Quick Study

• This week’s new story in Beat to a Pulp is a pirate yarn called “The Mercy of Jean Lafitte,” written by Evan Lewis.

• Speaking of Beat to a Pulp, editor David Cranmer has announced the lineup for that Webzine’s upcoming first anthology, Beat to a Pulp: Round One, which will feature 27 stories and run almost 400 pages long. Included on the list of contributors: Charles Ardai, Sophie Littlefield, Scott D. Parker, Ed Gorman, Patricia Abbott, and James Reasoner.

• Crimefactory 3.5, an all-fiction supplement to the regular e-zine (the latest edition of which was released earlier this month), is now available for reading. The dozen stories include work from Cullen Gallagher, Jason Duke, John Kenyon, and Naomi Johnson. Click here for all the contents.

• After capturing the 2010 Miles Franklin Literary Award, could Australian crime novelist Peter Temple win the Man Booker Prize next?

• Save our public libraries!

• Wow, have I been out of the loop. I didn’t even realize there were serious plans--finally!--to make a theatrical film based on the exploits of that masked hero of radio and television, The Green Hornet. Apparently, this production, which stars Seth Rogan (yes, that Seth Rogan) and Jay Chou, is set to open in U.S. theaters come January 2011. Crimespree Cinema has the trailer.

• Open Mike Quote of the Week: “Now I know, the dumbness doesn’t just come from soundbites.”

• Ian Rankin has interviewed himself for The Guardian. He’s just one of several authors who “ask themselves questions journalists never ask.”

• Meanwhile, Jedidiah Ayres goes one-on-one with Dave Zeltserman.

• And Stuart Brent, a longtime bookstore proprietor and certifiable literary fixture on Chicago’s North Michigan Avenue, has passed away at age 98. (Hat tip to Helen Riggs.)