Small But Bountiful

• Jen Forbus’ “World’s Favorite Detective Tournament” has entered its second stage. She initially asked for nominations of fictional sleuths. From those, she has tallied up the 64 most popular, a list that includes Lew Archer, Philip Marlowe, Harry Bosch, V.I. Warshawski, Sherlock Holmes, Kinsey Milhone, Spenser, Bernie Gunther, and Guido Brunetti. As Forbus explains it, this tournament will consist of weekly contests, with readers asked to choose their favorites, until the list is boiled down to a winner. Voting is set to begin tomorrow. If you’d like to participate, click here.

• Connecticut author Chris Knopf has a few casting suggestions for any producer daring enough to turn his latest novel, Short Squeeze, into a film. Read more.

• Naomi Johnson of The Drowning Machine gives well-deserved props today to my local independent bookstore specializing in crime fiction, the Seattle Mystery Bookshop.

• A great DVD packaging idea.

• Speaking of DVDs, next week will bring the first season release of Matt Houston, the 1982-1985 ABC-TV series that starred Lee Horsley as a Texas oil man, living in Los Angeles, who conducts private investigations on the side. A totally unbelievable concept, but Horsley managed to make the most of it. And Buddy Ebsen joined the cast in Houston’s final season, playing a former CIA operative.

• Married writing partners Mary Reed and Eric Mayer, who write the John the Eunuch mystery series (the latest entry in which is Eight for Eternity), deliver a poetic explanation of their fiction-composition process in the Mystery Fanfare blog.

• Thanks to British critic Mike Ripley and Ostara Publishing, more great old thrillers are being brought back into print.

• And actor Michael Imperioli, last seen in the unjustly abbreviated U.S. version of Life on Mars, has reportedly signed up to star in a TV series called 187 Detroit, which TV Squad calls “kind of The Office meets NYPD Blue in Michigan.” Imperioli is slated to play Fitch, “the hot-tempered, veteran detective who boasts an impeccable record for closing cases and catching killers.” Hmm. Is it just me, or does that character not sound so very different from Imperioli’s role as the arrogant, politically incorrect New York police detective, Ray Carling, in Life on Mars?