A Bit of Dis and a Bit of Dat (July Edition)

Lawrence Block has a new eBook with Open Road and it is titled Afterthoughts; you can get it for the Kindle platform for .99 cents right now (the book will be available for every other platform on August 2nd). Mr Block has over 40 eBook titles with Open Road, but Afterthoughts is different: it "is the book friends have been urging me to write for years. (...) All my crime novels are here, from Grifter's Game and The Girl with the Long Green Heart all the way to Random Walk. Then there are the dozens of early books I wrote under pen names. For years I wanted to disown them, but time has brough acceptance, and in Afterthoughts you'll find essays and reminiscences of the days I spent as Lesley Evans and Anne Campbell Clarke, as Sheldon Lord and Andrew Shaw, as Chip Harrison and Paul Kavanagh and Lee Duncan."

The Criterion Collection's new releases in Blu-Ray DVD include Akira Kurosawa's nerve-wracking thriller High and Low (1963). While you're there, take a look at their Noir and Neonoir titles. You'll remember (or discover) Godard's Alphaville and Breathless, Clouzot's Diabolique, Yates's The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Mamet's Homicide and so many other classics from a long list of French directors like Louis Malle, Jean-Pierre Melville, Jules Dassin, Francois Truffaut et Jacques Becker, but also Neil Jordan, Robert Aldrich, etc. (more than 50 movies in total). This is definitely my favourite movie collection; maybe one day I'll own them all!

Peter Spiegelman (winner of the Shamus Award for Best First P.I. Novel for Black Maps) has just published his fourth novel with Alfred A. Knopf, a stand-alone titled Thick as Thieves. Here's a little promo video about it. 
The book is blurbed by none others than Lee Child, Daniel Woodrell, Reed Farrell Coleman, Edna Buchanan, Don Winslow and Jeffery Deaver. If you like intense crime novels with great characters, sharp dialogues and many good twists, Peter Spiegelman is your man.

Very soon, I will be posting my review of Megan Abbott's new book The End of Everything along with an interview I did with her when she was in the editing process of that book. I can tell you right now that The End of Everything is a beautiful novel where Megan Abbott transports the reader in the mind of a 13-year old girl, Lizzie Hood, who's best friend disappears. Lizzie's teenage world suddenly shifts towards (or into) the world of adults, a whole new and scary reality in her life. It is a story about the fragility of everything that we take for granted in and around us, especially when we are kids. It is about the shift into adulthood; an abrupt and terrifying shift for some.
I invite you to read Megan's essay about the world that inspired her for the novel (and how the mind can sometimes play tricks on you).

And speaking of inspiration, here's Laura Lippman's take on an old case she covered while working as a journalist in Baltimore. Her new book, The Most Dangerous Thing, will be published in August by Harper Collins. It is my next read and I will review it afterwards. (update: the blog can now be found on her website which has been updated recently and now looks great).

Early this month, on July 1st, the excellent crime writer Craig McDonald wrote a very interesting essay on his blog, about Ernest Hemingway's death 50 years ago. Craig McDonald also recently announced two more forthcoming books; in addition to one we already knew about, his next (stand-alone) novel El Gavilan due out in the fall, McDonald also revealed the title for the next Hector Lassiter book Never Send 'Em to the River and for a new book of interviews from Tyrus Books that will be titled 'Til Somebody Dies (some of the authors interviewed are Megan Abbott, Michael Connelly and Laura Lippman). Details about pub dates should be announced soon. I just can't wait!

Don't forget my giveaway for an advance reader's copy of Louise Penny's new book A Trick of the Light. Inspector Gamache is back.

Dat's it for now!
JF
July 29, 2011