Around The Web In 80 Seconds*

Being a pick-‘n’-mix selection from the interweb of stuff we were too busy / lazy to plug when we should have, to wit:
  Gerard Brennan over at CSNI mocks up a cover for Adrian McKinty’s forthcoming FIFTY GRAND (right), and does a damn fine job. GB is plugging the fact that Serpent’s Tail will be published FIFTY GRAND this side of the pond, and he’s also got an excellent interview with John McAllister of LINE OF FLIGHT fame going on. All of which is very nice …
  Over at the Sunday Indo, Alison Walsh has a piece on forthcoming Irish novels of interest, among which are the latest from Andrew Nugent, Alex Barclay, Benny Blanco and Sir Kenneth of Bruen …
  A couple of new blogs for your delectation: the inimitable Book Witch has branched out into non-book matters of culture and whatnot with CultureWitch – just don’t dare ask who Roger Whitaker is. Meanwhile, Michael Donnellan embarks on The Great Search for Truth, with the latest post pertaining to ‘Roscommon’s Roswell’. Erm, Michael? Those little green men in Roscommon are actually the indigenous natives …
  Upward and onward, and KT McCaffrey lets us know that he’ll be swanking around Trim Castle Hotel, Co. Meath, on September 20th, spraffing away about crime fiction in the rather elevated company of Laura Wilson. Nice. KT? Tell Laura we love her. For all in the info on the day, jump on over to KT’s interweb malarkey …
  Finally, we haven’t mentioned John McFetridge on Crime Always Pays for, oh, it must be minutes now. John, for those of you recently arriving, will play Stadler to my Waldorf as we partake in a road-trip from Toronto to Baltimore, via NY, Vermont, Boston and Philly, in the week leading up to the Baltimore Bouchercon. I’ll be posting up an itinerary sometime this week, but in the meantime I’m wondering if the guy ever gets fed up being compared to Elmore Leonard. To wit:

“It’s natural to compare McFetridge to Elmore Leonard. He has a similar deadpan humour and a knack for evoking complex, three-dimensional lives with just a few lines of dialogue. It would be equally apt to compare his examination of urban life with that of the television series, The Wire, in the way the cops and criminals operate on parallel tracks, crime and big business are synonymous, and the portrait of a city, bit by bit, comes together in all its squalid, teeming glory.” – Barbara Fister, Reviewing the Evidence
“This top-notch Canadian novel does noir with a wry cynicism that will remind you of Elmore Leonard … The sharp and funny dialogue on both sides is sometimes so terse it’s hard to follow – but well worth it.” – Jane Dickinson, Rocky Mountain News

  John? Just say the word and I can have a cease-and-desist out on the Elmore Leonard references in three minutes flat …

* Providing you don’t actually click on any of the links