Crime Bytes

• The British crime-fiction Webzine Shots has just undergone an extensive redesign, which makes it look a good bit sharper than it did before. The basic contents, though, don’t seem to have changed. Mike Ripley’s latest “Getting Away with Murder” column has just been posted there, as has an interview with James Gurbutt and Henry Sutton, the co-authors (under the pseudonym James Henry) of First Frost (Bantam), a prequel to R.D. Wingfield’s acclaimed Inspector Jack Frost series.

• If, after watching today’s Super Bowl, you feel like reading some football-based crime fiction, Janet Rudolph has just the list for you.

• The latest chapters of Dick Adler’s serial novel, Forget About It: The First Al Zymer Senile Detective Mystery, have been posted here. If, for some reason, you haven’t been keeping up with that story and need a refresher, you will find a full archive of the developing yarn here.

• Happy second anniversary to Spy Vibe!

• Following news that a previously unknown Dashiell Hammett story will be published in the Winter/Spring 2011 edition of The Strand Magazine, there comes talk about that and 14 other Hammett yarns (unearthed in Texas) being collected in book form in the near future.

• Novelist-screenwriter Lee Goldberg talks with Spinetingler Magazine about the future of e-publishing. It’s actually one in a series of interviews Brian Lindenmuth has put together.

• On the occasion of what would have been Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday, The Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen and Salon both look back at how the mixed legacy of Reagan’s time as the 40th U.S. president often conflicts with right-wing mythologizing. (More here.)

• The blog Where Danger Lives has finally finished posting its countdown of the “100 Greatest Posters of Film Noir.” The last batch covers numbers 10 to 1, including Night and the City, This Gun for Hire, and ... well, I won’t reveal #1. To take in the whole series, click here.

• Beat the Dust’s new issue focuses on crime and noir fiction.

• This week’s new short story in Beat to a Pulp is called “Mercy Street” and comes from crime and horror writer Richard Godwin.

• Meanwhile, Part III of “Black Lens,” the Ken Bruen and Russell Ackerman story being serialized in the Mulholland Books blog, is here.

• And this proves once again that (sadly) there are absolutely no new ideas in broadcast-TV land. Omnimystery News reports that American network NBC has revived plans to remake the popular 1991-2006 British series Prime Suspect. “The original Prime Suspect, which aired seven ‘seasons’ over a period of 15 years,” Omnimystery News recalls, “stars Helen Mirren as Detective Chief Inspector (and later Detective Superintendent) Jane Tennison, and was created by crime novelist Lynda La Plante. NBC’s remake is scripted by Alexandra Cunningham (Desperate Housewives, Fastlane).”