Bullet Points: Spooks and Goblins Edition

Before the children start showing up at my doorstep, ready to clean me out of every sugary substance I’ve amassed for this holiday, let me pull together a few crime-fiction news items I have not yet mentioned.

• We now know which books are in the running to be named the Ireland AM Crime Fiction Book of the Year. Per author-blogger Declan Burke, here are the nominees:

-- The Twelfth Department, by William Ryan (Pan Macmillan/Mantle)
-- The Convictions of John Delahunt, by Andrew Hughes
(Doubleday Ireland)
-- The Doll’s House, by Louise Phillips (Hachette Ireland)
-- Inquest, by Paul Carson (Century)
-- The Stranger You Know, by Jane Casey (Ebury Press)
-- Irregulars, by Kevin McCarthy (New Island Books)

I’m particularly pleased to see Irregulars as a finalist. I very much enjoyed McCarthy’s previous novel, 2010’s Peeler, which introduced early 20th-century Irish cop Sean O’Keefe. I have only recently been pouring through Irregulars, Peeler’s sequel--and what a dynamite read it is; more on that later. The winner of this prize, which is part of the annual Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards competition, will be announced on Tuesday, November 26. Online voting for these awards is open from October 31 to November 21. Click here to participate.

• Congratulations to Atticka Locke, who has won the 2013 Ernest J. Gaines Award for her novel The Cutting Season (2012).

• Today is your last opportunity to participate in The Rap Sheet’s survey to determine which were the best of Alistair MacLean’s more than two dozen adventure thrillers. Click here to make your preferences known. You can vote for one or more books. Results will be announced early next week.

• Michael Connelly’s Web site brings the news that Amazon Studios has “given the green light for the production” of Bosch, “based on [his] best-selling Harry Bosch book series and written by Emmy-nominated Eric Overmyer (The Wire, Treme) and Michael Connelly ...” The character of Hieronymous “Harry” Bosch will be played by Titus Welliver, who I first remember from the 2001 CBS-TV crime drama Big Apple, but who later showed up in a memorable role on Deadwood (along with Big Apple’s Kim Dickens). Asked how Amazon will offer a prospective Bosch series, Connelly explains: “We are producing the show for Amazon Studios, which means that when it is released it will be streamed off Amazon’s instant video service. This means you can watch it on your computer or digital device as well as on your television if you have it set up with an Amazon connection. Sometime early next year--probably in March--this pilot will be available for free viewing and comment. However, like HBO or Netflix or any cable provider, Amazon streaming is a subscription service provided under Amazon Prime. If Bosch goes to series a membership in Amazon Prime will be needed to watch it at some point.”

• Meanwhile, HBO-TV has released a new trailer for True Detective, its eight-episode, Louisiana-set crime drama starring Matthew McConaughey, Woody Harrelson, and Michelle Monaghan. The show will premiere on January 12, 2014. The trailer, which you can watch here, gives me hope that True Detective will be better than the usual, predictable small-screen drama. Fingers crossed.

• Flavorwire has posted the first trailer I’ve seen for the Kickstarter-funded Veronica Mars movie. That film is due out next spring.

• And Omnimystery News says “Netflix has announced that it has reached a deal with CBS to stream all 8 seasons of Dexter to its members in the U.S.”

• This is a potentially interesting shift of gears: “After making his name on crime dramas set in his native Boston,” /Film explains, “Dennis Lehane is getting his next bit of inspiration from outside the country. The Shutter Island author has been tapped to write Sony’s English-language remake of A Prophet (aka Un prophète), Jacques Audiard‘s acclaimed French crime drama.”

• Mike Ripley’s Top Notch Thrillers imprint is releasing new editions of two installments from TV writer James Mitchell’s five-book spin-off series based on Edward Woodward’s 1967-1972 series, Callan. On that program, Woodward (later to make a name for himself in The Equalizer) played “a reluctant professional killer for a shadowy branch of the British Government’s intelligence services known as ‘the Section.’” The Callan novels returning to print (and also debuting as e-books) are A Magnum for Schneider (aka Red File for Callan) and Russian Roulette. Nick Jones offers more information about the Callan novels in his blog, Existential Ennui.

• I confess, I didn’t know much about Robert Siodmak until I read Jake Hinkson’s profile in Criminal Element of this man he calls film noir’s greatest director.

• A tip of the hat to Kristopher Zgorski’s blog, BOLO Books, which recently celebrated its first blogiversary.

• Finally, I am sorry to hear that doctor-turned-novelist Michael Palmer has perished at 71 years of age. According to his middle son, Daniel, he died yesterday “of complications from a heart attack and stroke.” The Gumshoe Site’s Jiro Kimura recalls that Palmer “began writing while he was practicing internal medicine, starting [with] The Sisterhood (Bantam, 1982). ... He wrote 18 medical thrillers and the last two, Oath of Office (2012) and Political Suicide (2013), featured Dr. Lou Welcome, a physician in Washington, D.C.” Palmer’s 20th novel, Resistant, is scheduled for publication (by St. Martin’s Press) on May 20 of next year. I don’t think I ever met Palmer, but Rap Sheet correspondent Ali Karim, who says he was introduced to the author “at the very first ITW [International Thriller Writers] Thrillerfest held in Phoenix, Arizona, in 2006,” remembers Palmer as “a very nice guy, plus multi-talented” and “a real gentleman.”