Scattershot Saturday

• The brand-new edition of Plots with Guns has just been posted. Among the short-story contributors to this second issue of the revived PWG are Jimmy Callaway (“When Dawn Came Without Salvation”), the ubiquitous Patti Abbott (“Like a Hawk Rising”), Frederick Zackel (“Backing Down the On-Ramp”), and Bryon Quertermous (“ The Hemingway Stripper”).

• Yesterday, author Steve Hockensmith (The Black Dove) wrote about I Am the Cheese, by Robert Cormier, as part of The Rap Sheet’s ongoing Friday blog series highlighting great but sadly forgotten books. Other nominations to that list, coming from elsewhere in our crime-fiction-oriented corner of the blogosphere, included: The Shark-Infested Custard, by Charles Willeford; Home Sweet Homicide, by Craig Rice (whose 100th birthday would have been this last Thursday); Down and Dirty, by W.E. Murphy; You Never Believe Me, by Davis Grubb; ’57, Chicago, by Steve Monroe; The Last Witness, by K.J. Erickson; and Crooked Man, by Tony Dunbar. In addition, Patti Abbott--who was responsible for this series--posts five other suggestions in her personal blog, plus a list of this week’s other “forgotten books” participants.

• While I haven’t caught all of the installments, National Public Radio has been doing something comparable in a series called “You Must Read This”--inviting prominent authors to talk about books they’ve found particularly compelling over the years. Most choices don’t fall into the mystery/thriller/suspense realm, but some do. Pico Iyer, for instance, enthuses over Graham Greene’s 1955 novel, The Quiet American. John Marks endorses Bram Stoker’s 1897 Dracula for its “great tension ..., the struggle between rational fact and supernatural reality.” And Michael Chabon applauds the “humor, affection, and real insight into a soldier’s life” that Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle brought to his 1903 standalone, The Exploits and Adventures of Brigadier Gerard.

• Speaking of the phenomenal Holmes, it seems that English screenwriter-director Guy Ritchie (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch) is hoping to “bring Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes up to speed for the new millennium” with a film scheduled for release in 2010. More on that film here.

• And thanks to Holmes, The Thrilling Detective Web Site’s Kevin Burton Smith seems finally to have caught the gaming bug.

• Finally, Rod Lott of Bookgasm alerts us to the debut of Sherlock Holmes Magazine. He explains that issue No. 1 is, surprisingly, not “filled with Holmes pastiches and parodies--quite the opposite, writes editor Marvin Kaye in his introduction--but the contents certainly honor the spirit of the sleuth as created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. That goes for the short stories and the mix of nonfiction pieces, making it a must for Sherlockians.”

• Jonathan Fenby, former editor of The Observer in Britain and The South China Morning Post, selects half a dozen “top books” about China for The Times of London. Cheating a bit, Fenby chooses as one of his picks the entire Inspector Chen Series by Qiu Xiaolong, the latest installment of which is Red Mandarin Dress (2007).

• Material Witness’ Ben Hunt interviews Jason Pinter (The Guilty, The Mark) and, not feeling he’s done enough for one week, reviews the just-released James Bond novel, Devil May Care, by Sebastian Faulks. Although he contends that “Faulks never quite moves beyond a two-dimensional caricature” of his (or, rather, Ian Fleming’s) protagonist, Hunt finally pronounces Devil to be “a fine effort from Faulks, who is a long way outside his natural territory and pretty far removed from his comfort zone. His book is lively and concise.”

• Lee Goldberg is, shall we say, significantly less enthusiastic about Faulks’ efforts. Click here.

• Spinning off from a Forbes piece that looks at how the James Bond franchise has expanded over the decades, Bish’s Beat offers up a terrific trove of 007 trivia and ways to spend any money you might have left over these days, after filling up your gas tank.

• TV Shows on DVD reports that Nash Bridges, the often lighthearted 1996-2001 cop series starring Don Johnson and Cheech Martin, is headed for DVD. No actual release date yet, though.

• Oh, whoopee-do, the forthcoming big-screen remake of The A-Team (a show I thought was much below the talents of star George Peppard) finally has a stand-in for Mr. T.

• Pop Sensation’s analyses of old paperback covers often leave me laughing. In looking over A Hard Day’s Knight, by Ted Marks (1966), pseudonymous blogger Rex Parker comments, “Nothing turns me on like a housecoat, granny panties, and molded plastic hair of an indeterminate dirt color.”

• The pulp magazine Out of the Gutter is holding a short-fiction contest in association with its upcoming “Revenge Issue.” The judges are Anthony Neil Smith (Yellow Medicine, Plots with Guns) and Victor Gischler (Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse). “All stories submitted that fall between 1,000 and 5,500 words by a writer who is classifiable as an ‘up-and-comer’ will be automatically entered in our short fiction contest,” the site explains. “Two first, second, and third place winners will be selected--one set for our ‘APPROXIMATELY 10 MINUTE READ DEPT.’ and one set for our ‘15-20 MINUTE READ DEPT.’ By ‘up and comer’ we mean writers with a relatively humble resume ... writers who have not yet ‘arrived’ and have everything to prove and to whom it will mean something to win this thing.” Although it doesn’t say on the Web page highlighting this contest, I can only assume that the deadline for OOTG’s short-fiction contest is the same as that for other copy submitted to the “Revenge Issue,” June 15. If you hope to enter, you’d better get crankin’.

• A quick reminder: June 15 also happens to be the deadline for submissions to the “Shifting Gears” flash-fiction contest, masterminded by Patti Abbott, Gerald So, and Aldo “Mystery Dawg” Calcagno. The rules are: “Write a story [of] 750 words or less incorporating the sentence, ‘With gas prices rising, their plans had to change.’ Post your story on your blog or Web site on June 15, 2008.” Abbott notes that “People who want their stories posted on Powder Burn Flash should probably advise Mystery Dawg sometime before that day that you will need his services.”

• The placards for Die Another Day, Chinatown, The Silence of the Lambs, and Anatomy of a Murder are among the “100 Best Movie Posters of All Time”? Who am I to argue? (Hat tip to Notes from Hemingway’s Lounge.)

• Wallace Stroby reports that the University of Chicago Press plans to reprint all of Donald E. Westlake’s novels starring the professional thief known as Parker “in chronological order, beginning in September with The Hunter (aka Point Blank, aka Payback), The Man with the Getaway Face and The Outfit.”

• Foreword Magazine has announced the winners of its 2008 Book of the Year Award in the mystery/thriller category.

• Via Delle Oche, the final installment in Italian writer Carlo Lucarelli’s trilogy of short crime novels featuring Commissario De Luca, is finally out in English translation. International Noir Fiction’s Glenn Harper offers a backgrounder on the series, which is thoroughly entertaining, as far as I’m concerned. I read the first two De Luca books, Carte Blanche and The Damned Season. I don’t have Via Delle Oche yet, but it’s only a matter of time before I can no longer resist buying the book.

• Martin Edwards applies the Page 99 Test to his new Harry Devlin novel, Waterloo Sunset.

• Finally, a few more novels to add to your must-read pile, courtesy of the Bloodstained Bookshelf list of upcoming titles: Swan Peak, by James Lee Burke (due out in July); Blackout, by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza (August); Blood Alone, by James R. Benn (September); and Year of the Dog, by Henry Chang (November).