Bullet Points: Slow Sunday Edition

• Stephen Bowie of The Classic TV History Blog has posted an excellent recap of efforts to bring Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novels to television.

• Coincidentally, Sergio at Tipping My Fedora has taken up the challenge of “review[ing] each and every one of the 87th Precinct mysteries written by Ed McBain.” Click here to find his critique of the first book, Cop Hater (1956).

• Wow, talk about obscure TV shows: Michael Shonk looks back at T.H.E. Cat, a 1966-1967 series about a professional cat burglar turned professional bodyguard. Robert Loggia (who, much later, would star in Mancuso, FBI) played the title character, Thomas Hewitt Edward (T.H.E.) Cat. Whether you remember

this program or not, you will probably enjoy seeing the opening credits--with theme music by Lalo Schifrin--which I’ve embedded at left.

• Here’s the trailer for the fall-release film Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, based on John le Carré’s 1974 thriller of the same name, and starring Gary Oldman. As Double O Section blogger Tanner writes, “I love this trailer. I love the tone, I love the music, I love the hints we get of the performances, I love the cinematography, I love the art direction, I love the Seventies fashions and hairstyles; I love pretty much everything about it. This is exactly what a spy movie of this sort should look like!”

• Congratulations to Houston, Texas, technical writer Scott D. Parker, who is joining the editorial staff of the Webzine Beat to a Pulp.

• Omnimystery News has put up two posters for the upcoming (in December 2011) film Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, a sequel to 2009’s Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, and the fetching Rachel McAdams.

• Jake Hinkson pens an ode to “noir’s indispensible dame,” Ida Lupino.

• John Lutz recalls his splendid Fred Carver series.

• Nominations have been announced for this year’s David Award, named in memory of David G. Sasher and given out during the annual Deadly Ink conference in Parsippany, New Jersey. Voting for a winner will take place during the convention.

• The Romance Writers of America has released its list of Daphne du Maurier Award winners for 2011. A full list of nominees is here.

• This week’s new short-story offering in Beat to a Pulp is “A Glutton for Punishment,” by New Jersey writer Thomas Pluck.

• Beautiful ruins from around the world. I’m especially intrigued by Bannerman’s Castle on New York’s Hudson River. It looks worth a stop, the next time I’m in that area.

• PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! series, which next weekend will debut a three-episode adaptation of Michael Dibdin’s Aurelio Zen novels, has another treat in store, as well. In October, turn to Masterpiece Mystery! for a miniseries based on Kate Atkinson’s Case Histories.

• British critic Barry Forshaw previews the coming crop of English-translated crime and mystery novels from Norway, including works by Karin Fossum, Anne Holt, “and a writer who has created a massive pre-publication fever, Thomas Enger.”

• By the way, Forshaw is writing his own book about Scandinavian crime fiction, Death in a Cold Climate, due out sometime early next year.

• Karen Meek previews three more Scandinavian novels for August.

• Part XXIV of “Black Lens,” the Ken Bruen-Russell Ackerman serial tale, has been posted at the Mulholland Books site.

• While you’re over there, check out Megan Abbott’s essay about her longtime attraction to fiction backdropped by suburbia--which also happens to be the setting for her dark new novel, The End of Everything. More from Abbott about her inspiration for this book can be read in the blog written by her mother, Patti Abbott.

• Classic Film and TV Café chooses its five favorite episodes of Mission: Impossible, spread across that show’s original seven seasons.

• Riding book publishing’s new crime wave.

• An interview worth reading: Vince Keenan’s conversation with Bill Crider, author of the new Dan Rhodes mystery, The Wild Hog Murders.

• How ideology stops Republicans from compromising.

• And Tess Gerritsen, author of the Jane Rizzoli series, writes in The Week about her six favorite novels featuring female sleuths. (Hat tip to Campaign for the American Reader.)