Bullet Points: Pre-Halloween Edition

• This week’s Web-wide selection of “forgotten books” recommendations includes: Six Dead Men, by Andre Steeman; His Name Was Death, by Fredric Brown; Halo in Blood, by John Evans; The Warrielaw Jewel, by Winifred Peck; Death Beyond the Nile, by Jessica Mann; The Ambassador’s Wife, by Jake Needham; Vengeance, by Brian Pinkerton; a couple of short-story anthologies--The Hardboiled Lineup, edited by Harry Widmer, and The Ethnic Detectives, edited by Bill Pronzini and Martin Greenberg; and what may have been Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most unusual book, The Coming of the Fairies. For a full list of this week’s participating bloggers, plus several more suggested crime-fiction reads (one of them being Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Lucky Legs), see organizer Patti Abbott’s personal blog.

• Squeezegut Alley’s Nicolas Pillai looks more closely at Johnny Depp’s plans to star in a big-screen remake of the 1934 William Powell-Myrna Loy picture, The Thin Man. Should you wish to watch the trailer for the original film, click here.

• Add another name to the list of most unnecessary TV remakes: ABC is hoping to bring Charlie’s Angels back for 21st-century audiences. “The angels haven’t been cast yet,” reports Omnimystery News, “but original series producer Leonard Goldberg and film angel Drew Barrymore are executive producing the pilot. Filming is expected to begin in Miami in January.” Groan ... I was afraid that the success of a revamped Hawaii Five-O would unleash this sort of nonsense.

• Oh no, a Wild Wild West remake too?

• Bare•bones’ Peter Enfantino continues his excellent look back at “the greatest crime [fiction] digest of all time,” Manhunt. Part 6 of his retrospective can be found here.

• Reviews are coming in of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, the Swedish film adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s third novel, recently released in the United States. Salon has its say here, while The Baltimore Sun’s Read Street blog wraps up other opinions here. UPDATE: Mystery Scene’s Oline Cogdill contributes her own two cents about Hornet’s Nest here.

• Here’s the schedule for NoirCon 2010, set to take place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from November 4 to 7.

• Another eye-catching faux-vintage paperback cover from New Jersey freelance illustrator Rob Kelly.

• How damaging could any significant Republican gains in Congress be? Economist Paul Krugman and The Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen weigh in here. More here.

• Wow, the Webzine Beat to a Pulp is already clocking in its 99th short-story entry, “Outback Gothic,” by author-editor Chap O’Keefe.

• Omnimystery News has posted the trailer for the 2011 big-screen release, Blitz, based on Ken Bruen’s 2002 novel of the same name and starring Jason Statham as London Detective Sergrant Tom Brant.

• Universal Studios Home Entertainment has finally announced the release date for its three-DVD set, Columbo--The Mystery Movie Collection 1991-1993. It should reach stores by February 8, 2011.

• Marty McKee recalls Broken Badges, one of the less-well-remembered TV series cooked up by the late producer, Stephen J. Cannell.

• Meanwhile, Mystery*File’s David L. Vineyard reflects on the classic ABC-TV series Peter Gunn, and Skipper Bartlett pays tribute to the appearance of beatniks in Johnny Staccato.

• Right-wing voter intimidation at McDonald’s?

• Ten reasons to hire a private eye.

• From Spinetingler Magazine comes this video in which authors Robert Ward, Reed Farrel Coleman, and Daniel Woodrell discuss the overlap between social-realist fiction and crime fiction.

• A few author interviews worth your time: Craig Sisterson chats up both Roger “R.J.” Ellory (Saints of New York) and Simon Kernick (The Last 10 Seconds); Col Bury puts the screws to Adrian Magson (Red Station); J. Sydney Jones addresses John Harvey (Far Cry); Keith Rawson questions Russel D. McLean (The Good Son); Declan Burke has a conversation with James Ellory (The Hilliker Curse); and in the blog Sea Minor, several people sit down to talk with themselves--Martin Edwards, Brian Wiprud, Jen Forbus, and Benjamin Whitmer.

• Benjamin Whitmer, author of the new novel Pike, also submits to questioning by Jedidiah Ayres in the blog Hard-boiled Wonderland.

• Add this book to my Christmas wish list.

• It won’t be published until May 2011, but Vince Keenan is already recommending Lawrence Block’s next novel, A Drop of the Hard Stuff.

• British pulp authority Steve Holland offers two galleries of Margery Allingham book covers, plus a short bio of the author, who died in 1966.

• And here’s a nice collection of illustrated covers from Ed McBain’s much-admired 87th Precinct books.

• Finally, Martin Edwards writes in Bookdagger about Following the Detectives and the importance of location in crime fiction.