Sunday Smatterings, Daylight Savings Time Edition

Much as I love the extra hour of daylight, losing the extra hour of sleep kind of blows. But enough kvetching, on to the links:

Marilyn Stasio has her say on new crime fiction by Valerie Laken, Sean Doolittle, Jedediah Berry and Jacqueline Winspear.

Oline Cogdill reviews the new Randy Wayne White novel for the Sun-Sentinel and SJ Rozan's SHANGHAI MOON on the wires. 

The Observer's Tobias Jones goes on holiday with the current crop of international crime fiction.

Akira Higashiyama has won the Haruhiko Oyabu Award for detective fiction in Japan.

Robert Rotenberg and his debut novel OLD CITY HALL is all over Canadian media, what with a review in the Toronto Star, Mark Medley's profile in the National Post and Brian Bethune's take in Maclean's. 

Adam Woog rounds up new crime fiction by Olen Steinhauer, Laura Lippman, Cara Black, Thomas Perry, S.J. Rozan and Anne Argula. Woog also reviews Earl Emerson's new novel CAPE DISAPPOINTMENT.

Chuck Leddy gives Lippman's LIFE SENTENCES a great review in the Boston Globe, but holy spoilers, Batman - you have been warned. More on the book in the Madison County Herald.

Also in the Globe is a quick Q&A with Blake Bailey, whose biography of John Cheever is, well, everywhere.

Earl Emerson brings back his PI Thomas Black after a ten-year hiatus and tells the Seattle Post-Intelligencer why he did so.

Gerry Schmitt, aka Laura Childs, informs the Minnesota Star-Tribune of the genesis for her cozy-mystery writing career.

Olen Steinhauer's THE TOURIST got two raves over the week - one from Janet Maslin (who probably hasn't read his other books), the other from Paula Woods (who definitely has.)

Ian Rankin has a new novel, A COOL HEAD, that's part of the Quick Reads campaign in the UK. He tells The Press and Journal all about it.

The Wall Street Journal has a short profile of Barry Eisler, venturing into standalone thriller territory with FAULT LINE.

Jack Batten's Whodunit column in the Toronto Star reviews recent books by Ruth Rendell and Val McDermid.

The Livingston Daily writes up Bryan Gruley and his excellent debut mystery STARVATION LAKE. 

Marshall Browne's financial thrillers are written up by the Sydney Morning Herald's Jason Steger.

Ron Charles wonders where today's radicals are when they are reading Stephenie Meyer vampire novels instead.

Mark Athitakis talks with Jesse Ball, author of wonderfully unclassifiable novels like THE WAY THROUGH DOORS.

Guy Gavriel Kay looks at the often complicated, not quite symbiotic relationship between authors and fans.

Not too many people can lump in Jade Goody, Philip Roth and David Foster Wallace in the same essay, but Gordon Burn is not most people.

Finally, summing up Julie Myerson-gate is going to take more time than I have, but in a nutshell: she wrote a novel called THE LOST CHILD that mirrored her experience of kicking her drug-addicted teenage son out of the house. He got pissed the book was published and told the press in great detail. Now the commentaries and criticisms begin, and Myerson defends her actions. This won't be over by a longshot. 

Comments

[Ali]

Thanks great updates -

After a morning reading the Sunday business sections, worrying how the stock markets will fare come Monday when US announced >8% unemployment late Friday, and my drinking a couple of glasses of 1998 Western Cape and chewing on lamb chops, I considered the Myserson 'spliff-gate' story.

The Myerson saga is a pain in the arse in the UK. It's all over the media, TV, radio, Newspapers, Internet, facebook, toilet wall grafitti as well as written on the rolling papers and roaches of dope-dicks...

While the economy is destroying lives and the world we live in; instead we have the UK media using the terminal case of Jade Goody and the Myerson Spliff-Gate to act as a distraction.

Mrs Mysercon is whining and admits that she took "8 Tokes" herself as a student, but didn't do a Bill Clinton; she admits to inhaling, shucks what a storm in a spliff.

Interestingly her publishers have brought the release of her book forward - no doubt the pungent aroma of skunk in the media can only but help her book sales.

Is this the way the world ends?

I always thought it would be Triffids, Aliens, Asteroid Impact, Volcano eruption, A virus, an attack of Jason Donovan Clones or Death of Crops - not a load of Rich Bankers, and corrupt dicks like Maddoff and their ilk bolloxing up the world economy - making working stiffs like us head toward the soup kitchen, while Murdoch and the rest of the 7 main global media players fill our reality with poor Jade Goodies misfortune and the stale smell of Mrs Myserson's sons dope den?

Surreal, I'm gonna buy another stack of books next week

I'd rather read what you guys write [novels and blogs] than some of the cack spewed out by the media - in their so-called reality

Ali

PS - Sorry if this sounds like a rant, it's just that the world is really a nutty place

PS Loved the link to Blogs / Authors - For the record GEORGE RR MARTIN's 'Sandkings' is on of the greatest SF novellas I have ever read

[Rich]

The media destroyed poor Jade (hardly Himmler, was she?); they blew a personality clash (we've all suffered at work and school, without being trapped 24 hours a day with the situation) into obscene proportions, and vilified her as a racist demon --'The patron saint of vulgarity' and 'Beauty and the three beasts' were comments I heard on Sky. It was a bit of bitching by young girls couped up together, nothing more, and Shipla Shetty more than played her part (though her goading was somewhat more sophisticated). The only real bullying was by the media. I wonder how much stress (even by-proxy: alcohol, binge-eating) played in her demise. I don't watch reality TV, and didn't particularly like her, but I felt sorry for her at the time, and even more so now. Now they're crowding around hospitals trying to take photos of her dying, it is simply vile.

[rui]

interesting article from myerson - writing about her son and her new book - at www.wbqonline.com. great site for book lovers, actually.