Once Around the Blogosphere

• A new addition to The Rap Sheet’s blogroll: My Year in Crime, the handiwork of Dan Fleming, who describes himself as “the writer/co-creator of Warrior Twenty-Seven, the independent comics anthology.” Check it out.

• I’m sorry to say that it’s been a while since I read one of Graham Hurley’s Portsmouth novels featuring Detective Inspector Joe Faraday. (They aren’t easily had in the States, and I don’t get up to Vancouver, Canada, nearly enough to keep myself supplied with British titles.) However, coverage of his latest Faraday installment, Beyond Reach, may encourage me to seek him out once more. Michael Carlson reviews the novel at Irresistible Targets, and Hurley is January’s “Author of the Month” in Crime Squad.

• Three months after NBC-TV cancelled the “gritty” Los Angeles-based police drama Southland, the series’ second season is set to begin on rival TNT. TV Squad reports that “Starting on Tuesday, January 12, TNT will air reruns of Season 1 of the show at 10 p.m. ET/PT. Then, on March 2, the six-episode second season will premiere.” Excellent!

• In the run-up to this Sunday’s celebration in Philadelphia of the 43rd anniversary of noir writer David Goodis’ death, editor-novelist Duane Swierczynski has launched a blog tour of “the Quaker City through Goodis’ eyes, pairing selections from his novels with photos of the city as Goodis saw it.” You’ll find his series here.

• James McCreet (The Incendiary’s Trail) selects his “top 10 Victorian detective stories”--fiction and non-fiction--for Britain’s Guardian newspaper.

• Critic and blogger Sarah Weinman has penned what sounds like a labor-of-love essay about American author Don Carpenter (Hard Rain Falling) for the January issue of The Believer magazine. While the whole piece isn’t available online, you can at least read an excerpt here, and Weinman shares some background on her work here.

• Reed Farrel Coleman’s beloved protagonist, Moe Prager, is expected back in print in a sixth adventure, Innocent Monster, come next fall. The book will be published in hardcover by Tyrus Books. (Hat tip to Independent Crime.)

• If you’re hoping to attend, but have not already signed up for Sleuthfest 2010 (February 26-28 in Boca Raton, Florida) or Left Coast Crime in Los Angeles (March 11-14), you had better get cracking.

• Stephen Bowie’s list at The Classic TV History Blog of 10 “new classic” series includes four straight-out crime dramas, plus another (The Sopranos) that can pretty easily be squeezed into the genre.

• Rap Sheet contributor Jason Starr has a new, hardcover graphic novel due out next week, a supernatural crime-fiction work called The Chill. In the meantime, the Vertigo blog features his list of the “six most influential crime novels.” Good picks, all.

• The GOP’s new nickname: “The Party of Crazy.”

• Recommended by “Stieg Larsson’s English Translator,” Reg Keeland: An article in the Financial Mail Women’s Forum about the late Larsson’s 32-year “soul mate,” Eva Gabrielsson, who “has not seen a penny of his £20m.”

• Mark Justice, who I know best from his pulp cover blog I Was a Bronze Age Boy, has launched another blog, Pulp Nocturne, in which he intends to “serialize new pulp fiction. Some of the stories will have a contemporary setting, like our initial offering [‘Donovan Pike and the City of the Gods’]. A future project will be set in the blood-and-thunder 1930s pulp world.” Justice also intends to podcast each chapter of his fiction.

• Friend of The Rap Sheet Col Bury has won December’s One Word Flash Fiction Challenge at Writers News Talkback Forum. “The idea,” he explains, “is to write up to 200 words on a word chosen by the preceding month’s winner--who then becomes the judge for the following month, if you get me drift.” His very short story, “Frantic,” can be found here.

• It looks as if things are moving ahead on a big-screen adaptation of the 1970-1971 British science-fiction TV series UFO.

• Finally, British author-editor Rob Kitchin is challenging readers to help him compile a curriculum list of 10 must-read, pre-1970 crime-fiction classics. “[E]ither post the list on your own blog and send me the link (rob.kitchin@nuim.ie), or post the list in a comment to this post by January 31st. I’ll then compile a curriculum based on the most popular choices (and provide link-backs to posts). Ideally, the selection of books needs to try and capture different crime fiction sub-genres and styles.” Crime Scraps’ Uriah Robinson has already made his suggestions. Anyone else up for the task?