Sunday, September 13, 2009

Out for a Little Site-Seeing

• Following through on his promise, The Tainted Archive’s Gary Dobbs has spent this weekend pumping out posts related to The Saint, Simon Templar. There’s almost too much stuff to list, but a few things worth checking out: a full episode of The Saint radio series, starring Vincent Price; Cullen Gallagher’s report on “a recent live re-creation of one of those old-time radio Saints”; a review of The Saint in New York (1935); an interview with Ian Dickerson, a friend of Saint creator Leslie Charteris and now secretary of The Saint Club; a fond look back at The Saint Magazine, and ... well, so much more. Click here to read the full load.

• It looks as if an A-Team movie is finally coming together.

• People (like me) are still registering for the San Francisco Bouchercon in October 2010, but registration is also open now for the 2011 St. Louis convention.

• I almost forgot that today’s marks the 150th anniversary of the last duel in San Francisco, pitting a pro-slavery judge against an anti-slavery U.S. senator.

• This week’s short-story offering at Beat to a Pulp is “Cedar Mountain,” by Connecticut writer George Miller Jr.

For fans of author Mary Stewart.

• In addition to Lyn Hamilton’s death, last week also brought the ends to two other people with crime-fiction connections. Writer-producer George Eckstein worked on The Fugitive, The Name of the Game, Banacek, and many other familiar U.S. TV series. And Larry Gelbart, though he’s best known as one the brains behind M*A*S*H, also won an Edgar Award for the musical City of Angels.

• I forgot to mention that last months Killer Nashville conference produced a trio of award recipients. Read all about them here.

• Is Washington, D.C., really “wired” for Republicans--no matter how silly and “freakish” they act sometimes?

• This is Agatha Christie Week, at least according to Aussie Kerrie Smith from Mysteries in Paradise. She’s coaxed a variety of like-minded bloggers to celebrate “the life and work of Agatha Christie with a blog tour where people undertake to put up a special post on their own site, starting today. Our tour will extend for 11 days.” A list of the participants can be found here. By the way, Tuesday--September 15--would have been author Christie’s 119th birthday, had she not passed away in 1976.

• And in case you ever thought that you could finally catch up with all of the good books being published in the world ... forget it!

5 comments:

Uriah Robinson said...

Jeff, it is the Agatha Christie Festival Murder Mystery
and Mayhem on the English Riviera from 13 -20 September. Torquay in glorious Devon was Agatha Christie's birthplace and yesterday it was full of tourists waiting for the launch of the festival.

David Cranmer said...

Much thanks!

Gary Dobbs/Jack Martin said...

Thanks for plugging the Saint Weekend - it was intended as a overview that people who have no knowledge of the character could enjoy - and I'm really pleased you enjoyed it as I really rate the Rap Sheet. Thanks.

Kerrie said...

Many thanks for the promo Jeff

Picks by Pat said...

I had to laugh when I read the note about registering for Bouchercon 2010 & 2011. I still haven't registered for 2009!