Triple Play

• This coming Thursday will bring word about who has won the latest Ellis Peters Historical Award. But blogger Uriah Robinson (aka Norman Price) has already handicapped the field.

• I very much enjoyed NBC-TV’s political drama, The West Wing, during its seven-year run. But I am not convinced that an American version of House of Cards, the 1990 BBC series based on Michael Dobbs’ novel of the same name and starring Ian Richardson as a nefarious Parliament climber, will either satisfy my jonesing for West Wing-like political fiction on the tube or live up to the excellence of the original. But we will see. (Hat tip to Crimespree Cinema.)

• And there’s a new flash-fiction contest being put together by the proven team of Patti Abbott, Aldo Calcagno, and Gerald So. “What I would like to propose,” writes Abbott, “is a 750-800-word story that is set, or at least partially set, in a Wal-Mart store.” The possibilities may be as numerous as shopping aisles. Tales are supposed to be readied for posting on November 30.