Radio 4 Extra: Charles Paris.

This week on Channel 4 Radio Extra is Simon Brett's Dead Room Farce featuring Bill Nighy as actor Charles Paris, always ready for a drink and a case, such as this one with the death of an audio producer. 

Clues 29.2: Simenon, Stout, Sayers, et al.

Vol 29, no. 2 of Clues: A Journal of Detection has just been published, including the following topics:

• Analyses of two matchups of the detective vs. archcriminal. The first one is Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe and Arnold Zeck; John Littlejohn looks at Stout's reasons for creating a major adversary for Wolfe. The second is the Sara Martin Allegre's examination of the complex relationship between Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus and his nemesis, "Big Ger" Cafferty.

• Detection Club president Simon Brett pays tribute to his late colleague H. R. F. Keating:  "Whenever I think of Harry, I think of the Olympic Diving competition."

• Dorothy L. Sayers's engagement with true crime between the wars by Victoria Stewart.

• Ahmet Mithat Efendi's Esrar-i Cinayat, the first Turkish detective novel (1884), by Zeynep Tufekcioglu

• The role of class in the 1930s Maigret novels of Georges Simenon by Bill Alder.

• The use of sound in the works of Raymond Chandler by Eric Rawson and the role of the automobile in the works of Chandler and James M. Cain by Shelby Smoak.

• Gender bending in Mickey Spillane's Vengeance Is Mine! (1950) by Heather Duerre Humann.

• The Montana-set police procedurals of Robert Sims Reid by Rachel Schaffer.

• Margaret Atwood's techniques that lead the reader to become a detective by Lisa A. Wellinghoff.

Richard Matheson, Simon Brett this week on BBC Radio 4 Extra.

This week on BBC Radio 4 Extra, Richard Matheson's A Stir of Echoes is featured (adapted for a 1999 film with Kevin Bacon as a man who agrees to be hypnotized, which reaps unexpected results) as well as Simon Brett discussing his radio career. Episodes can usually be heard for a week after broadcast.

James Sallis, Simon Brett this week on BBC Radio 7.

This week on BBC Radio 7: James Sallis's Eye of the Cricket with African American private eye Lew Griffin and Simon Brett's Murder Unprompted with alcoholic actor-sleuth Charles Paris. Go here for the schedule or to listen online; episodes can usually be heard for a week after broadcast.

Val McDermid, Lindsey Davis this week on BBC Radio 7.

In the latest in the series Foul Play, which is written and chaired by Simon Brett, authors Lindsey Davis and Val McDermid attempt to solve the mysterious death of a doctor. Go here for the schedule or to listen.

Ask Simon Brett.

The multitalented mystery author, radio producer, and Detection Club president Simon Brett will appear on a future episode of the BBC's I Did It My Way, and you can participate by submitting questions to radio7@bbc.co.uk by 6 pm on February 26th. Clips from Brett's career, including the radio adaptations of his hapless actor-sleuth Charles Paris, are planned to be aired during the program.

I do wish there was a radio adaptation of Brett's Lines of Enquiry, his mystery written entirely in verse. It's hilarious.

About the photo: Simon Brett by Jason David Hall.

More Simon Brett this week on BBC Radio 7.

The first book in Simon Brett's Fethering series, The Body on the Beach, is featured this week on BBC Radio 7. Go here for the schedule or to listen.

Simon Brett's Charles Paris this week on BBC Radio 7.

Simon Brett's actor-sleuth Charles Paris, who has frequent issues with alcohol and young women, appears this week on BBC Radio 7 in So Much Blood, in which Paris performs in a one-man show on Thomas Hood in the Edinburgh Festival and turns up a body as well. Go here for the schedule or to listen.

You also can listen to Brett reading from his Murder in the Museum (and doing all the characters' distinctive voices) here.