Bullet Points: The Sunday Supplement

• The new edition of the Los Angeles Times Magazine is devoted to its city’s relationship with noir fiction. There’s plenty of great stuff in those pages, including an essay by Megan Abbott about the L.A. “dream factory” and Denise Hamilton’s rundown of “twenty essential books and films that form the foundation for that specialty genre known as L.A. noir.”

• Meanwhile, author Jonathan Kellerman picks what he contends are “the top 10 L.A. noir novels,” a group that includes Jonathan Latimer’s Solomon’s Vineyard, Mark Behm’s Eye of the Beholder, and “any novel by Ross Macdonald.” (Hat tip to Campaign for the American Reader.)

• Thanks to a tip from Spinetingler Magazine’s Brian Lindenmuth, I have added yet another horizontal book cover to the collection I began building last October in one of my other blogs, Killer Covers. This jacket comes from PictureBox’s new reissue of Charles Willeford’s 1988 autobiography, I Was Looking for a Street. According to the publisher’s Web site, it’s “the first in a series of reissues by this great author.”

• Tomorrow night’s edition of TV Confidential, on Shokus Internet Radio, will bring something special:

In our first hour, we’ll mark the occasion of James Garner’s birthday by replaying our salute to Maverick, a program that originally aired in September 2007. Our guest will be film and TV journalist Mick Martin, co-author of Video Movie Guide and the last writer ever to interview Jack Kelly, Garner’s co-star on Maverick. The program will also feature comments from the late Roy Huggins, creator and producer of Maverick, audio clips from noted episodes from the series, and a whole lot more.

Hour 2 will be devoted to comedian, actor, and director Dick Martin of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In fame. The show begins on Shokus at 9 p.m. ET, 6 p.m. PT. If you can’t listen then, TV Confidential will be repeated this coming Friday, April 9, at 7 p.m. ET and PT on KSAV.org Internet radio.

• The March/April issue of ThugLit has been posted. It includes fiction by Lee Robertson (“Pink Champagne”), Stephen D. Rogers (“Tare Weight”), Hugh Lessing (“Hand Me Down”).

• April 15 is the cutoff date for people wishing to register at a reduced price for the 2010 NoirCon, which is to be held from November 4 to 7 in Philadelphia. Click here for a registration form.

• Patti Abbott and Gerald So have issued a new flash-fiction challenge, based around a dining establishment and the old Eurythmics song, “Sweet Dreams.” Stories should be limited to 1,000 words in length, and the competition will end on May 1. All the info you need to enter is here.

• Interviews worth reading: Jack Getze talks with Robert Crais (The First Rule) for Spinetingler Magazine; J. Sydney Jones quizzes Jassy Mackenzie, author of the forthcoming South Africa-set novel, Random Violence; Jones also fires some queries at David Fulmer, author of The Fall; Dan Fleming has a brief conversation with Duane Swierczynski (Expiration Date); and Declan Burke puts questions to John McFetridge about the latter’s new novel, Let It Ride, and his new writers’ co-operative organization.

• Plus one video interview: For the Archive of American Television, author-screenwriter Lee Goldberg chats up TV producer Glen A. Larson, who has been associated over the years with such series as McCloud, Switch, Quincy, M.E., Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, The Fall Guy, and Battlestar Galactica. This exchange last 4.5 hours, so you ought to make some popcorn before you sit down to watch.

• In addition to his recommending Norbert Davis’ The Mouse in the Mountain as one of this last week’s “forgotten books,” blogger Evan Lewis is offering up a complete Davis short story, “Never Say Die,” from Detective Fiction Weekly.

• TV Squad’s Danny Gallagher lists “Five Cop Shows That Should Never Be Remade,” either because the originals were too good to ruin (such as Columbo) or so awful that remaking them would be compounding a crime (example: Cop Rock).

• Efforts by the Texas State Board of Education to rewrite American history books with a more favorable bent toward right-wingers is the most recent example of this pernicious practice, but it’s not the only one.

• Paperbacks for “just plain folks.”

• This week’s new short story in Beat to a Pulp is “Fetish,” penned by New York writer and Spinetingler Award nominee Hillary Davidson.

• The Webzine Crimefactory is in the market for kung fu stories.

• The latest Cocktail Nation podcast takes a look back at the life of the late Robert Culp and the 1960s TV spy show I Spy, in which he starred with Bill Cosby. Listen here.

• The Drowning Machine’s Indie Store of the Month is Aunt Agatha’s New & Used Mysteries, Detection & True Crime Books, located in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

• Oh, and Happy Easter!