Monday morning roundup

So….first day of unemployment. Well, not exactly, because here it is some kind of bank holiday that no one really knows why it exists, except for the real reason, of course–an obligatory day off. So my slackerdom really begins in earnest tomorrow, but what the hell. I’m up early anyway, so….links:

Lisa Scottoline drew on a little-known facet of history for her newest novel, KILLER SMILE. She talks to the New York Times about how Italian-Americans were interned in camps in the US during World War II, and how that inspired the writing of her novel.

Patrick Anderson looks at a new ⁹⁄₁₁-centered thriller by Chuck Logan, and informs us that if we’re into Robert Crais and John Sandford (a former colleague of Logan’s at the St. Paul Pioneer Press) we might dig this book.

Who knew there were thrillers written in India? Well, it’s a reasonable assumption, I suppose, I just never thought about it. But one of them, by Ravi Shankar Etteth, gets a rather mixed reaction from the India Business-Standard.

Walter Mosley is interviewed by the St. Louis Dispatch, and reveals his next projects for 2005: another Easy Rawlins novel set in the late 1960s (what I’m calling “Easy Among the Hippies”) and…a sci-fi novel for teens? Aha, another crime writer on the children’s lit bandwagon….

Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have combined to write a bunch of bestselling thrillers (including their latest, BRIMSTONE) but they haven’t actually seen each other in person in five years. Why? Because Preston lived out of the country and Child refuses to fly. They talk to the San Jose Mercury News about how they make this peculiar arrangement work.

Ed McBain has yet another 87th Precinct book out–how he does it after 50+ years is an amazement–and it garners a nice review from the Boston Globe.

More fallout from the recent NEA report can be found at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (where a rather cranky Ace Atkins is interviewed), and the East Valley Tribune.

So WHSmith finally sold Hodder Headline–to Hatchette Livre for a nice sum of 223 million pounds. So, uh, does this mean HH and Orion are now owned by the same company? Or am I totally mistaken? Yay conglomerization!

The Brits discover Pamela Anderson, novelist. I saw the book in stores yesterday, “racy” cover and all. The first chapter features ho-hum teen lesbian sex and probably goes downhill from there if I’d bothered reading past. Maybe if, I dunno, Barbi Benton wrote a novel I’d be more inclined to read it, but I rather doubt it.

When publishers attack: Random House Canada is being sued by Trait D’Union, a French-Canadian publisher, for publishing a paperback edition of a book about everybody’s favorite child murdering accomplice, Karla Homolka. Seems the French publisher had world rights to the book and are not amused about this supposed breach. Oh yeah, and Karla gets out next summer. Glory be…

Rosemary Goring praises W. Somerset Maugham to the heavens for the Glasgow Herald, calling him a “criminally overlooked writer.” Huh, really? Maybe in the UK, I suppose….

And finally, meet Harry Stephen Keeler, the King of the Convoluted Mystery Plots. To say the least. NPR recently featured the mid-20th century writer and his unbelievably outlandish novels which broke all the rules…and then some.