Bullet Points: Review and Revivals Edition

• There are so many Christmas-related mysteries, editor-blogger Janet Rudolph is posting them alphabetically in several parts. Novels by authors whose last names begin with the letters A-D can be found here; the E-H listings are here; and crime fiction by wordsmiths bearing monikers that start with I-N are here. The rest of the alphabet should be covered in Rudolph’s Mystery Fanfare this week.

• I have never watched 1935’s The Glass Key, the first of two big-screen adaptations of Dashiell Hammett’s novel of the same name. But Kliph Nesteroff’s Classic Television Showbiz blog now features that picture in its entirety here. (By the way, the second version of Hammett’s novel was made in 1942 and starred both Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. Click here to view a clip from that adaptation.)

• TV watchers who enjoyed the too-soon-cancelled, 2010-2011 series Detroit 1-8-7 might be interested to learn that the AMC network has given the go-ahead to production of another cop series set in the Motor City. According to the news site Deadline Detroit, AMC has “ordered up 10, one-hour episodes” of Low Winter Sun, adding that “the Detroit cop show is based on a 2006 British miniseries and focuses on murder, revenge and corruption. It will debut sometime in 2013.” The Hollywood Reporter explains that Low Winter Sun “is a contemporary story of murder, deception, revenge and corruption in a world where the line between cops and criminals is blurred. The drama kicks off with the murder of a cop by a Detroit detective.” Like the 2006 original, this AMC remake will star UK actor Mark Strong.

• Just try to use this word in a sentence.

• The new table-computer-based crime-fiction periodical, Noir Magazine, was originally set to debut this last October, but that launch had to be delayed; the expectation now is that its first issue will appear this coming Wednesday, December 19. In a note sent to people who helped fund Noir’s creation through Kickstarter, editor Nancie Clare says the inaugural edition will be “an embarrassment of riches,” featuring “articles and stories by Lee Child, Michael Connelly, Denise Hamilton, Annie Jacobson, Laura Lippman and Otto Penzler, among others.” In addition, “writers Val McDermid and Craig Robertson weigh in on the inaugural Scottish crime writer’s festival, Bloody Scotland, and Denise Mina takes us on a tour of her Glasgow.”

• You haven’t yet seen the last of Tony Hillerman’s two Navajo tribal policemen, Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. Hillerman passed away in 2008, but his daughter, Anne Hillerman, tells New Mexico’s Albuquerque Journal that she intends to continue her father’s award-winning mystery-fiction series. Her first new Leaphorn-Chee novel, Spider Woman’s Daughter, is slated for release this coming fall by publisher HarperCollins. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

• I’m still tracking critics’ tallies of their favorite crime and thriller fiction from 2012. Irish author and blogger Declan Burke includes on his list The Silver Stain, by Paul Johnston; The Gods of Gotham, by Lyndsay Faye; and Another Time, Another Life, by Leif G.W. Persson. Meanwhile, among Pulp Curry’s choices are The Darkest Little Room, by Patrick Holland, and Dare Me, by Megan Abbott. And The New Yorker’s Malcolm Gladwell applauds Shake Off, by Mischa Hiller.

• More “best of 2012”: The blog Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes selects its “7 Favorite Private Investigator Sites” of the year.

• Criminal Element’s Deborah Lacy chooses her favorite crime-fighting TV couples. I’m just pleased to see that they’re not exclusively from the last 10 or 15 years. She includes among the bunch Remington Steele and Laura Holt of Remington Steele, along with David Addison and Maddie Hayes of Moonlighting. I’d like to add to Lacy’s list Amanda King and Lee Stetson from Scarecrow and Mrs. King, and--though it violates the man-and-woman theme--Christine Cagney and Mary Beth Lacey from Cagney & Lacey.

• Well, this is embarrassing.

• An interview worth reading: J. Sydney Jones talks with Qiu Xiaolong, Chinese author of the Inspector Chen series.

• Curt Evans celebrates one of Ross Macdonald’s few non-Lew Archer novels, 1960’s The Ferguson Affair, in The Passing Tramp.

• Mystery*File’s Michael Shonk weighs the strengths of various TV show opening themes seen over the last few decades.

• And this should bring new attention to the prospective TV revival of The Saint: Radiant actress Eliza Dushku (formerly of Tru Calling and Dollhouse) has reportedly signed on to play Patricia Holm, Simon Templar’s on-and-off girlfriend, opposite Adam Rayner in the lead role.