On the Chopping Block

Ever since The Rap Sheet first flickered to life in 2006 (almost 20 years ago!), it has featured a lengthy right-hand column of links to other Web-based crime-fiction resources. The precise number and variety of those connections has changed over time, as blogs and Web sites have appeared and vanished. But we have always been committed to educating readers of this genre through more than just our own news stories, reviews, and commentaries.

Adding to this page’s blogroll is always gratifying; cutting out links to once-valuable sites that are, for one reason or another, no longer being updated or have expired altogether is far less pleasant. It must be done on occasion, though—and this is one of those times.

It’s come to our attention recently that more than a handful of the Web pages we have been listing on the right are now simply gathering dust. Knowing how hard it is to keep a blog or other Web site active, we try to be generous in allowing writers to let their sites lie fallow for a spell. We have learned that sometimes, what we conjectured were dead pages were merely dormant. (The Stiletto Gumshoe being a recent example.) However, sites that haven’t been refreshed for 12 months or more are usually not going to rise from the electronic grave.

We haven’t weeded through our entire blogroll yet, but here are the first links we’ve decided to remove from it:

General Crime Fiction:
• Black Guys Do Read
• Bookgasm
• Col’s Criminal Library
• Crime by the Book
• Crime Review
• Crime Squad
• Crime Thriller Hound
• Crimeworm
• Dead Yesterday
• Double O Section
• Harriet Devine’s Blog
• The Hungry Detective
• Interview Room One: Reviews
• Lawrence Block’s Blog
• Material Witness
• Mystery Scene Blog
• New York Journal of Books: Mystery & Thriller
• Nordic Noir
• Novel Gossip
• Novel Heights
• The Reading Room
• Reviewing the Evidence
• The Secret Agent Lair
• The Trap of Solid Gold
• True Crime Fiction
• Views on Books

Podcasts:
• Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine’s Podcast
• Almost Holmes
• The Bastard Title
• The BookPeople Podcast
• Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine’s Fiction Podcast
• Good Evening: An Alfred Hitchcock Presents Podcast
• Hark! The 87th Precinct Podcast
• It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club
• James Bond Radio
• The Killing Times Podcast
• My Favorite Detective Stories
• Queer Writers of Crime
• The Tartan Noir Show
• Two Crime Writers and a Microphone
• Writer Types

Periodicals:
• Mysterical-E
• Mystery Weekly Magazine
• Noir Nation

Short Fiction:
• Beat to a Pulp
• Flash Bang Mysteries
• Modern Mayhem Online
• Not Offended
• Pulp Metal Magazine
• Tough

In only a few cases, do we know why these sites have gone dark. The termination earlier this year of Typepad, a once-popular blogging software, spelled the end for Ben Hunt’s Material Witness blog and Harriet Devine’s Blog, and almost took down B.V. Lawson’s In Reference to Murder as well. (She wound up moving the contents of her site over to Blogger in order to save it.) Meanwhile, the founder of the New York Journal of Books, a once superior book review site, blamed the closing of his operation on Donald Trump’s chaotic tariffs. But for the most part, we have no clear idea why these resources have disappeared. Their authors left readers with no explanations.

As we continue assessing our blogroll, there will likely be more dead sites nixed. Some, like Lawrence Block’s Blog and the John D. MacDonald-focused Trap of Solid Gold, will be relocated to The Rap Sheet’s Archives page, because they remain useful, even if they’re no longer being updated. But most will go away altogether.

If you happen to be responsible for any of these orphaned sites, and can reassure us that your project has a future after all, that’s wonderful. Please drop us a line here.