Saturday’s Spread

• Britain’s Crime Writers’ Association has announced the rules and restrictions for its 2012 Debut Dagger competition, open to any authors who have not yet had a novel published commercially. Entries will be accepted between October 22, 2011, and January 21, 2012.

• Time is running out to get in on Patti Abbott’s Reginald Marsh flash-fiction challenge. Stories are supposed to be posted on Tuesday of this coming week. If you don’t have a blog in which to put up your own story, send it to Abbott by Monday.

• I’m pleased to hear about the release, in November, of Beat to a Pulp: Hardboiled. I was so fond of the previous compilation, Beat to a Pulp: Round 1, that I agreed to blurb it.

• Don Herron visits the Los Angeles apartment building where pulp writer Jim Thompson was living when he died in 1977.

• Today marks the 60th anniversary of the TV debut of I Love Lucy, starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez. There’s still more to read about that classic comedy series here.

• Britain’s Sun newspaper says that the 23rd James Bond movie (Skyfall?) will begin shooting next month, with a theatrical release expected in November 2012. (Hat tip to The HMSS Weblog.)

• John Avlon, a senior columnist for Newsweek and The Daily Beast, delivers an ode to independent bookstores and a list of some of his (mostly Manhattan) favorites.

• The Obama administration’s decision last week to abandon a program that would have subsidized long-term elderly care--part of the president’s history-making health-care reform legislation--represents the U.S. government working well and “exactly the way it ought to,” contends Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum.

• No surprise in this headline: “ABC Cancels Charlie’s Angels.”

• But this is too bad. The “original” Hamburger Hamlet, on L.A.’s Sunset Strip, is set to close on December 19. I think I consumed one of my first meals in the City of Angels at that fine establishment.

• I’m also sorry to hear that Canada’s Citytv has cancelled the television series Murdoch Mysteries, based on Maureen Jennings’ crime novels based in 19th-century Toronto, after five seasons.

• Yvette Banek picks her five favorite Mission: Impossible episodes.

• Meanwhile, San Francisco author Ronald Tierney (Mascara) uses the announcement by GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain of his dumb “9-9-9” economic plan to suggest some of his own favorite nines: “Top Nine Crime Films,” “Top Nine Crime Honorable Mentions,” and “Top Nine Crime Dramas/Series.” Tierney introduces those lists here.

• The Gumshoe Site’s Jiro Kimura reports that Mildred Savage, “famous as the author of her first novel, Parrish (Simon & Schuster, 1958), which was turned into a popular movie of the same title starring Troy Donahue,” passed away “on October 7 at her home in Norwich, Connecticut.” She was 92 years old. More here.

• Although I agree with series co-creator William Link, that the final Columbo movies weren’t as good as earlier ones, or as the original NBC Mystery Movie series, it’s still nice to know that Universal Studios Home Entertainment will soon finish off its Columbo releases with a DVD release of the last seven teleflicks. Those movies, shown between 1994 and 2003, will go on sale on January 10 of next year.

• And the Web-based art and culture magazine Zoom Street is preparing to launch a noir-focused edition on November 1. Stay tuned.