actor Edward Woodward, this time from the blog The Horn Section. Click here to read more.
• Good news from Slate: “By January, [President Barack Obama] will have accomplished more than any first-year president since Franklin Roosevelt.” More on that same subject here.
• Christopher Mills is celebrating “spy vixens” this week in Spy-fi Channel. First up: Dalia Lavi, from Dean Martin’s The Silencers.
• Out of the Gutter #6--“The Sexploitation Issue”--is now available.
• This is certainly a milestone: Carl Kassel, who has been with National Public Radio since 1975 and probably provides that network’s most familiar voice, will cease broadcasting the news as of today, December 30.
• What James Bond and Jonny Quest have in common.
• Finally, I want to wish a happy birthday to my best friend from college, Byron Rice. Many moons have sailed over the horizon since he and I met, got into running, pounded down bottles of “Green Death” on the back lawns, talked about how our lives might proceed, and got down to the ugly business of living as adults. But those memories (and the abundant laughs they’ve generated) created a solid foundation for a lifetime of comradeship. I consider myself one lucky guy to have such a friend.
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