The Rap Sheet (Free subscription) | yesterday
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day in the United States, an occasion that’s supposed to bring families together and cause us all to assess what blessings we’ve enjoyed over the last twelve months. I have to say, 2009 has made me feel more optimistic than I have since the 2001 terrorist attacks, for some very good reasons: Now that Democrat Barack Obama has replaced George W. Bush in the White...
Chris Well: Learning Curve (Free subscription) | 11/24/2009
I discovered several bloggers going through the The Alphabet in Crime Fiction letter by letter, and thought it'd be fun to give it a try. This week they're featuring the letter "H." My selection is Rex Stout 's Homicide Trinity (Crime Line) . Originally published by Viking Press in 1962, it's a collection of three mysteries starring Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin: "Eeny Meeny Murder Mo,"...
Church of the Big Sky (Free subscription) | 11/22/2009
Installment #1 in a series of posts to prove my talent for attracting strangeness is not a recent development. Exhibit A: This is me, circa 1978-ish, returning a runaway lion cub to the neighbors across the street from my parents' house. The lioness at our local zoo ( Niabi Zoo ) had three cubs and she rejected them. Teske's, the local seed and feed (now a "pet and garden center" ) offered...
Central Crime Zone (Free subscription) | 11/22/2009
Here is the line-up for Nov 20th. Paul Bishop, The Jane Bond Adventures, Mable Marley Michael Carlson, Box Nine, Jack O'Connell Bill Crider, The Girl on the Best Seller List, Vin Packer Martin Edwards, Victims, B.M. Gill Ray Foster, The Schoolgirl Murder Case, Colin Wilson Ed Gorman, A Memory of Murder, Ray Bradbury Libby Fisher Hellman, The Staked Goat, Jeremiah Healy George Kelley, The Forgotten...
'Do You Write Under Your Own Name?' (Free subscription) | 11/10/2009
Much as I like crime novels that explore character and matters of social significance, one of my guilty pleasures continues to be those detective stories which are, in essence, games between the writer and the reader – to see if the reader can pick up the clues to solve the mystery in good time before the truth is revealed. The ‘game’ aspects of the detective story were highlighted...
The Scary Parent (Free subscription) | 11/06/2009
Note: This is a re-posting of an entry from a couple years ago. People have asked me about this again, so I'm putting it here again. Recently I got a question that I've heard before, which is, when is it time to find an agent? There's plenty of information about this online already. There are whole blogs by agents where they answer exactly this kind of question. My reply, based solely on my experience...
Ed Gorman Blog (Free subscription) | 11/05/2009
A Different Take on John D. MacDonald By Brendan DuBois The postings and writings about John D. MacDonald on Ed Gorman’s blog got me thinking about my own memories of this famed grandmaster. One of the most embarrassing details about me being a mystery author is just how ill-informed I am about the field, especially when I first started out. I sold my first short story to Ellery Queen’s...
Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine (Free subscription) | 11/02/2009
Welcome to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine! : "Episode 3: 'The Talking Dead' by Melodie Johnson Howe A TV writer goes missing, leaving her show's star without a script and opening up a perfect scenario for murder. In this fourth installment in her series of Diana Poole mysteries (published in EQMM in June 2003), former Hollywood actress Melodie Johnson Howe takes a penetrating look at the off-stage...
The Best American Poetry (Free subscription) | 11/02/2009
• Early on, Pete cuts off wife Trudy's questions by snapping, "Trudy, stop it with the Ellery Queen." Ellery Queen was, of course, the fictional detective and pseudonym of Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee, author/star of over 20 novels...
Ed Gorman Blog (Free subscription) | 10/31/2009
I've been reading a lot of short stories lately and thought I'd recommend a few tonight. On Tuesday I received the new Alfred Hitchcock double issue dated January/February 1010. I've been reading through it and found a number of particularly strong stories: "Game" by Janet E. Irvin is a classic suspense story with some truly chilling moments. Very precisely observed. "The God of Right...
maggies meanderings and shameless p (Free subscription) | 10/28/2009
I think eventually, it will be posted on their website , but for now, I'll just post the whole thing. THE BUTLER DID IT By Tim Kelly Mesquite Community Theatre *REVIEWED 10/24/09 REVIEWED BY Matt Gunther ASSOCIATE THEATER CRITIC for John Garcia's THE COLUMN _______________________THE BUTLER DID IT______________________ Do the words `Detective Mystery' and ` Butler ' evoke any kind of immediate response...
Beth Groundwater (Free subscription) | 10/26/2009
I love hosting fellow mystery authors on my blog when they're conducting virtual book tours, though I do warn them that my readership is probably not as high as the multi-author blogs. Tomorrow, I am pleased that my good buddy and fellow Sisters in Crime Guppies member Elizabeth (Liz) Zelvin will visit my blog during her virtual tour to promote her latest release, Death Will Help You Leave Him . In...
The Rap Sheet (Free subscription) | 10/23/2009
(Editor’s note: This is the 68th installment of our ongoing Friday blog series highlighting great but forgotten books. Making today’s selection is Russell Atwood, a former managing editor of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and the author of two novels featuring New York City private eye Payton Sherwood: East of A (1999) and Losers Live Longer, the latter of which was released just recently...
Bibliophile Stalker (Free subscription) | 09/23/2009
Every Wednesday, I have an essay or feature article on any topic that catches my fancy! My review copy of The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction: Sixtieth Anniversary Anthology (ed. Gordon van Gelder) just arrived and it's this massive tome of both familiar and unfamiliar stories. When it comes to short fiction, in the past, I encountered them in books rather then magazines. And the reason...
Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine (Free subscription) | 09/15/2009
Criminal Brief: The Mystery Short Story Web Log Project : "If Christie isn’t your thing, I’ve got news of something new at the Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine websites. Both magazines have begun posting podcasts of short stories. The AHMM site is offering Will Ludwigsen’s “In Search Of”, read by actor and playwright...
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