In Case You Don’t Already Know

• This month will bring, on the 19th, what would have been Patricia Highsmith’s 100th birthday. (She died back in 1995, aged 74.) In celebration, Britain’s Guardian newspaper has today published a “newly discovered short story” by the author of The Talented Mr. Ripley. That yarn’s title? “The World’s Champion Ball-Bouncer.“

• America’s PBS-TV has a couple of Agatha Christie specials, Inside the Mind of Agatha Christie and Agatha Christie’s England, lined up for January. The first of those is set to debut on Sunday the 17th.

• R.I.P., Ed Bruce. The country singer, songwriter, and actor was familiar to me from his role as Tom Guthrie, a sheriff turned saloonkeeper, in James Garner’s 1981-1982 series, Bret Maverick, a revival of the 1957-1962 Western, Maverick. Bruce was 81.