News from Hither and Thither

• Today brings to a close this year’s national midterm elections in the United States, but voting has only just begun for the sixth annual Goodreads Choice Awards. The 20 nominees in the Best Mystery and Thriller category include: I Am Pilgrim, by Terry Hayes; The Long Way Home, by Louise Penny; The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches, by Alan Bradley; and The Secret Place, by Tana French. Click here to pick your favorites. By the way, this is a three-round voting process; the current, first round ends on November 8.

• As Reuters reports, “The case of the disputed Sherlock Holmes copyright is hereby closed after the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday left intact a ruling that said 50 works featuring the famed fictional detective are in the public domain. … The estate had wanted writer Leslie Klinger to pay a $5,000 license fee before a volume of new stories based on the Holmes character, famed for his genius IQ, deerstalker hat and cocaine habit, could be published.” The short-story collection at the center of this dispute is In the Company of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon, edited by Klinger and Laurie R. King, and due out in November from Pegasus Crime.

• Have you heard about the International Thriller Writers’ “1,000 Thriller Giveaway”? According to a news release, “ITW authors (including authors such as Lee Child, Harlan Coben, and Karin Slaughter) have donated 1,000 thrillers, and 20 lucky readers will win a book a week for an entire year.” To enter the drawing, simply follow this link. The names of the winners will be drawn on November 30.

• I was very sad to read that Tom Magliozzi--who with his younger brother, Ray, hosted National Public Radio’s Car Talk program for 35 years--died on Monday at age 77 “of complications from Alzheimer’s.” I have never been a big car enthusiast, but Tom and Ray (aka “Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers”) were long a regular part of my weekend radio listening. Even now that their show is in repeats, I tune it in all the time. Go smoothly into the night, Tom ... with your foot pressed down hard on the gas pedal. (You can read more about Magliozzi here, here, here, and here.)

• This last weekend’s NoirCon in Philadelphia included the dispensing of three different commendations, according to Mystery Fanfare:

Bronwen Hruska, publisher at Soho Press, received the Jay and Deen Kogan Award for Constant Excellence in the Field. “In recognition of her tireless dedication to the advancement of crime/mystery fiction as publisher of Soho Press.”

Fuminori Nakamura of Tokyo, Japan, received the David Goodis Award for excellence in writing.

The Czar of Noir, Eddie Muller, received the Anne Friedberg Award for his contribution to noir education and preservation.

• Publishers Weekly notes that “Nearly 200 industry members gathered October 31, at the Random House Building in New York City, to pay tribute to Oscar Dystel. The former head of Bantam Books revolutionized the mass-market paperback business in the 1950s and, in the process, made books more widely available to the public than they had been at any point in American history. Dystel died on May 28, at the age of 101.”

• In case you haven’t yet noticed, I have made a number of additions recently to The Rap Sheet’s YouTube page, including the main title sequences from Richard Diamond, Private Detective, Lindsay Wagner’s short-lived Jessie, and the 1971 pilot film Banyon.

• And this is a disturbing trend. For the second time since mid-August, a vehicle has run through my local Seattle Starbucks outlet--and the store doesn’t even have a drive-thru window. An automobile apparently missed making the turn in front of Starbucks on August 24, crashing into the east side of the shop. Then yesterday, “a black pickup truck … tore through the protective guardrail and into the front of the building.” The driver fled the scene of the crime. Fortunately, both accidents occurred when Starbucks was closed.