Sector Sweep

• A never-before-published Hercule Poirot story? Andrew F. Gulli, the managing editor of Strand Magazine, says the yarn will feature in his periodical’s upcoming 10th anniversary issue. He adds:

This is the first time in over a decade that something new has come from Agatha Christie and the first time in thirty-four years, since Poirot has made an appearance.

After Agatha Christie’s daughter Rosalind Hicks passed away in 2004, her home was left to the National Trust. While the home was being cleared out they found Agatha Christie’s notebooks. In one of the notebooks, “The Incident of the Dog’s Ball” was found, which is a Hercule Poirot story. [W]e decided to publish this because there is some interesting history behind the story; Christie later expanded the story into a novel called The Dumb Witness. To those who have read the novel, there are some similarities, but there are also several surprises which make it a great story in its own right in addition to providing a glimpse into the mind of Christie.

More here. (Hat tip to Janet Rudolph.)

• The blog Meridian Bridge has posted a very nice two-part interview with author, blogger, and determined lawn protector Bill Crider. Part I is here, Part II is here.

• Elizabeth Foxwell reminds us: “Lawyer-author George V. Higgins, best remembered for the gritty The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1972), was born today in Brockton, MA, in 1939. He died in 1999.”

• The DVD release of Southland’s first season episodes is due in January. That happens to be the same month in which TNT plans to begin running the series’ second season.

• More DVD news: The first-season episodes of Scarecrow and Mrs. King (1983-1987), which starred Kate Jackson as a divorced housewife impressed into the spy game by Bruce Boxleitner, will be released on March 9, 2010. Meanwhile, Season One of the Los Angeles cop series Hunter, with Fred Dryer and Stepfanie Kramer, is due in stores on January 19.

• Just in case you were wondering: “I don’t see anywhere in the Bible where it says you shouldn’t get breast implants,” disgraced former beauty queen Carrie Prejean tells Christianity Today.

• I’d like to offer my belated condolences to the family of short-story writer Dick Stodghill, who died last weekend in Ohio. The quondam newspaperman contributed over the years to Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, many of his yarns featuring 1930s Akron private eye Jack Eddy. (An example of such fiction can be enjoyed here.) Stodghill was 84 years old. UPDATE: More on Stodghill’s work can be found here.

• While impatiently awaiting the publication, by Crippen & Landru, of William Link’s book, The Columbo Collection (formerly known as The Columbo Stories), I stumbled today across a “fan fiction” site devoted to Los Angeles’ shabby but brilliant Lieutenant Columbo. Appropriately, it’s called Just One More Paragraph ...

• All I can say to this is, it’s about frickin’ time!

• G.M. Malliet, the author of Death and the Lit Chick, is interviewed by Sara Rosett in The Good Girls Kill for Money Club.

• Sue Grafton fans, take note.

• Don Bruns submits his latest novel, Stuff to Spy For, to Marshal Zeringue’s demanding Page 69 Test. The results are here. By the way, Bruns previously put his book through the Page 99 Test.

• It’s all choices, folks.

• Eighty-three-year-old actor Richard Anderson, who starred in The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, co-starred for a time in Perry Mason, and appeared as a guest on series such as Ironside, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Hawaii Five-O, Columbo, and The Fall Guy, will be the next visitor to TV Confidential, the Web radio program hosted by Ed Robertson and Frankie Montiforte. The show will premiere this coming Monday, November 16, at 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT on Shokus Internet Radio, with a rebroadcast on Tuesday, November 17, at 11 p.m. ET/8 p.m. PT on Share-a-Vision Radio, KSAV.org. Click here for more information.