Hit the Links

• The January 2018 edition of Mike Ripley’s “Getting Away with Murder” column is now available for your attention in Shots.

• Also look for this year’s first edition of Sarah Weinman’s newsletter, “The Crime Lady,” which includes her recommendations of forthcoming crime-fiction releases.

• Mystery Fanfare notes the passing, on Wednesday, of Fred Bass, “who transformed his father’s small used-book store, the Strand, into a mammoth Manhattan emporium with the slogan ‘18 Miles of Books…’ He was 89. The cause was congestive heart failure.” National Public Radio’s Lynn Neary also shares her memories of Bass.

• Jake Hinkson picks his “Top 6 Maigret Mystery Novels.”

• MysteryPeople chooses its “Top 6 Debut Novels of 2017.”

• While we await this coming fall’s Season 2 debut of The Deuce, the David Simon/George Pelecanos-created HBO-TV drama about New York City’s porn industry of the 1970s and ’80s, Literary Hub’s Dwyer Murphy serves up a list of 10 crime novels—by Lawrence Block, Chester Himes, Judith Rossner, and others—that showcased the grittier side of that metropolis during the same era.

• The Killing Times provides a long round-up of crime dramas expected to debut in Great Britain this year—most of which, I hope, will eventually show up on U.S. screens.

• Kate Beckinsale’s The Widow may not air until 2019.

• The Strand Magazine has put together a brief biography of Sherlock Holmes’ older and less active sibling, Mycroft.

• In addition to the disappearance on December 31 of Hey, There’s a Dead Guy in the Living Room, a second group blog, The Lady Killers, has also decided to call it quits.

• And Andrew Grant (False Witness) is the latest guest on Nancie Clare’s Speaking of Murder podcast. Listen in here.