Saturday, August 14, 2010
Abbey Lincoln, R. I. P.
Happy Birthday, Gary Larson!
15: Number of years that “The Far Side” was nationally syndicated. The cartoon’s creator, Gary Larson, was born on this date in 1950."
Ay, Caramba!
Bill Gates predicts that the best education will come from the web in five years, but YouSwear demonstrates how nearly everything worth learning is already available on the internet anyway."
Croc Update (Surgery Edition)
[. . . .]
After ten vets declined to perform the operation, Wang accepted, injecting 60 ml of a local anaesthetic and cutting the tumour off with a blade."
Friday, August 13, 2010
Richie Hayward, R. I. P.
The drummer had been suffering from liver cancer and died Thursday at a hospital near Vancouver, Canada, after complications of pneumonia, his publicist, Bridget Nolan, confirmed Friday."
Rocketship Update
Rocket art landing on SF waterfront | San Francisco Examiner: "It won’t fly anybody to the moon, but a retro-themed rocket ship planned for The Embarcadero will recall a time when Americans romanticized the unlikely pursuit of space colonization.
“Raygun Gothic Rocketship” — a striking 40-foot, 8-ton sculpture — is scheduled to be installed along San Francisco’s waterfront in August."
It's About Time
The Weird Book Room
Forgotten Books: THE THIRD MAN -- Graham Greene
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Shamus Nominees
• The Silent Hour, by Michael Koryta (Minotaur)
• Where the Dead Lay, by David Levien (Doubleday)
• Locked In, by Marcia Muller (Grand Central)
• Schemers, by Bill Pronzini (Forge)
• My Soul to Take, by Yrsa Sigurdardottir (William Morrow)
Best First P.I. Novel:
• Loser’s Town, by Daniel Depp (Simon & Schuster)
• The Last Gig, by Norman Green (Minotaur)
• The Good Son, by Russel D. McLean (Minotaur)
• Faces of the Gone, by Brad Parks (Minotaur)
• Chinatown Angel, by A.E. Roman (Minotaur)
Best Paperback Original P.I. Novel:
• Dark Side of the Morgue, by Raymond Benson (Leisure)
• Sinner’s Ball, by Ira Berkowitz (Three Rivers Press)
• Red Blooded Murder, by Laura Caldwell (Mira)
• Vengeance Road, by Rick Mofina (Mira)
• Body Blows, by Marc Strange (Dundurn)
Best P.I. Short Story:
• “The Dark Island,” by Brendan DuBois (from Boston Noir, edited by Dennis Lehane; Akashic)
• “Deadline Edition,” by S.L. Franklin (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, April 2009)
• “Blazin’ on Broadway,” by Gary Phillips (from Phoenix Noir, edited by Patrick Millikin; Akashic)
• “Suicide Bonds,” by Tim L. Williams (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, March/April 2009)
• “Julius Katz,” by Dave Zeltserman (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, September/October 2009)
No Comment Department
Police were called to a beach at Anzio south of Rome by a furious mother who said the way the “attractive” sunbather was rubbing lotion on her body had “troubled her sons aged 14 and 12.”"
Cathy, R. I. P.
Cathy Guisewite, the strip's creator, said Wednesday that deciding to end the comic strip was 'excruciating.' The comic has won several awards, including a 1992 National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award and an Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program in 1987, and at its height appeared in 1,400 papers."
Here's the Plot for Your Next Globe-Spanning Thriller
Once Again, Texas Leads the Way
Using off-the-shelf parts and a minimalist approach, Miller invented a 2 1/2-pound, battery-powered microscope that a new study shows is just as good at diagnosing tuberculosis as hospital machines that retail for $40,000. Miller's costs $220."
Seepy Benton Knew this Already
With about 35 CPU-years of idle computer time donated by Google, a team of researchers has essentially solved every position of the Rubik's Cube™, and shown that no position requires more than twenty moves."
10 Celebrity Exhumations
I live in Lexington, VA where the rest of Stonewall is buried. His grave is at the center of a plot surrounded by graves of his widow, his daughter and his two grandsons (who never knew their grandfather but both were career military men).
In life, Jackson was known to enjoy sucking on lemons during battles (and no one could figure out how he always managed to have them on hand). Virginia Military Institute students to this day visit the cemetery and leave lemons on the grave of the old VMI professor.
The arm has a more interesting history than recounted here. It was dug up in 1864 by Union troops and said to be reburied. A widely reported incident happened in 1921 when the US Army was conducting military exercises in the area. The legend is that General Smedley Butler had the arm dug up, then reburied in a metal box.
