Playing the Links

• Latino Review reports that actor Jared Harris, who currently appears as financial officer Lane Pryce on AMC-TV’s Mad Men, will play nefarious Professor James Moriarty in Sherlock Holmes II, the sequel to last year’s Robert Downey Jr./Jude Law action thriller.

• Season 4 of the Raymond Burr crime drama Ironside is due for DVD release on October 19. Meanwhile, November 30 is the date for Have Gun--Will Travel fans to remember. That’s when the first half of that old show’s Season 5 will reach stores.

• Followers of British author Peter Cheyney, rejoice. The official Cheyney Web site reports that it has “been comprehensively up-dated with the addition of ‘The Cheyney Papers,’” taken from his estate’s files. Much of that material has not been seen during the last half century. Click here to learn more.

• Bouchercon is looking for volunteers to help during next month’s convention in San Francisco. There are plenty of job and time options.

• R.I.P., Arthur Penn, the director who gave us Bonnie and Clyde, Little Big Man, Night Moves, and The Missouri Breaks, among other memorable motion pictures. (Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

• Yes, today is National Coffee Day.

• Author John Harvey was less than impressed by this week’s screening, on Britain’s ITV, of DCI Banks: Aftermath, the two-part pilot for a new series starring Peter Robinson’s detective, Alan Banks.

• But Double O Section’s Tanner kind of, sort of likes the new J.J. Abrams spy series, Undercovers. However, he’s still withholding judgment. More or less.

• Interviews worth reading: Sara Townsend talks with author Elena Forbes (Evil in Return); Laura Harman chats up Dreda Say Mitchell (Gangster Girl); and Bill Crider does a Q&A with fellow novelist Reed Farrel Coleman (Innocent Monster).

• I never realized that the A-frame design theme was so popular.

• And click here to listen to a reading of Dashiell Hammett’s 1926 short story, “The Creeping Chinese,” which debuted in Black Mask.