Checking Out the Territory

• Timed to the UK release of Peter Temple’s new novel, Truth--a follow-up to his Ned Kelly Award-winning, 2005 novel, The Broken Shore--interviewer and critic Bob Cornwell interviews the Australian author for the Tangled Web site. Their conversation covers everything from Temple’s liberal deadlines in writing this new novel and his decision to change protagonists for the book, to his exploration of male relationships in Truth and his disagreements with his Aussie publisher over his pared prose. By the way, Cornwell’s review of Truth calls it “his best book to date, a tour de force that raises the bar for crime writers--and readers--everywhere.” Farrar, Straus and Giroux will issue an American edition of Truth in May.

• Over at Confessions of a Mystery Novelist, Margot Kinberg cites cases of sleuths who cause, rather than solve, deaths.

• The design blog The Silver Lining showcases a selection of crime novel covers and other jackets by Dutch author, illustrator, and graphic designer Dick Bruna. Look especially at his front for an edition of Leslie Charteris’ 1935 novel, The Saint in New York. A brilliant and subtle concept. (Hat tip to The Casual Optimist.)

• Ray Winstone says there won’t be a film version of The Sweeney, the 1970s British police drama, after all.

• Oh, damn! Dexter star Michael C. Hall has cancer.

• Mystery writer Carolyn Haines (Greedy Bones, Bone Appetit) has won the 2010 Harper Lee Award for Alabama’s Distinguished Writer of the Year. She will receive her commendation during the Alabama Writers Symposium in late May.

• FOX-TV is scheduled to debut a new crime-adventure series this Sunday called Human Target, based on a comic-book protagonist named Christopher Chance, who was originally introduced way back in 1958. This show stars Mark Valley (Boston Legal, Keen Eddie), along with Chi McBride (Boston Public, Pushing Daisies) and Jack Earle Haley (Watchmen). As TV critic Alan Sepinwall explains: “‘Human Target’ is loosely based on the DC Comics character of the same name--very loosely. In the comics, Chance takes the place of the people he’s protecting using complex disguises (and in recent years, has begun to develop an identity crisis because his roles seemed more real than his own personality). The TV producers didn’t want to replace Valley with a guest star for the bulk of each episode, so all they kept was the character’s name and profession. Here, his gimmick is that he’s good at everything: shooting, martial arts, foreign languages, piloting or whatever other skill turns out to be necessary at that moment.” It sounds like a combination of The Pretender and Burn Notice. At least one of my Rap Sheet colleagues suggests Human Target might be watchable. It certainly has a bang-up opening, embedded at the bottom of Sepinwall’s review. Human Target premieres tomorrow at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

• Since I stopped watching FOX’s 24 after the end of its ridiculous, cliché-ridden second season, I find myself unable to drum up more than a yawn at news that Kiefer Sutherland, 43, “would love to keep doing the show until he’s 60 years old.” More interesting is word that TNT’s Men of a Certain Age has been renewed. While that Monday night (at 10 p.m.) comedy-drama series featuring Ray Romano, Andre Braugher, and Scott Bakula is something of an acquired taste--and may appeal to me because I, too, am “a man of a certain age”--it is both well written and thoughtful. Certain Age offers no explosions, no heavy weaponry, and no under-dressed young thangs menaced by cougars, but it does boast plenty of heart and some fine acting by all three stars.

• Are these “the final days” of Dennis Hopper?

• Mill Creek Entertainment is preparing to release a new DVD set, Tenspeed and Brown Shoe: The Complete Series, on March 9. That 1980 ABC-TV spoof series starred Ben Vereen and Jeff Goldblum as mismatched partners in a private-eye agency. Executive produced (and often written) by Stephen J. Cannell, the show ran only 14 episodes long, but it is still fondly remembered by many viewers.

• I’d forgotten about this book, but it sounds good.

• “The Wheel of Life Caper” is the title of this week’s Sam Spade radio show offering in Davy Crockett’s Almanack, an episode originally broadcast on July 11, 1948.

• The latest short story to be posted in Beat to a Pulp is “The Killing on Sutter Street,” a previously unpublished work by golden-era pulp author Paul S. Powers (1905-1971). In his blog, BTAP editor David Cranmer tells how Powers’ granddaughter, Laurie, finally made this hard-edged tale available.

• By the way, there’s a very fine interview with editor and author Laurie Powers in the blog Meridian Bridge, in which she talks about composing the biography of her grandfather’s life, Pulp Writer: Twenty Years in the American Grub Street. Part I of that exchange is here, Part II is here.

• It looks as if plans are going ahead to remake the classic TV police drama Hawaii Five-O (1968-1980) for CBS. Why can’t the networks leave well enough alone?

• Meanwhile, the crew set to adapt Robert Ludlum’s 1977 political thriller, The Chancellor Manuscript, for the big screen is growing.

• And production of a sequel to the still-new Robert Downey Jr. picture, Sherlock Holmes, could begin as early as this coming June.

• Have you noticed that today’s right-wing criticism of health-care reform legislation sounds an awful lot like the scare tactics Ronald Reagan used back in 1961 to denounce President John F. Kennedy’s proposed Medicare plan? “[I]f you don’t [stop Medicare] and I don’t do it,” Reagan said, “one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.” Medicare, of course, is now one of the U.S. government’s most popular social assistance programs.

• The list of who will be attending next October’s Bouchercon in San Francisco continues to grow.

• French blogger Xavier Lechard is putting together a fine series of posts about “the Golden Ages of Crime Fiction.” His initial entry can be found here, with more comments appearing here, here, and most recently, here.

• Changes are being made in the Chicago writers’ blog, The Outfit.

• This is a momentous day in U.S. gangster history.

• Finally, Matt Beynon Rees, author of the forthcoming The Fourth Assassin and three previous crime novels set in the Middle East, picks his “top 10 novels set in the Arab world” for The Guardian.