In 1998, the National Park Service decided to open the Elwood Plantation to visitors. Concerned that someone might attempt to make off with the arm, they were going to put in a concrete apron to protect it.
But first they had archeologists explore the site. There was no metal box and after exhaustive study of records, the Smedley Butler seems to be pure legend.
They also could find no evidence of a grave in the vicinity of the marker. It had been placed there in 1903 by a man named Smith but based on the other markers Smith installed at other sites, it was only intended to mark the general area, not the precise location.
So for what its worth, the National Park Service says it believes the arm is in the cemetery but the precise location "...is unknown and likely to remain unknown."
A Man, A Plan And A Sharpie
He enlisted a friend, Benjamin D. Herson, and together they got to work erasing errant quotation marks, rectifying misspellings and cutting unnecessary possessive apostrophes.
The Great Typo Hunt is the story of their crusade.
In 2 1/2 months, Herson and Deck traveled the perimeter of the country, exploring towns and cities in search of typos. They found 437 typos and were able to correct more than half of them."
Once Again, Texas Leads the Way
The thief somehow climbed on top of the roof, cut a chain the mannequin was attached to and took off with it.
“It was a heavy duty one. So they came prepared. I think they probably watched her, came back. Needed a date that night,' laughed Leah Leissner."
Iowa Leads the Way
Will the Persecution Never End?
The Name Proves He's Telling the Truth
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Ummmmmmmm! Cheese!
To be clear, that's four mozzarella sticks pressed into a grilled cheese sandwich. The $4 plate is served with French fries and marinara sauce."
Needle: The Summer Issue
Ray Banks
Nolan Knight
John Stickney
Frank Bill
Julie Summerell
Nigel Bird
Sarah Weinman
Allan Leverone
Chris F. Holm
David Cranmer
Stephen Blackmoore
Mike Sheeter
Order HERE
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David L. Wolper, R. I. P.
The 82-year-old producer died in his Beverly Hills home Tuesday evening, Wolper's spokesman Dale Olson told the Associated Press."
Here's the Plot for Your Next Gastronomic Thriller
The corpse of Jean-Francois Poinard, 71, was discovered Tuesday in the apartment he had shared with a girlfriend in Lyon, regarded as the culinary capital of France."
E-Book Update
Far more surprising is this: His next book will skip print altogether and be published only as an e-book."
No Comment Department
No Comment Department
If She Had a Lawn, I'd Stay Off It
According to the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office, Nancy Waro attacked the woman she shares a jail cell with, and stabbed her with a le[a]d pencil six times."
Otto Penzler Defines Noir Fiction
And Keep Off Her Lawn!
Sally Gordon has been honored as America's Outstanding Oldest Worker for 2010 by a national organization.
[. . . .]
Gordon has been in the work force 84 years. For the last 26 years, she has been an assistant sergeant-at-arms, or 'red coat'' for the state, serving the Nebraska Legislature while it is in session."
And Stay off Their Lawns!
The protestors, known as 'The Raging Grannies,' blocked the main gate while calling for the immediate shutdown of the nuclear reactor.
The eldest woman with the group was 91 years old and has now been arrested seven times for protesting the nuclear plant. Five of the other women were either in their 60s or 70s."
Bye Bye Baby -- Allan Guthrie
No Comment Department
Erle Stanley Gardner on "What's My Line?"
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Reality TV: The Bottom of the Barrel? Parts 3 & 4
Speaking of Physical Objects People No Longer Buy . . .
It was a coup — albeit a costly one — for Netflix, which knows its needs to lock up the digital rights to films as customers stop receiving DVD’s by mail and start receiving streams via the Internet. The deal will commence Sept. 1.
Ted Sarandos, the chief content officer for Netflix, said he is essentially taking the “huge pile of money” that Netflix pays in postage for DVDs by mail — about $600 million this year — “and starting to pay it to the studios and networks.”"
Once Again, Texas Leads the Way
67-year-old Henrietta Lopez is describing her first thoughts when she found a man sitting in her car outside of her Corpus Christi, Texas home Thursday night.
'So, he came to me. I don't know if he was going to attack me or whatever he was going to do, but when he came to me, I let him know that I was not afraid of him and that I was going to take care of him,' Lopez said.
Lopez didn't have to look very far for a weapon.
'I pulled my cane and I held it just like a baseball bat, I held it and when he came over I just let him have it over the head,' Lopez said."
Headline of the Day
Rabid Child -- Pete Risley
Dorchester Redux
Once Again, Texas Leads the Way
Kong!
