Linkin’ Log

• James Ellroy (Blood’s a Rover) sure can talk. Here he is, talking with PBS-TV host Tavis Smiley. (The podcast version is here.) And here he is again, this time being interviewed by journalist Erika Schickel at Los Angeles’ Hammer Museum. A synopsis of their discussion can be found here.

• Rhys Bowen chats up Barbara Peters, the co-owner (with her husband, Robert Rosenwald) of Scottsdale, Arizona’s Poisoned Press Bookstore and a general, all-around authority on the state of crime-fiction publishing today.

• A few final thoughts on this year’s Bouchercon ... from Patti Abbot ... and Ruth Jordan ... and Christa Faust ... and Sandra Parshall ... and Jared Case ... and Donna Moore.

• Here’s a different version of the famous Perry Mason TV theme.

• Iain Glen, a familiar face on UK TV screens, has replaced actor Dominic West in the British television adaptation of Ken Bruen’s 2001 novel, The Guards. Author-blogger Declan Burke isn’t completely sold on this change-up. “With all due respect to the craggily handsome Glen,” Burke writes, “he looks a bit too young and craggily handsome to be playing the Jack Taylor we all know and love.”

• Yet another theatrical trailer for the Christmas 2009 film release, Sherlock Holmes, has been released, building significantly on the original trailer from this last May.

• For the ultimate Man from U.N.C.L.E. fan.

• “With Halloween just around the corner,” writes Julie Blakley at the BootsnAll Travel site, “you may be wondering where some of the spookiest, creepiest, eeriest, most haunted and/or best places to visit on Halloween are located around the world. Places where mummies stare back at you or ghosts roam the hallways, caves where witches hide from the world or dungeons where people were once imprisoned and tortured are scattered throughout the world, giving the heebie jeebies to travelers and residents alike.” Blakley goes on to list her favorite “31 Places to Go for Halloween,” including four in the United States. (Hat tip to Janet Rudolph.)