Canada's new chess detective.

Canada's Showcase TV is airing a new series, Endgame, which features an agoraphobic chessmaster as sleuth. Go here to see the trailer; here to read a review; here for the Endgame blog. (Hat tip to Alexandra Kosteniuk's Chessblog)

Margot Kinberg discusses the similarity of the game of chess and the activities of fictional investigators, and the Chess Circle forum mentions appearances of chess in works such as Rex Stout's Gambit (1952), Alan Sharp's Night Moves (1975), and Katherine Neville's The Eight (1988); another example is William Faulkner's short story "Knight's Gambit" in the collection of the same name (1949).

Happy birthday, Katherine Neville.

Katherine Neville, best known as author of the multifaceted thriller The Eight (1989), was born today in St. Louis in 1945. The Fire, her follow up to The Eight, was published in 2008. Other works include A Calculated Risk (1992) and The Magic Circle (1998).