Attracting Eyeballs

I was unimpressed by Blogger’s most recent software update—and I certainly wasn’t alone in my displeasure. In fact, fellow mystery-fiction blogger Lesa Holstine switched over to the content-management system WordPress just to avoid having to learn the quirks of dealing with all of Blogger’s clumsy modifications.

One Blogger change I do like, though, is that its statistics-counting system finally lets me find out what the most popular posts have been in any given year. (Previously, I could filter for days, weeks, and single months, but not for a full 12 months). Using that new toy, here are the five most-read Rap Sheet postings since mid-December of 2019:

• “The Easiest Eighty Thousand Words Ever Put Together”: The Story Behind the Story of David Dodge’s “To Catch a Thief,” by Randal S. Brandt (August 5, 2020)
• A “Lost” Dennis Novel Makes Its Debut, by Lee Goldberg
(January 2, 2020)
• Thrilling Escapes for a Lockdown Summer (June 12, 2020)
• The Book You Have to Read: “To Kiss, or Kill,” by Day Keene, by Steven Nester (December 20, 2019)
• “The Uncles” Consumed by Flames (June 4, 2020)

Posts provided by guest writers include their names. The others were all my own humble contributions.

I am particularly pleased to see included among these top-draws librarian Randal Brandt’s wonderful backgrounder on David Dodge’s 1952 novel, To Catch a Thief. As he explains in his article, that work was inspired by a real-life burglary that took place on France’s Côte d'Azur, committed 70 years ago this last August. If not for that audacious crime, and for Dodge’s imagination, we wouldn’t now also be able to enjoy Alfred Hitchcock’s romantic thriller To Catch a Thief, released by Paramount Pictures in August 1955.