Bullet Points: Be My Valentine Edition

• Southern Louisiana’s Iberia Parish, which as every Rap Sheet reader surely knows is home to James Lee Burke’s fictional sheriff’s deputy, Dave Robicheaux, is preparing to host its first official Dave Robicheaux’s Hometown Literary Festival, April 8-10. “Various venues will celebrate literature and its impact on our parish’s culture with storytelling, workshops, theatrical vignettes, music, local cuisine, bourré lessons and a tournament, Dave Robicheaux tours and a 5K run,” says the festival’s Web page. More info and ticket purchases are available here. (Hat tip to Linda L. Richards.)

• I missed it by a couple of days, but actor Burt Reynolds’ 80th birthday was this last Friday, February 11. Over the years he has been featured in plenty of films with a criminal slant, including Fuzz (1972), Deliverance (1972), Shamus (1973), Sharky’s Machine (1981), Stick (1985), and Heat (1986). But no less important are his credits from small-screen crime dramas, everything from M Squad and Naked City to Perry Mason and The F.B.I. Reynolds also starred as Detective Lieutenant John Hawk (a full-blooded Iroquois) in the short-lived, 1966 series Hawk; as the eponymous Southern California homicide detective in Dan August (1970-1971, opening titles here); and as a Florida gumshoe who drove around in a 1960 Cadillac convertible in B.L. Stryker (1989-1990, opening titles here). In addition, notes The Spy Command, “in the very early 1970s, some (such as director Guy Hamilton) thought he could have been a good James Bond.”

• If you haven’t seen it, here’s the trailer for Season 2 of Bosch, the Los Angeles-based drama starring Titus Welliver as Michael Connelly’s fictional police detective, Harry Bosch. The series is scheduled to return to Amazon’s TV-streaming service on Friday, March 11.



• Speaking of trailers, here are two for The Night Manager, a six-part British-American miniseries based on John le Carré’s 1993 novel of the same name. According to Wikipedia, The Night Manager—which stars Tom Hiddleston, Olivia Colman, and Hugh Laurie—will debut on BBC One on February 21 and then on AMC in the States on April 19.

• This is interesting: Flavorwire explains that “Ashley Judd, who had a starring spot as a retired CIA agent in the canceled ABC series Missing, will return to TV for David Lynch’s Twin Peaks reboot. The surreal series is set to premiere on Showtime in 2017. Deadline reported the news, but does not indicate what role Judd will play in the show. Twin Peaks originally aired in 1990 and centered on the murder of high school student Laura Palmer.”

• Now for a bit of unfortunate news: ABC-TV’s Agent Carter, starring lovely actress Hayley Atwell as a clever, kick-ass American spy in the 1940s, has reportedly been cancelled due to its underwhelming Season 2 viewership stats. I’ve enjoyed this show a great deal, and will be sorry to see it disappear. At least all 10 episodes of the current season—which debuted on January 19—are expected to be broadcast through March 1. If you need to catch up with Agent Carter, click here to find the five Season 2 episodes that have been shown so far.

• Tim Dorsey, who pens crime-caper novels such as the new Coconut Cowboy, is the seventh and latest recipient of the John D. MacDonald Award for Excellence in Florida Fiction. He received his prize during an event on January 26. As this press release states, “Some past winners of the award include Elmore Leonard, James W. Hall, Randy Wayne White, and Stuart Kaminsky.” (Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

• Seriously, a big-screen MacGyver movie?

• The guest line-up for the 2016 Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival (July 21-25 in Harrogate, England) has been announced. It includes not only Crime Writers’ Association Diamond Dagger winner Peter James and Gerald Seymour, but also Linwood Barclay, Jeffery Deaver, Martina Cole, and many others.

• Shotsmag Confidential highlights two opportunities to show your crime-fiction scholarship. Click here to find out about submitting chapters to a book about “domestic noir,” and here to learn how your knowledge of author Agatha Christie might come in handy.

• Saskatchewan lawyer/book critic Bill Selnes has recently focused his attention on UK novelist Philip Kerr and his acclaimed Bernie Gunther crime series, set around World War II. So far, he has reviewed Kerr’s first three Gunther novels—March Violets, The Pale Criminal, and A German Requiem—and looked at how the Gunther books treat the subject of the Jewish Holocaust in two posts, here and here.

• Not to brag or anything, but I have read all 14 of Stephen Greenleaf’s San Francisco-based John Marshall Tanner P.I. novels, from Grave Error (1979) to Ellipsis (2000). If you’ve missed out, note that Mysterious Press is offering 12 of those tales in e-book format. The only two missing seem to be 1994’s False Conception and 1997’s Past Tense, but the publisher also has for sale two of Greenleaf’s non-Tanner thrillers, The Ditto List (1985) and Impact (1989).

• I’ve long been a fan of Alistair MacLean’s thrillers, but I confess that, while I own a copy of Caravan to Vaccarès (1970), I haven’t yet read it. So Vintage Pop Fiction’s recent review of that novel is a good reminder of what I expect will be a pleasurable task ahead.

• David F. Walker’s new Shaft comic-book series, subtitled “Imitation of Life,” is winning plenty of favorable comments.

• I love this quote from author Douglas Adams, brought to my attention by The Passive Voice: “Wandering around the web is like living in a world in which every doorway is actually one of those science fiction devices which deposit you in a completely different part of the world when you walk through them. In fact, it isn’t like it, it is it.”

• While I know Rap Sheet contributor Mark Coggins best for having created the August Riordan private eye series (No Hard Feelings), he’s also a photographer, and he’s out now with a new book of his work in that field, titled The Space Between. As he explains, this is “a thoughtfully curated set of fifty street scenes from cities in France, Italy, Japan, and the U.S.” that “conveys the energy, communal bonds, and in some cases, inherent mystery and alienation of urban life.”

• A nice piece about Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon.

• David Morrell has a few things to say about fellow author John D. MacDonald, adding to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune’s series of pieces printed in the run-up to the July centennial of MacDonald’s birth.

• And since today is Valentine’s Day (tell me you didn’t forget, guys), click over to Mystery Fanfare for a rundown of crime novels that somehow feature this annual celebration of love.