My Blog

Point of Impact

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Variety reports that Mark Wahlberg will in SHOOTER, the movie version of Stephen Hunter’s POINT OF IMPACT, the first in his popular, long-running series of novels about a master sniper named Swagger (and several prequels about Swagger’s father). Antoine Fugua will direct with a script by Jonathan Lemkin. The film has been kicking around Hollywood for a while now. It was originally developed as a vehicle for Keanu Reeves and, before that, Robert Redford.

I’ve read most of Hunter’s books, and while POINT OF IMPACT is one of his best, I think my favorite novel of his is DIRTY WHITE BOYS.

iBooks Lightbulb Burns Out

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Logo_on
I’ve heard from several authors with deals at iBooks that the publishing company, which was run by the late Byron Preiss, has declared bankruptcy and is folding. This puts many upcoming releases in doubt and quite a few authors I know are very worried about the status of the rights to their unpublished books (not to mention if they will ever see the royalties on their past titles for the company). It’s sad news all around.

At Least It Wasn’t a One-Armed Man

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A $1 million Ferrari was totalled in a race on PCH last night.  The owner of the car, a Swedish millionaire, fled the scene and was found wandering in a canyon. He claimed he wasn’t driving the car…but that someone he knew only as "Dietrich" was behind the wheel.

One witness told deputies that the Ferrari appeared
to be racing with a Mercedes-Benz SLR northbound along the coastal
highway when the accident occurred about 6 a.m. west of Decker Road.

"It took out the pole, and part of the car went another 600 feet,"
Sheriff’s Sgt. Philip Brooks said. "There were 1,200 feet of debris out
there."

Eriksson told authorities that "Dietrich" ran up a hill
toward the canyon road and disappeared. Brooks said detectives are far
from convinced they have the whole story.

Eriksson "had a .09
blood-alcohol level, but if he’s a passenger, that’s OK," Brooks said.
"But he had a bloody lip, and only the air bag on the driver’s side had
blood on it. The passenger-side air bag did not. My Scooby-Doo
detectives are looking closely into that.

Better Late than Never

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Lots of old pilots are being dusted off and redeveloped this season. The latest is  THE WEDDING ALBUM, which Fox passed on five years ago… and is now greenlighting as a pilot again. Variety reports that VP Craig Erwich has always loved the script, about a NY wedding photographer and his assistant who attempt to find romance in their own
lives while shooting the weddings of others, and was just waiting for the right time to resurrect it. If it was about a crime scene photographer, or one of them talked to God, it could have been shopped to CBS years ago.

Another Day, Another BADGE Review

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If you’re a regular visitor here, then you’re familiar with Chadwick H. Saxelid, a frequent commenter on my posts and a man whose unusual name I have borrowed (with his permission, of course) for a murder victim in DIAGNOSIS MURDER: THE DOUBLE LIFE (coming in November 2006). Today, he reviews THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE on his blog. He says, in part:

Lee Goldberg’s The
Man With the Iron-On Badge is a fun little page turner that, on more than one occasion,
reminded me of Parnell Hall’s Stanley Hastings series.  Like Stanley Hastings,
what Harvey Mapes thinks he knows about private detective work comes entirely
from television shows and crime novels.  (Goldberg’s novel references so many
different television shows and/or books that it almost qualifies as an exercise
in metafiction.)  Unlike
Stanley, when Harvey gets in over his head he finds an inner reserve of strength
and character that he never even knew existed within him.  (Stanley usually
makes an ass out of himself, or he just gets lucky.)

But Mapes amateurish fumbling and on-the-case training are just sly
misdirections on Goldberg’s part.  While the reader is distracted by Mapes’s
growth from junk food guzzling slacker to junk food guzzling detective, all the
clues are artfully dropped.  Another trick is how The
Man With the Iron-On Badge manages to spoof private detective story cliches
while letting Mapes discover that the reality of amateur detecting isn’t all
that different from what is on TV or in books, after all.

Thanks, Chadwick. Now I’m sorry I killed you.

God Is A Bullet…and a Movie

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I found this nugget in Variety today…Nick Cassavetes is writing and directing an adaptation of Boston Teran’s novel GOD IS A BULLET.  You may recall that Boston Teran is a pseudonym … reportedly for a well-known mystery author who wanted to try a different voice.  While GOD IS A BULLET generated some heat, the follow-up book didn’t.

BADGE is So Good

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Gerald So, an editor at the Thrilling Detective website, recommended THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE on his blog yesterday. He wrote, in part:

Goldberg’s clever premise allows him to present a refreshingly un-macho hero to whom any fan of the P.I. mystique can relate. Facing the hard realities behind private eye genre cliches, Harvey believably discovers truths about the case and about himself.

Gerald is big fan of Robert Parker’s Spenser, and runs the Spenser discussion group, so I was especially pleased that he enjoyed the book. I was also thrilled to discover that Harvey Mapes got his own listing in Thrilling Detective’s list of literary PIs.

From now on, it’s Diet Coke, No Ice.

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A 12-year-old compared bacteria levels in ice samples from five
restaurants in South Florida with toilet water samples from the same
restaurants.
The toilet water was cleaner. From ABC News:

Jasmine Roberts never expected her award-winning middle school science
project to get so much attention. But the project produced some
disturbing results: 70 percent of the time, ice from fast food
restaurants was dirtier than toilet water.

Coincidence…or an in-joke?

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Someone wrote to me today:

Last night on GREY’S ANATOMY, Dr. McDreamy’s former best friend, the plastic surgeon who had an affair with McDreamy’s wife, showed up. Guess what his name  is? Dr. Mark Sloan.

I wonder if he solves crimes, too, and has a 40 year old son who still hasn’t left home. I haven’t seen the episode yet — it’s waiting on my Tivo.

Levine Levity

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Outlook
My friend Paul Levine talks about his new book DEEP BLUE ALIBI for Penn State Live. You can get a feel for the lively banter in his SOLOMAN AND LORD books just by reading the interview.

Newswire: You write legal thrillers, but your lawyer-protagonists, Steve
Solomon and Victoria Lord, don’t spend that much time in court. Why is
that?

Levine: Where would you rather be, in a stuffy courtroom, or
on a beach in Key West?

* * * *

Newswire: One reviewer called your books: "Carl Hiaasen meets John
Grisham in the court of last retort." Fair assessment?

Levine:
Maybe. I bring humor to the legal system because I see so much that’s absolutely
nutty there.

Newswire: In "The Deep Blue Alibi," there’s a chapter
at a Florida nudist resort. Is it fair to ask how you researched the
scene?

Levine: Like Jackie Chan, I do my own stunts.

* * * *

Newswire: What advice would you give any young grads who want to break
into Hollywood?

Levine: Marry a blood relative of Jerry
Bruckheimer.

Newswire: Lacking that, when aspiring authors or
screenwriters sit down at the computer, what should they be
writing?

Levine: Ransom notes, maybe…