Vidoq Society -- Interesting Interview
Q: What is the Vidocq Society?
A: The group, founded in 1990, is made up of the world's great detectives and forensic specialists. They meet once a month over lunch in a Victorian dining room in Philadelphia to examine cold case murders. They spend years, pro bono, bringing killers to justice in cases where the cops just can't figure it out."
Jack Parnell, R. I. P.
The family said Parnell died at his home in Southwold, eastern England, on Sunday following a yearlong battle with cancer.
Parnell was born in 1923, the son of a showbiz family — his father was a music hall performer and his uncle ran a string of theaters — and began drumming professionally as a teenager. During World War II he served in the Royal Air Force and performed in a band at the headquarters of Bomber Command."
Monday, August 09, 2010
Lawsuit of the Day
Its motto: 'So good it's SCARY!'
Its logo: A smiling green creature with a red apron who, the way Burnham sees him, is part dinosaur, part alligator and part dragon. Or, as Swett sees him, 'Tyrannosaurus rex on steroids.'"
This Is Why You Shouldn't Take Assault Rifles to Weddings
The Anatolia news agency reported eight other people were wounded at the incident at the village of Akcagoze in the south-eastern province of Gaziantep.
The groom unleashed a volley of rapid aerial shots with an AK-47 rifle to celebrate his nuptials, but quickly lost control of the weapon and accidentally raked the guests with bullets, the report said."
The Ghostwriter
The Truth Comes Out at Last
Interview of Interest
There Will Always Be an England
A total of 102 enthusiasts bared all to take their seats on the Green Scream rollercoaster at Southend-on-Sea, Essex."
The Glades
Bubba Ho-tep Update
Patricia Neal, R. I. P.
Sunday, August 08, 2010
Croc Update (Bikini Edition)
The two wannabe stars on our front page were photographed bikini-clad and sunbaking atop a crocodile trap.
One of the girls, believed to be in her 20s, is lying on her stomach while the other is crawling around on all fours."
Lawsuit of the Day
Filed in Norfolk Superior Court, Mary Ann and Stephen Davis’s lawsuit says that stadium officials enacted a “no ticket, no entry’’ policy in 2007 to deter tailgating by underage drinkers without tickets to the New England Country Music Festival, but that a lax security force never enforced it."
Here's the Plot for Your Next Poker Noir Novel
The 59 year old was charged with swindling at least 26 elderly people out of their savings, and he has half a year to pay back the $440,000. As part of a plea deal, the player has promised to pay back the money in $7,500 monthly installments and – in return – the judge will provide a more lenient sentence after the money is paid back."
Top Notch Thrillers
Top Notch Thrillers
Summer 2010
The summer titles from Ostara Publishing’s Top Notch Thrillers imprint which aims to revive Great British thrillers ‘which do not deserve to be forgotten’ include: a 50th anniversary reissue of a classic manhunt, the story of a World War II conspiracy from one of the biggest selling authors of the 1970s, an award-winning against-the-clock thriller and a Gothic chiller from an author described as the literary link between Dennis Wheatley and James Herbert.
Watcher in the Shadows by Geoffrey Household is the tense, spare story of a manhunt across England’s green and pleasant countryside in 1955 which has been described by one critic “As if Gunfight at the OK Corral had been transposed to St Mary Mead.”
Geoffrey Household, the writer widely considered to be the natural successor to John Buchan, had an unrivalled feel for the English countryside and the primitive bond between hunter and prey. First published fifty years ago in 1960, Watcher in the Shadows is a masterly description of a deadly game of cat-and-mouse which ranks comfortably alongside Household’s legendary Rogue Male.
Black Camelot, first published in 1978, combines a superbly researched wartime conspiracy plot with blistering action and rightly led to the author, Duncan Kyle, being favourably compared to Alistair Maclean and Desmond Bagley.
Under his real name, John Broxholme was a distinguished journalist and Chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association, but it was as Duncan Kyle that he achieved international fame from the moment his first thriller, A Cage of Ice, became an instant bestseller on publication in 1970.
Francis Clifford was one of Britain’s most respected thriller writers from his first well-crafted mysteries in the late 1950s to his untimely death in 1975. His 1974 novel The Grosvenor Square Goodbye was a sensation on publication, won the Crime Writers’ Silver Dagger and was serialised in national newspapers.
The action of the book takes place in less than 24 hours and begins with a crazed lone gunman bringing the West End of London – and the American Embassy – to a violent halt. But nothing, absolutely nothing, in this ingenious ticking-clock thriller can be taken for granted.
