Cleaning Up the Blogroll

When I originally put together The Rap Sheet, more than 17 years ago, the Blogger content management system I chose to use didn’t offer as many gadgets as it does now. You could not, for instance, create a “blogroll” that tracked how often other Web sites updated their material and have their latest headlines delivered to a list on your own page. (That’s possible now.) The best I could do was create a simple directory of other sites I thought might be useful to crime-fiction readers, and install that in this page’s right-hand column.

So that is what I did.

Said blogroll has grown tremendously since, compelling me to break my picks down into categories and to occasionally remove inoperative sites, or move those that are no longer being updated but that I think still provide useful information onto an archive page.

It is always with regret that I delete site links. I know exactly how difficult it is to maintain an active blog—the hours that must be devoted to writing, editing, and page design; the challenge of remaining focused on that Web project even as other elements of one’s life conspire to distract. Which is why this is not an undertaking for everyone, and why valuable or merely interesting Web resources cannot be relied upon to stick around forever.

But since it does neither this site nor readers much good to keep dormant or vanished pages registered in the right-hand column. I am planning to excise a number of those entries this week. Most have ceased to be updated in a very long while; others have been superseded by sites managed by the same authors. At least in one instance—that of Existential Ennui—the contents have diverged so far from crime and mystery fiction, that I can no longer rationalize including it here. Classic Mysteries will go from the list only because its writer, Les Blatt, told me during Bouchercon last month that he has finally decided to retire. And Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Magazine should’ve been deleted ages ago (its author died in 2018), but I kept a link here so I could regularly check on Crider’s blogroll.

The following “General Crime Fiction” sites are on the chopping block. Those marked with an asterisk (*) will be moved to the archives:

• Alpha-60 Books*
• Artistic License Renewed
• The Baker Street Babes
• Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Magazine*
• Classic Mysteries*
• Deadly Diversions*
• Existential Ennui
• Fair Dinkum Crime*
• Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes
• Kingdom Books, Mysteries—Reviews
• MBTB’s Mystery Book Blog
• Mysterious Press Blog
• The Nick Carter & Carter Brown Blog
• Pulpetti
• She Kills Lit
• Suspense Magazine
• The View from the Blue House
• The Writer in the Gutter

If you happen to be the person responsible for one of these pages, and wish to argue for its retention on the list, drop me a line.

A variety of “Crime/Mystery Podcasts” are also slated for removal. Again, those with asterisks will be relocated to the archives:

• Almost Holmes
• The Bastard Title
• The BookPeople Podcast
• Classic Mysteries Podcast*
• In GAD We Trust*
• James Bond Radio
• The Killing Times Podcast
• The Men Who Explain Miracles*
• Queer Writers of Crime
• Suspense Radio
• Thrilling Tales*
• Writer Types

This weeding out of The Rap Sheet’s links list is an ongoing endeavor. I still have to decide what to keep in other sections of the blogroll, and will be doing that between now and the end of the year. Meanwhile, if you know of an outstanding crime-fiction-oriented blog or Web site that you think deserves to be added, please let me know.

FOLLOW-UP: A reader e-mailed me to ask just how closely I observe whether blogs are being updated. The answer is, I don’t conduct regular assessments. But I do click on many of the links in the Rap Sheet blogroll at least once each week, to see what’s new. So I tend to notice when activity drops off. I’m very forgiving of authors who want to play hooky from their Web-contributing efforts now and then (I do the same thing myself), but I start to worry when inactivity extends for weeks or months. Recently, for instance, I have been concerned for the future of these pages: Crime Review, Double O Section, For Winter Nights, The Hungry Detective, and The Trap of Solid Gold. I hope their authors/editors will soon find fresh reserves of interest in these enterprises, and get back to work.