Bullet Points: “I Want My MTV” Edition

• BBC Radio 7 has begun broadcasting adaptations of five crime/mystery stories originally penned during the early to mid-20th century. “This Is Pulp Fiction” has already treated listeners to the work of Jack Ritchie (“Divide and Conquer”) and Gil Brewer (“Getaway”), with today’s offering being “Black,” by Paul Cain. Still to come are yarns by Jim Thompson and William F. Nolan. If you’d like to tune in, don’t hesitate: the BBC only allows people who didn’t hear its shows the first time around seven days to “listen again.” Access all of the episodes here.

• If the FOX-TV series 24 has already “jumped the shark,” why is there still discussion of a big-screen adaptation of the show?

• From the New York Daily News: “What do you get when you mix Katherine Heigl, lingerie and bounty hunting? A chick flick that guys are sure to enjoy. The Grey’s Anatomy star has signed on for the lead role in One for the Money, based on the first book in the immensely popular Stephanie Plum series of novels by Janet Evanovich ...” Well, let’s call this a “maybe.” Heigl, who I first remember ogling over ... er, watching in the TV series Roswell, certainly has abundant visual appeal. But unless there’s going to have to be more going on in this adaptation--and I mean a lot more than Evanovich’s half-funny plot about a lingerie buyer turned bounty hunter, with a stress-inducing family--before this guy is going to pay $10 to see it in a theater.

• The many faults of debut novels.

• Wow, I didn’t even know that the Brentano’s store near the Paris Opéra had closed, after 113 years in business. But, fortunately, it’s now reopening. This was the first English-language bookshop I visited in the French capital a few years back, during a day-long walk (and snack-fest) around the city’s Right Bank. It’s the shop that introduced me to the works of Fred Vargas and Dan Fesperman, and made sure I had something new to read on my subsequent train trip to The Netherlands. The story at the link says that Brentano’s will be beefing up its stock of volumes in English, which only ensures that I shall drop by there again during my next holiday in the City of Lights.

• Comedian Dan Rowan and John D. Macdonald were pen pals?

• I confess that I was never a fan of the Dirty Harry films, starring Clint Eastwood, but the covers of the paperback book series it inspired are certainly impressive.

• There are just over two weeks to go before the opening of Sleuthfest, to be held in Boca Raton, Florida, with guests of honor David Morell and Stephen J. Cannell.

• Not only does Southern California author Gar Anthony Haywood have a new novel out in bookstores, Cemetery Road, but he’s also started writing a blog called Wisdom Mistaken for Lunacy.

• Oops, caught!

• Valentine’s Day is Sunday. Do you have your box of chocolates? Your roses? Your dinner reservations? Your Valentine’s Day mystery novel? If you’re missing that last component, Janet Rudolph has a few reading suggestions.

• While Republican’ts in Congress embarrass themselves by voting against things they previously supported, setting records for obstructionism, and pushing once more to privatize Social Security--all in the rankly partisan hope of destroying President Obama--a significant majority of Americans still want legislators to pass a comprehensive health-care reform plan, Obama’s signature economic issue. That’s good news.

• Author interviews worthy reading: J. Sydney Jones talks with Vicki Delany; New Mystery Reader Magazine chats up Kerry Greenwood; The Independent takes on Tereska Torres (Women’s Barracks), “the reluctant queen of lesbian literature”; and Allen Appel puts questions to Randy Wayne White, here, here, and here.

• Finally, MTV is dropping the tagline “Music Television” from its logo. While this may seem like a long-overdue change, due to the network’s obvious downplaying of its music content, it feels like a blow of sorts. I was never anywhere near as “into” music as I have been “into” books. But during the 1980s, when I was living first in Detroit, Michigan, and later in Boulder, Colorado, MTV provided essential background noise to my days. I didn’t have many friends in either town, so I spent a lot of time in apartments, either reading or--when I was bustling about, doing housework or getting ready for my jobs--with the television blasting, usually tuned to the continuous stream of MTV music videos. I didn’t really care what was playing--Madonna, Don Henley, Tears for Fears. The point was that there was seemingly something going on in my apartment better than dust collecting. MTV’s decision to excise “Music Television” from its brand seems like the end of an era, one that’s now freighted with a great deal of nostalgia. You’d probably have to be over 40 years old to really understand ...