B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 208

Quote of the Day

FFB: The Last Vanity and All the FFB LInks

I'm hosting Friday's "Forgotten" Books for Patti Abbott today, and you can scroll down to the bottom of this posting for all the links to other book blogs with their weekly offerings. But first, a look at The Last Vanity by Hartley Howard.



Leopold Horace Ognall (1908-1979) was a prolific author with close to 90 novels under his two pseudonyms, Hartley Howard and Harry Carmichael. Thus it is rather surprising that it's so difficult to find anything about the author or his books.



He was born...

Mystery Melange

Book sculpture by Abadova

Sisters in Crime Australia announced the shortlist for its 14th Davitt Awards for the best crime books by Australian women. Categories include Best Adult Novel, Best YA Novel, Best Children's Novel, Best True Crime Book, and Best Debut Book. For all the nominees, check out the SinC-Aussie website.



After a three-year hiatus, SleuthFest will return to South Florida in 2015, February 26 ��� March 1 with James Patterson serving as the Keynote Speaker. Other special gu...

What Makes a Good Mystery Author?

That was the question asked by the agent behind the Mysterious Matters blog after attending one Malice Domestic Conference and being asked—probably for the thousandth time—how to get published, deciding that a better question was how to improve your writing. Toward that end, seven tips were offered up, to wit: 1. A good mystery writer thinks first and foremost about the reader's experience. 2. A good mystery writer balances character and plot. 3. A good mystery writer thinks about the future.

Keep Watching (Reading?) the Skies

Summer is a great time for star-gazing, which got me to wondering about ties between crime fiction and astronomy. After a search, I've come to the conclusion those ties aren't very strong, for the most part. Fortunately, Conan Doyle led the way early on. In an article by Bradley E. Schaefer, Schaefer points out that Dr. Watson often points out some fact, such as the phase of the moon or the time of sunrise, which would allow the range of possible dates to be narrowed down (as in the Adventure

The Final Frontier

In honor of my astronomer hubster's recent birthday, coupled with the also-recent 45th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, I'm posting an encore of a blog from last year about space-themed mysteries. The above is a fair pictorial representation of the space shuttle launch at night I witnessed in 2010, one of the last shuttle launches (with photo credit thanks to James N. Brown). Truly a sight to behold. It got me wondering about mystery and crime fiction novels which feature NASA or

Trivial Pursuit

Not too long ago, Hachette Books offered up this little trivia quiz in honor of summer books and reading. See if you can match these seasonal titles with the correct author: 1. Sand Sharks 2. Sabotage at Sea 3. In the Heat of the Summer 4. Summer of the Dragon 5. 4th of July a) Elizabeth Peters b) James Patterson c) Franklin W Dixon d) John Katzenbach e) Margaret Maron ANSWERS: Sand Sharks – (e) Margaret Maron Sabotage at Sea – (c) Franklin W. Dixon Heat of the Summer – (d) John Katzenbach

I Scream, You Scream

Not too long ago, The Guardian reported on the campaign begun by a New Jersey librarian to get Ben Jerrys to launch a literary-themed ice cream flavor. The leading candidates included Sh-sh-sh-sherbet, Malt Whitman and the Gooey Decimal System. In that same spirited and noble vein (and the fact it's summer and hot), I wondered what would happen if crime fiction fans decided to come up with some counterparts of their own? Perhaps they might look like the following: Butter Choc Holmes: Vanilla

The Brain Game

I came across an interesting article in Psychology Today. Titled "The Genius of Detective Fiction," author Christopher Badcock makes the case that there's "no doubt that detective fiction—both in its vast quantity and intrinsic quality—is the distinctive literary genre of modern, industrial societies." He also looks at the almost Asperger-like personality of Sherlock Holmes (photographic memory, concentration, few social skills) as an example of mechanistic cognition, whereas Miss Marple's

Media Murder for Monday

MOVIES



Bradley Cooper and Todd Phillips are producing A Thousand Pounds of Dynamite for Warner Brothers, a project based on the nonfiction article by Adam Higginbotham about a 1980 extortion plot in a Nevada casino involving a gigantic bomb and a ransom note.



Jim Sturgess, Abbie Cornish, Ed Harris and Andy Garcia are in negotiations to join Gerard Butler in Geostorm, the sci-fi/adventure thriller about two estranged brothers who have to save the world from a man-made storm of epic proporti...