Bullet Points: Late-Start Friday Edition

• As usual for a Friday, the crime-fiction blogosphere is crowded with recommendations of “forgotten books” worth reading. Among today’s selections: Hoodtown, by Christa Faust; Dark Ride, by Kent Harrington; Gory Night, by Margaret Rivers Larminie and Jane Langslow; Engineered for Murder, by Aileen Schumacher; They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, by Horace McCoy; Prester John, by John Buchan; Hombre, by Elmore Leonard; and a Wild Wild West tie-in, The Night of the Assassin, by Robert Vaughan. A full list of today’s participating blogs can be found at Patti Abbott’s site.

• One other blogger who’s contributing today is Cullen Gallagher, touting The Jugger, a 1965 Parker novel by Richard Stark (aka Donald E. Westlake). But I’d like to draw particular attention to film critic Gallagher’s not-yet-two-month-old Pulp Serenade blog for its consistently interesting series of reviews of vintage pulp works. Among the novels he has written about so far are The Cockeyed Corpse, by Richard S. Prather; It’s a Sin to Kill, by Day Keene; Mourn the Hangman, by Harry Whittington; and Of Tender Sin, by David Goodis. Keep up the fine work, Cullen.

• Also worth recommending: Duane Swierczynski’s “Legends of the Underwood” series, celebrating such speedy and prolific writers as Orrie Hitt, Michael Avallone, and Gil Brewer.

• Finally coming to a DVD sales shelf near you: Our Man in Havana (1960), starring Alec Guinness.

• What’s the rarest and most valuable book in the old Dell 10-cent paperback line? It’s described as “a hard-boiled mystery/thriller that crams tough detectives, con men, beautiful molls, hapless victims and innocent damsels into 64 pages, and it does it in true pulp fashion.” What’s more, it has a title you’re not likely to soon forget.

• “Steampunk detectives”? Who knew?

• Obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe’s 1836 honeymoon visit to Petersburg, Virginia, accompanied by his 13-year-old cousin and new wife, Virginia Clemm, Richmond Magazine contributor Jeff Abugel wound up buying a building. Why? Click here to find out.

• David Fulmer submits his brand-new Valentin St. Cyr historical mystery, Lost River, to Marshal Zeringue’s Page 69 Test. Look here for the results.

• From the Stupid Decisions File. (Hat tip to Bill Crider.)

• Cathi Unsworth interviews David Peace for Pulp Pusher. Meanwhile, blogger Gerard Brennan chats up Reed Farell Coleman for Crime Scene NI.

• Well, that's funny. I didn’t know that the 1965 film The Satan Bug, adapted from a novel by Alistair MacLean, was scripted by James Clavell of Shogun fame.

• Coming in the fall of 2009: Bloodshot Rainbow: The Life and Work of John D. Macdonald, by James Walling, to be published by Schaffner Press. (Hat tip to Elizabeth Foxwell.)

• To promote his latest book, The Associate, John Grisham has apparently given his first two interviews to blogs. One is at Above the Law, while the other can be found in The Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog. The author’s publicists also suggest that readers visit Grisham’s new Facebook page for more information, although Grisham himself conceded on national TV just the other day that he had absolutely nothing to do with setting up that page, and in fact has no idea what its purpose is supposed to be. Hmm. It sounds like even best-selling novelists and their publishers don’t always communicate well.

• And tomorrow will be (sniff, sniff) the last day of business at London’s landmark Murder One bookstore. However, as Shotsmag Confidential’s Ayo Onatade notes, “The good news is that the mail-order business will still be continuing and I understand that there will be a place (not exactly sure, but I believe that it will be in Hoxton) where customers will be able to go and pick up their ordered books.” It just won’t be the same, though ...