Playing Catch-up

• Hard Case Crime editor Charles Ardai (“clearly the Indiana Jones of pulp fiction”) recounts the story of how he unearthed the manuscript of James M. Cain’s unpublished last novel, The Cocktail Waitress.

• Omnimystery News has posted the new trailer for One for the Money, a film adaptation of Janet Evanovich’s first novel about bounty hunter Stephanie Plum. This picture stars the ever-captivating Katherine Heigl, with Jason O’Mara (Life on Mars) playing Joe Morelli, and is scheduled to open in U.S. theaters on January 27 of next year. I have to admit, the trailer

(see left) doesn’t look bad. But then, trailers do not necessarily reflect the overall quality of a movie.

• Happy birthday, F. Scott Fitzgerald!

• Registration is now open for NoirCon 2012, to be held in Philadelphia from November 8 through 11 of next year. Meanwhile, the conference is also hosting its first-ever poetry contest. The deadline for entries is March 2, 2012. More details here.

• In assessing Ross Macdonald’s 1962 novel, The Zebra-Striped Hearse, At the Scene of the Crime opines: “You might sum everything up by saying that Ross Macdonald may be the hard-boiled author for those who don't like hard-boiled authors.” Click here to read the full post.

• Thriller writer Kathleen George (Hideout) is the subject of a well-done piece in the Pittsburgh City Paper, written by Robert Isenberg.

• See it now: The original Hawaii Five-O’s “lost episode.”

• Ah, Ava Gardner ...

• Hoping to reap ballot-box benefits, hyper-partisan Republicans in Washington, D.C., have escalated their legislative obstruction tactics, the result being to keep the U.S. economy in recession and stifle job creation. Gee, thanks guys.

• The odyssey of little Dorothy’s ruby-red slippers.

• Congratulations are due author Lee Goldberg on his new deal with Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer imprint, which he says, “has picked up the Dead Man series in a unique and exclusive 12-book digital & print deal ... with an option for more. But that’s not all. Brilliance Audio will be also be rolling out their own editions of the books.”

• And a toast as well to Peter Rozovsky, whose award-winning blog, Detectives Without Borders, just celebrated its fifth anniversary.