The Young Man From Lima, first published in 1968, shows all the trademark touches which made author John Blackburn “today’s master of horror” (Times Literary Supplement).
Blackburn held a unique place among British thriller writers of the 1960s, adding his own taste for the Gothic and the macabre to the conventions of the thriller, the spy story and the detective novel, and always at a ferocious pace. As a writer he is seen as the literary link between the work of Dennis Wheatley and James Herbert and many of his plots were based on scientific or medical phenomenon presaging the work of writers such as Michael Crichton.
***
In less than ten months since its inception, the Top Notch Thrillers imprint has reissued 12 novels from what consulting editor Mike Ripley calls: “the heyday of British thriller writing – the 1960s and 1970s.”
Says Ripley, himself an award-winning crime writer and a member of the International Thriller Writers organisation: “It’s a fantastic honour to be re-issuing many of the thrillers I grew up reading, but it is not just a question of nostalgia. The range and distinctiveness of British thrillers forty years ago was staggering, and the sheer quality of imaginative writing then simply does not deserve to be forgotten.”
Full details of all Top Notch Thrillers can be found on www.ostarapublishing.co.uk.
Details of summer titles for 2010 are:
Watcher in the Shadows by Geoffrey Household, first published in 1960[ISBN 9781906288457].
The Young Man from Lima by John Blackburn, first published in 1968 [ISBN 9781906288440].
The Grosvenor Square Goodbye by Francis Clifford, first published in 1974 [ISBN 9781906288433].
Black Camelot by Duncan Kyle, first published in 1978 [ISBN 9781906288426].
Forthcoming Top Notch Thrillers in 2010 and 2011 will include novels by John Gardner, Victor Canning, James Mitchell and James Munro.
Extreme Sports Update
Excellent Post on e-Books
And I'm not talking Dan Brown or James Patterson type bad. Those guys are All Stars compared to these amateurs. But it doesn't seem to bother readers. Sure, they'll comment on it in an Amazon review or whatever, but then mention that they still loved the story and will buy the next book by the author."
Hard Case Crime Update from Charles Ardai
Those of you who are tuned in to goings-on in the publishing industry may have seen the announcement last week from Dorchester Publishing that they've decided to get out of the business of publishing mass-market paperback novels (the main business they've been in for the past 40 years). Instead, they've announced they're only going to publish ebooks and a limited number of larger trade paperbacks, using a 'print on demand' process.
What does this have to do with Hard Case Crime? Well, for the past six years, Dorchester has been the company that has printed and distributed our books. They're a first-rate company run by good people, and I'm sorry to see them going through tough times. I'm also sorry to see them stop publishing books in our format. What does this mean for us? Well, either we'll need to switch from the smaller "mass market" format to the larger "trade" format, or we'll need to start working with another publisher, or both. (Most likely both, but we'll see.)
It'll take a little while for this all to get sorted out, and I apologize for delays in the meantime. Our August title, Brett Halliday's MURDER IS MY BUSINESS, has shipped to booksellers and is available right now. I'd encourage you to grab a copy while you can -- it's a terrific book (with a gorgeous Robert McGinnis cover), and it'll be the last new Hard Case Crime book you'll see for a while. The next two -- QUARRY'S EX by Max Allan Collins and CHOKE HOLD by Christa Faust -- will not be coming out in October and March as planned. They will come out -- but probably not till sometime later next year. We'll keep you posted as soon as we know when.
And you'll be glad to know we're already at work on subsequent titles. It's too early to spill the beans about what they are -- but it looks like books #69 and #70 will actually be by the same author, one well known to readers of our line. The former will be a reprint, the latter a brand-new book, and both are very exciting. As soon as I can let the cat out of the bag (once the ink is dry on the contracts!), you'll hear more.
After that? Well, you won't be seeing a new book every month, but I expect you'll continue to see a handful of new Hard Case Crime titles each year, and rest assured they'll be good ones. Stay tuned to your email for news and announcements (also not every month -- but every time we've got news to share, I promise).
And if you're a member of the Hard Case Crime Book Club, I'd say don't cancel that subscription just yet -- again, it's too early to talk about what we've got in store, but a neat idea has surfaced for a way to keep the books coming and if it works out, I think you're going to like it. (I know I'm excited about it.)
In the meantime, I want to thank you all for your years of support and your passion for our books -- it feels good to know so many of you are as excited about these books as I am, and (circumstances permitting) I'm looking forward to bringing you more of them for years to come.
Best,
Charles
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Charles Ardai
Editor