Add CrimeSpot to your site with CrimeSpotExpress Recent Posts: James Crumley Dies I WANT Free Psycho Billy! Well, This Sucks - Updated Rita Mae Brown Last Call to Do Some Good Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Carnival of Crime Black Mystery Month Bad News from Weatherford Complete Archives: 01/01/2006 - 02/01/2006 02/01/2006 - 03/01/2006 03/01/2006 - 04/01/2006 04/01/2006 - 05/01/2006 05/01/2006 - 06/01/2006 06/01/2006 - 07/01/2006 07/01/2006 - 08/01/2006 08/01/2006 - 09/01/2006 09/01/2006 - 10/01/2006 10/01/2006 - 11/01/2006 11/01/2006 - 12/01/2006 12/01/2006 - 01/01/2007 02/01/2007 - 03/01/2007 03/01/2007 - 04/01/2007 04/01/2007 - 05/01/2007 06/01/2007 - 07/01/2007 07/01/2007 - 08/01/2007 08/01/2007 - 09/01/2007 09/01/2007 - 10/01/2007 10/01/2007 - 11/01/2007 11/01/2007 - 12/01/2007 12/01/2007 - 01/01/2008 01/01/2008 - 02/01/2008 02/01/2008 - 03/01/2008 03/01/2008 - 04/01/2008 04/01/2008 - 05/01/2008 05/01/2008 - 06/01/2008 07/01/2008 - 08/01/2008 09/01/2008 - 10/01/2008 James Crumley Dies Thursday, September 18, 2008   The wheel of life turns again. Soon after the deaths of Gregory McDonald and David Foster Wallace, James Crumley has passed away at age 68. I met him briefly at ConMisterio in Austin in 2006. He seemed to be in poor health at the time, moving around rather slowly. He also seemed to think the whole thing was faintly ridiculous. I spoke with him a few moments but was too starstruck to talk long. My loss. I know that The Last Good Kiss is widely considered his masterpiece, but I always liked The Wrong Case, in which fuckup private eye Milo Milodragovich investigates the death of the man who was his surrogate father, and in the process ruminates on the death of his real father many years before. Crumley's last published novel, The Right Madness, left me cold, but I always looked forward to his next book, one I guess won't be coming. At director Ernst Lubitsch's funeral, Billy Wilder is said to have remarked, "No more Lubitsch," to which William Wyler replied, "Worse than that - no more Lubitsch pictures." No more Crumley books. No more Crumley. (Sarah Weinman has a big roundup here.) posted by Graham Powell at 4:26 PM     I WANT Saturday, July 12, 2008   Plus: The end of the Stories, The Lineup has landed, Crimedogs on parade. I got an email earlier today from Hard Case Crime's mailing list, touting a new series of books set to debut next year - and I'm already salivating. The series is called The Adventures of Gabriel Hunt, and it's an attempt to do for pulp what Hard Case did for hardboiled crime fiction. Each book will be credited to "Gabriel Hunt" and will be written both by Hard Case veterans and other writers, both new and established. To check out a cover image, go to http://www.huntforadventure.com/. A house-name pulp series? Featuring some of my favorite authors? Done up by the inimitable Hard Case crew? Count me in! Hardluck Stories calls it a day. Speaking of pulp, publisher Dave Zeltserman has closed up shop at his excellent webzine, Hardluck Stories. And he's going out with a bang - the Pulp issue, featuring well-know pulpophiles such as Bill Crider ("Crossroads") and James Reasoner ("The Red Reef"), and many others, all illustrated by Jean-Pierre Jacquet. Dave talks about the Hardluck experience here. Goodbye, Hardluck, it's been fun. The Lineup debuts. Spearheaded by editor Gerald So, the busiest man in crime, a new book of crime-fiction poetry, The Lineup, is now available. Gerald's been blogging about the process of putting everything together for some time now, and he has more backstory over at The Rap Sheet. The best news: The Lineup will be a series. Not TV, unfortunately, but if you're of a lyrical bent, check the submission guidelines. You can buy The Lineup here. Crimedogs come to town. If you're in the Dallas/Fort Worth area tomorrow, be sure to catch Anthony Neil Smith and Victor Gischler tomorrow at the Barnes and Noble on Northwest Highway (across from Northpark Mall) tomorrow at 2pm. I'll be there, armed with a camera, and I promise many EXCLUSIVE photos, some hopefully embarrassing or even incriminating. Watch this space! posted by Graham Powell at 5:54 PM     Free Psycho Billy! Monday, May 12, 2008   Plus: LaSalle Lives On! Two bits of Crimedog-related news to pass on today. First, it's Psychobilly Monday, the day you all agreed to rush down to Barnes & Noble and buy a copy of Neil Smith's Yellow Medicine. You say you didn't agree to this? I've got