Hitting the High Points

• We dodged a bullet earlier this year when a remake of The Rockford Files was cancelled. But thanks to the success of CBS-TV’s rebooted Hawaii Five-O, and an evident lack of new ideas in Hollywood, we may still be treated to an unfortunate smorgasbord of warmed-over small-screen shows from the past. Next up, it seems, is a new version of The Wild Wild West (1965-1969), which was already butchered in a 1999 remake starring Will Smith. As TV Squad’s Bob Sassone puts it--and I agree--“This both thrills and terrifies me to my very core.”

• Speaking of comebacks, editor and bookstore owner Otto Penzler plans to relaunch The Mysterious Press as an imprint of Grove Atlantic next fall.

• Following close on the heels of Kieran Shea’s “The Takedown Heart” comes another boxing story from Beat to a Pulp. This one is called “First Man Falling,” and was written by Tucson resident Garnett Elliott.

• John Ashley is a new name to me, but probably like you, I’m very familiar with his voice as a TV narrator.

• The blog Sea Minor continues its revealing series of author self-examinations with Ray Banks interviewing himself, Ian Rankin putting questions to himself, and Cathi Unsworth talking to herself.

• Didn’t we just hear that a movie version of the 2004-2007 TV series Veronica Mars was off the table? Well, never say never.

• J. Sydney Jones has a good piece in his blog about Irish criminal “mastermind”-turned-novelist Sam Millar. Read their exchange here.

• In an interesting post for Mystery*File, Victor A. Berch traces the origins of the word “detective” back to the early 19th century.

• Chicago film critic Roger Ebert has made an interview he did with novelist John D. MacDonald in 1976 available online. (Hat tip to Spinetingler Magazine.)

• Strand editor Andrew Gulli recaps his magazine’s history.

• Kooky right-winger of the week: “The highest-ranking House official in charge of environmental and energy policy,” The Huffington Post reports, “may soon be a Republican legislator who denies climate change on the grounds of his belief that nothing bad can come of the Earth unless it is preordained by God.”

• Read along with The Avengers here and here.

• Twenty “essential” works of noir fiction.

• Earlier this year I posted the opening from the 1976 TV film Sherlock Holmes in New York, which starred Roger Moore and Patrick Macnee. I thought everybody else had forgotten about that picture, which only shows up every now and then on cable movie channels. But All Pulp is just out with a complimentary review.