The Rap Sheet Gets Poetic About Stark

I've done my share of writing about the Stark reprints from U of Chicago. Now JKP at The Rap Sheet has his thoughts, which are well worth reading.

The History Behind The Big Wake Up

Over at The Rap Sheet Mark Coggins has an interesting post about the history behind his latest novel, The Big Wake Up. I, for one, had no idea how much of the book's story had a historical basis. I assumed he was taking liberties with some of the more outlandish aspects, but no.

Killer Covers

Over at The Rap Sheet, J. Kingston Pierce has launched a new weekly feature called Killer Covers. The name pretty much says it all. As you know I do the weekly paperback thing as well. I'd say imitation is the highest form of flattery, but it was Pierce's idea from the start. I can't take any of the credit. I'm looking forward to seeing what he has in his collection.

Everything you Wanted to Know about Reginald Heade...

is available in handy blog-post form over at The Rap Sheet. Leave it to the prolific J. Kingston Pierce to come up with such a lengthy, information filled post on a guy about whom most of the world knows very little. Also, there are links to lots of Heade's pictures. Very cool.

And while I'm at it, let me note that Dick Adler has started blogging again, and he has a post in praise of small crime presses, which links to a longer post he wrote at The Knowledgeable Blogger about the same topic. All worth checking out.

I've been slacking lately, so here's some stuff

I've been a bit slack with the content of late, so I sat down to try and find things of note this afternoon.
First, we've got a profile of Akashic Books' Johnny Temple that ran in the IHT some time ago. I missed it the first time around. He also managed to land himself in a Glenlivet ad.

Over at Bleak House Ben LeRoy interviews Mike Segretto of Contemporary Press. (For a publisher with books like these, they sure have an innocuous sounding name.)

The Rap Sheet has the scoop on Crippen & Landru's definitive collection of Lew Archer short stories.

Allan Guthrie is on television.

The Rap Sheet's List of Overlooked Crime Novels

It's been a busy week for me. I've made the four hour trip to Atlanta twice, and consequently I haven't really been keeping up with everything. One thing I have been following, however, is The Rap Sheet's ongoing first anniversary celebration, and the huge list of overlooked books. J. Kingston Pierce has posted a wrap up and a comprehensive list of the books people picked. I was gratified to see that Charles Willeford, whose Black Mass of Brother Springer I picked, also got mentioned by Shane Maloney and Susan Kandel.
You can tell from the sheer volume of responses that were posted that Mr. Pierce asked the right question. If you like books you've got a list of them you can't believe more people haven't read. My submission was done quickly. I didn't take a lot of time to think about it. Since then I've thought of three other books that I could've listed, none of which were mentioned by anyone else. Oh well, there's always next year.

Keeping company that's too good for me

My selection for The Rap Sheet's One Book Project has been posted in the latest update. I'm definitely the least illustrious person to offer an opinion. You can tell because I misspelled Meursault when referencing Camus' The Stranger. No, that's not the book I picked. You'll have to go here to see what I chose. And, while I'm at it, I guess I should say happy birthday to The Rap Sheet, since this entire One Book deal is part of their first anniversary.

A Brief Note

I've had an extremely busy weekend, traveling, seeing friends I don't get to see very often and going to job interviews. As a result, I'm functioning on no sleep, and I haven't looked at the Internet for the last couple of days. I feel completely out of the loop. No email. No Fark. No Crimespot. Funny how something that didn't exist when I was growing up now seems essential. Anyway, I've got nothing really interesting to say about crime fiction or anything else, and probably won't until I've had some sleep. I did notice, however, that J. Kingston Pierce over at The Rap Sheet, has started posting the answers he got as part of his one book project, where he asked people to write a little something about an overlooked piece of crime fiction. I've learned quite a lot reading it, and my contribution might show up there some time this week.

Thoughts on Book Cover Porn

Over at The Rap Sheet, J. Kingston Pierce has an interesting post on paperback cover revisionism. As anyone who reads this blog knows, I like to post links to what I call "book cover porn." My use of the term porn is tongue-in-cheek and has as much to do with the visual appeal of the book covers as it does with any overtly sexual content (although that's not absent.)
I agree with Pierce that we live in strange times when book covers that would fly in the Fifties wouldn't fly now.
You can log onto the Internet and look at pictures of (insert your favorite sexual act here), but heaven forbid someone browsing in a bookshop might see a drawing of a naked lady. Sheesh.

This is currently my favorite book cover. It's got it all: a naked woman, a gun, liquor and money. If there's something missing I don't know what it is.

The Lefty

Over at The Rap Sheet J. Kingston Pierce has reported that Go to Helena Handbasket by Donna Moore (PointBlank: 2006) has won the Lefty, which is given each year for best humorous crime novel.

Pulp Fiction Postcards and More

J. Kingston Pierce over at The Rap Sheet blog has selected this cover, this one, and this one as the ones he would most like to see as available at Hard Case Crime's Cafepress store. Unfortunately, Hard Case is only selling merchandise with its logo at the moment. If you want to get vintage pulp fiction covers on a t-shirt or coffee cup, however, you can go to this Cafepress store, where you can find all kinds of obscure covers, and some not so obscure ones. I used this as a Christmas card a couple of years ago. You have to admit, it's better than the average Christmas card.