Bullet Points: Spring Has Finally Sprung Edition

I’m sorry for the somewhat reduced schedule of postings here in recent days, but I have been trying to complete work on a rather large book project. Other Rap Sheet contributors have been kind enough to pitch in, but the frequency and length of posts here should pick up again soon. Meanwhile, there are plenty of news tidbits worth noting.

• It’s deadline time, people. Ballots for the 2011 Anthony Awards must be mailed in by this coming Saturday, April 30. That’s also the last day you will have a voice in choosing nominees for the 2011 Spinetingler Awards. You had better get cracking!

• The Spring 2011 edition of Plots with Guns has just been posted. It includes short stories by Schuyler Dickson, Frederick Zackel, Richard Godwin, and Graham Powell.

• Cincinnati, Ohio-based publisher F+W Media has purchased small press Tyrus Books, according to Publishers Weekly. Tyrus founder Ben Leroy has been hired as publisher and community leader, F+W Crime.

• Law & Order: Criminal Intent, again featuring Vincent D’Onofrio and Kathryn Erbe in the leading roles, will return to the USA Network schedule for the opening episode of its final season this coming Sunday at 9 p.m. ET/PT. It will be followed by the season premiere of In Plain Sight, starring Mary McCormack.

• Jake Hinkson has a good piece on publisher Macmillan’s newly relaunched Web site, Criminal Element, about noir crime tales that turn on memory loss. Read it here.

• In the same publication, Bill Crider writes about the similarities between the private-eye novel and the western--a subject he also addressed some years ago in January Magazine.

• Warner Bros. has issued a newly remastered DVD version of James Garner’s 1969 film, Marlowe, which was based on Raymond Chandler’s novel, The Little Sister (1949). That picture’s a private-eye fiction classic. Save me a copy!

• J.F. Norris offers a fine look back at Martin Cruz Smith’s debut novel, Gypsy in Amber (1971). Norris writes:

For his first book he took a decidedly different and very unusual topic--the gypsy culture of New Jersey and New York in the 1970s--and created a story that forty years later still seems more original than most of what is being published today.

• Author Alafair Burke has initiated a “Read Men Read Women” campaign to raise the profile of female crime novelists and also promote youth literacy. You’ll find details here.

• Republicans have been showing their racism lately.

• The 2011 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books kicks off this weekend at the University of Southern California campus. Among the attendees will be Yunte Huang, the author of last year’s fascinating non-fiction book, Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History. Times books blogger Carolyn Kellogg is covering the festival here.

• Might Peter Lovesey’s Peter Diamond books inspire a TV series?

• In his blog, Scene of the Crime, J. Sydney Jones features a fine interview with Jim Kelly, the British author of Death Toll.

• Meanwhile, Cullen Gallagher chats up Greg Shepard from book publisher Stark House Press.

• And in case you haven’t already heard, on April 21 romantic suspense novelist Beverly Barton died suddenly of heart failure in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Her latest novel, Dead By Morning (Zebra)--the second installment in her “Dead By” trilogy--was just released this week. The concluding book of those three, Dead By Nightfall, isn’t due out till December. Barton was only 64 years old.