Short Takes

• The Flawn Academic Center on the University of Texas campus has decided to take down its re-creation of the California study once used by prolific mystery writer Erle Stanley Gardner, even though that exhibit has been a magnet for crime-fiction lovers over the last four decades. A photo of the study and an audio report on the Flawn Center’s regrettable move can be found here. (Hat tip to Bill Crider.)

• Speaking of Gardner, his 1950 novel The Case of the One-Eyed Witness is the subject of Les Blatt’s latest podcast review. You can listen to that critique here.

• Unbelievable! Britain’s long-running crime drama, The Bill, which debuted in October 1984, has finally been cancelled by ITV.

• Even Jane Austen’s characters can’t escape violence.

• Max Allan Collins writes today about the “(almost) lost Mike Hammer novels,” which were left behind at the time of Mickey Spillane’s death in 2006. One of those has already seen print (The Goliath Bone), a second (The Big Bang) is due out in May, and a third, Kiss Her Goodbye (which Collins says is “probably the best of the trio”), should come out “sometime next year.” But there are three more “yet-to-be-completed Hammer novels” after those.

• Not only have the right-wing Tea Party cultists practiced vandalism and demonstrated hatred, but now they want to abolish Social Security. Even former Bush staffers don’t like them.

• Get your Easter-themed mysteries here.

• The Spring 2010 issue of Mysterical-E has been posted.

• And here are two interviews worth checking out: Jedidiah Ayres talks with Victor Gischler, author of the soon-to-be-released novel, The Deputy; and Spinetingler Magazine features reviewer Jim Napier’s conversation with P.D. James.