Bullet Points: Memorial Day Weekend Edition

• Mike Ripley’s latest “Getting Away with Murder” column has been posted early in Shots. His subjects of puckish reflection this month include: the 25th birthday of publisher Serpent’s Tail; Sara Gran’s “strangely hypnotic” novel, City of the Dead; Paul Denver’s 1963 crime novel, The Last Laugh; and a one-day conference on Agatha Christie, to be held in September at Britain’s University of Derby.

◄ Is this not the worst cover EVER for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles? Check out more such frontal assaults in the Caustic Cover Critic blog.

• Peter Lovesey fans should know about this: the complete 1979-1981 UK TV series Sergeant Cribb (or simply Cribb, as British viewers knew it)--based on Lovesey’s early novels about a dogged Victorian police detective--will finally be released in DVD format in the States come June 14. I own a previous release of Cribb episodes on VHS tape, but it isn’t complete. So I’ll have make this DVD set a wish list item.

• Turning to U.S. police dramas, the E-Advisor Blog has produced a list of “10 TV Cop Shows That Changed the Medium.” Although its source is unlikely, this compilation is right-on with its choices, which include Miami Vice, Hill Street Blues, The Fugitive, and The Wire.

• May 27 brought the 84th birthday of U.S. novelist and short-story writer Marijane Meaker, who--under the pseudonym Vin Packer--wrote the 1952 paperback novel Spring Fire, widely considered to be the first lesbian pulp novel. Both Cullen Gallagher and Todd Mason took the occasion to remark on Meaker’s legacy.

• Winners of the 2011 Lambda Literary Awards were announced this last week, including victors in two categories of particular significance to Rap Sheet readers: Gay Mystery (won by Echoes, from David Lennon) and Lesbian Mystery (won by Fever of the Bone, from Val McDermid. All the nominees in these categories were listed here.

• This week’s new short story in Beat to a Pulp is called “LoVINg the Alien” and was written by England-born Polish author Paul D. Brazill.

• Meanwhile, issue #6 of Crimefactory has just gone live, with stories by Tony Black, Angela Savage, Eric Beetner, and many others. And Part XVIII of Ken Bruen and Russell Ackerman’s tale, “Black Lens,” is now available in the Mulholland Books blog.

• Robert Lewis considers the ties from The Streets of San Francisco.

• Canada’s Vancouver Sun offers a preview of the 2011 Bloody Words convention, slated to run June 3-5 in Victoria, British Columbia.

• And since tomorrow is Memorial Day in the United States, Mystery Fanfare’s Janet Rudolph provides us with a list of Memorial Day Mysteries. Any other suggestions along this line?