Smatterings

Been blogging rather crazily at Galleycat (end-of-month quotas, don’t you know) and other projects have popped up in the meantime so it’ll probably be a light week once again. Still, here’s some stories to check out in the meantime:

The big story of the week is the copyright infringement trial by the HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL authors against Dan Brown, which kicked off yesterday.

Marcia Davis remembers Octavia Butler, the noted sci-fi author who died over the weekend at the age of 58. The memorial service will be held this Thursday at Seattle’s Science Fiction Museum.

The LA Times’ Merle Rubin practically sniffs at Julia Kristeva’s detective novel MURDER IN BYZANTIUM, which doesn’t seem altogether fair.

Yvonne Zipp at the Christian Science Monitor looks at new mysteries by Kjell Eriksson, Rebecca Pawel, Paul Adam and the aforementioned Kristeva.

Patrick Anderson manages to wander around in this review of T Jefferson Parker’s THE FALLEN but finally proclaims the author as belonging to “first rank of American crime novelists.”

USA Today’s Carol Memmott rounds up the latest by Michele Martinez, Lynda La Plante, Jefferson Bass and Peter Blauner, whose SLIPPING INTO DARKNESS she dubs the “crime novel of the year.”

Curt Scheier at Bloomberg news looks at recent releases by Sara Gran, Luis Alfredo Garcia-Roza and M.C. Beaton.

The Miami Herald’s Connie Ogle meets Martha Grimes, currently touring around for her newest Richard Jury novel.

Dominick Dunne talks to the Hartford Courant about his career, James Frey, and of course, himself.

The Contra Costa Times catches up with television personality and cancer survivor Linda Ellerbee, who’s working on her first novel now. 

J.B. MacKinnon won the Charles Taylor Prize, given to the best non-fiction book published in Canada.

And finally, can’t someone shut him up? Please?