Tapping Our Sources

• CIA agent Felix Leiter, who often assisted British superspy James Bond in Ian Fleming’s novels, captures the No. 8 position in Time magazine’s list of “Top 10 Movie Sidekicks.” (Hat tip to The HMSS Weblog.)

• Sophie Littlefield submits her new novel, A Bad Day for Pretty (Minotaur), to Marshal Zeringue’s Page 69 Test. The results are here.

• Lesa Holstine has posted a satisfying long report from this last weekend’s Poisoned Pen Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona.

• How can you resist the coming William Shatner blogathon?

• In the first installment of a new National Public Radio book series, “Thrilled to Death” (focusing on thriller novels worth reading this summer), attorney-fictionist Scott Turow reconsiders Graham Greene’s 1940 novel, The Power and the Glory.

• If you need still more summer reading suggestions, The Hungry Detective’s Dan Wagner tosses a few more out for consideration.

• And if you want to read about a beach while lying on a beach reading, check out The Guardian’s tally of “10 of the best beaches in literature.”

• Allyn Ferguson, who with his partner, Jack Elliott, co-wrote the theme songs for such TV series as Charlie’s Angels, Barney Miller, The Rookies, and Starsky and Hutch, has passed away at age 85.

• Quebec resident and Rap Sheet contributor Jim Napier has launched a Web site of his own. It’s called Deadly Diversions.

• Hallie Ephron’s most recent novel, Never Tell a Lie (2009), won the David Award for Best Mystery during this last weekend’s Deadly Ink conference in Parsippany, New Jersey.

• I already have a number of restaurants in mind to visit during this fall’s Bouchercon in San Francisco (October 14-17). But for conference attendees less familiar with California’s most beautiful city, Rae Helmsworth has added a list of some of her favorite Bay Area eateries to the Bouchercon Web page. Look for that list here.

• Damn! Another classic novel I have to get my hands on.

• Right-wing politicians just don’t seem to understand the severity of today’s worldwide economic crisis. More here and here.

• We may yet see a Man from U.N.C.L.E. movie.

• Interviews worth reading: In Reference to Murder’s B.V. Lawson talks with Karin Slaughter about her new novel, Broken; Lee Goldberg sits down for an interview with The Writer’s Forensics Blog that covers everything from his TV tie-in books and his work on the new A&E series The Glades, to his forthcoming “feature adaptation of Victor Gischler’s Gun Monkeys”; and Craig Sisterson fires off a few questions at Scottish novelist Stuart MacBride (Dark Blood).

• Why have I never heard of this cult film favorite?

• And The Lazy Scholar introduces us to the world of Victorian “yellowback” novels, “cheaply printed, cheaply purchased” books with “lurid covers” that were once especially popular with British railway passengers. (Hat tip to The Bunburyist.)