Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Once Around the Neighborhood

• William Boyd’s World War II espionage thriller, Restless (2006), “has been named novel of the year in the Costa Book Awards, formerly the Whitbread Prize,” reports BBC News. “The novel ... now faces four other works for the overall book of the year prize, being announced next month.”

• If I’d been Bookslut’s Clayton Moore, fielding calls on a pre-holiday morning from a trio of prominent crime novelists--Walter Mosley, Donald Westlake, and Elmore Leonard--all with news to share about their next books, I might just have crawled back to bed afterward, content that my Christmas had been present-rich enough. (Link via Sarah Weinman.)

• Over at the Crime Down Under blog, Damien Gay delivers a rundown of new novels to expect from Australian writers over the next year, beginning with J.M. Calder’s And Hope to Die. Also anticipated are fresh works from Gary Disher (Chain of Evidence, March), Shane Maloney (Sucked In, May), and the deliciously named Tequila Bikini, by Kirsty Brooks (August).

• The Baltimore City Paper presents a satisfyingly long profile of Cort McMeel, the co-founder (with Nicholas Swezey) of the new bi-annual crime-fiction pub, Murdaland.

• And although it has little to do with this genre, I want to express my sorrow at today’s news that Yvonne DeCarlo, the Canadian-born actress who played Lily Munster on the 1960s TV horror-comedy The Munsters, died of natural causes on January 8. She was 84 years old and, over the decades, had guested on Murder, She Wrote, The Name of the Game, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., Burke’s Law, and Bonanza. She’d also enjoyed a substantial film career.

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