your signature right here on this for. No? Sure looks like it to me. So here's your chance to help Neil stick it to the Man. The proceeds should go a long way towards paying off all those golf balls he's lost in water hazards across America. In Other News: The late, great Emerson LaSalle has returned to blogging - a neat trick since he died some time ago. But apparently he was never quite comfortable with the latest technology, preferring to write out his blog posts longhand so his assistants could transcribe them. They're now doing their best to get them up there on his blog. Even better, YOU have the chance to help pick the LaSalle quote for a line of trading cards featuring sci-fi writers. Leave your favorite line from LaSalle in the comments. Fabulous no-prize prizes for all who enter! Incidentally, I understand a longstanding rumor has finally been debunked. Despite their long-running feud, there is no truth to the rumor that LaSalle was in Ketchum, Idaho, on the night of Hemingway's "suicide". posted by Graham Powell at 9:37 AM     Well, This Sucks - Updated Tuesday, April 22, 2008   So romance author Deborah MacGillivray got all wound up about a mediocre review on Amazon.com, to the point she's encouraging her fans to mark the review as "abusive", ensuring its removal. Worse, she has apparently dug up some personal information about "Reba", the reviewer. What possible use could she make of this information? You're mystery readers, use your imaginations. Worst of all, however, was the response when Tess Gerritsen posted a less-than-serious blog entry about the whole mess (there are several follow-up posts, visit her home page to read them all). The comments generally ran to the negative, to the extent that Tess decided to shutter her blog (temporarily, we hope). Just great. Tess won't miss the Internet - she has a career and a life. These other people? Getting in Internet pissing matches is what they do. I think I'll miss Tess's opinion more than theirs. Unfortunately, she's going away and they aren't. Update: First, I forgot to mention where I heard about this. Second, J.D. Rhoades has a nice post on this subject at Murderati. Finally, I believe I have found the reason for this behavior (not-safe-for-work language). posted by Graham Powell at 10:29 AM     Rita Mae Brown Thursday, March 20, 2008   Here's an interesting article on Rita Mae Brown from Time. While her fiction is not considered cutting edge - cat mysteries get a lot of grief in some quarters - she's apparently fearless in real life. She's never felt a need to hide her homosexuality, and in fact her first book, Ruby Fruit Jungle, was a comic coming-of-age story about a young lesbian. It sold a million copies. She was also kicked out of NOW by Betty Freidan personally, and later has a high-profile relationship with Martina Navratilova. Now she's Master of the Hounds for a foxhunting club in Virginia. No word on what Sneaky Pie thinks of that. posted by Graham Powell at 10:47 AM     Last Call to Do Some Good Monday, March 03, 2008   See that widget over there to the left, showing how much CrimeSpot readers have donated to the United Way? If you were planning on dropping some spare cash, you'd better get to it soon, as it's going away after this weekend. Some will be disappointed that they won't constantly be reminded how cool they are for contributing; others will be relieved that they won't be faced daily with evidence of their own skinflintedness. Brown's Requiem. Dick Adler has an excellent article on Fredric Brown in the Chicago tribune. Brown's been one of my favorite writers for years, both for his mystery and science-fiction stories. In fact, I titled my Carnival of the Criminal Minds post Carnival of Crime, the title of Brown's "best of" anthology. Dick asks why Brown never achieved the status of Dashiell Hammett or Jim Thompson, and I think he left out one of the reasons: Brown had a whimsical sense of humor that didn't fit into the hard-boiled world that much of his work would otherwise have been categorized as. I mean you can only set so many murder mysteries at circuses before people begin to wonder if you're serious. posted by Graham Powell at 8:05 AM     Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Friday, February 22, 2008   Plots With Guns has returned from the dead! There's only two possible outcomes here: A) "The savior of noir has returned!", or B) "BRRRAAAAAAIIIIIIIIINNNNSSSSSSSS..." posted by Graham Powell at 6:53 PM