Just published: James Sallis companion.

Just out from McFarland and Co. is James Sallis: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction, the latest volume in the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series that I edit. The author is University of East Anglia's Nathan Ashman. Sallis—who might be best known for Drive (adapted into the film with Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan) and his series with PI Lew Griffin—has an intriguing, cross-genre career that encompasses poetry, mystery, and sci-fi, as well as a highly regarded book on author Chester Himes and long experience as a critic (here are some samples). He's even appeared in a film with fellow mystery author Lawrence Block.

Hard-boiled detectives and libraries.

Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart)
meets a librarian from the Hollywood Public
Library (Carole Douglas) in the trailer to
The Big Sleep (1946)

Peter Igelström, librarian at Linköping University's Valla Library, takes an entertaining look at the relationship of hardboiled detectives to libraries and librarians. "One wonders why the library is a potential stigma to a hard-boiled detective," he states.

Matthew Surridge on The Best of Manhunt.

On Splice Today, Matthew Surridge reviews Stark House Press's The Best of Manhunt, an anthology of stories from an important crime fiction magazine that published authors such as Lawrence Block, David Goodis, Evan Hunter, John D. MacDonald, and Donald Westlake.

Happy birthday, Lawrence Block.

MWA Grand Master Lawrence Block, the creator of smart-aleck burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, detective Matt Scudder, hit man Keller, and spy Evan Tanner, turns 69 today. Among his latest releases is Lucky at Cards from Hard Case Crime with a con artist and card shark who becomes enmeshed in murder.

My World War I story, "No Man's Land," appeared in Blood on Their Hands, the MWA anthology edited by Block. I still sorely miss his column on fiction writing in Writer's Digest, which he penned for some 17 years and often featured the entertaining Arnold, his perpetually dim fictional student. Few of his longtime readers forget how he encouraged us to go hang around in bars to pick up authentic dialogue. Block's sage writing advice can be found in his books Spider, Spin Me a Web; Writing the Novel from Plot to Print; and Telling Lies for Fun and Profit.