My Weblog: Carnival Of The Criminal Minds, No. 4

Welcome to the fourth stop on the Carnival of the Criminal Minds blog, a traveling show for readers with a taste for wicked and mysterious entertainment. I'm your host, Mary Saums, here at the Femmes Fatales site where we talk about books and the writing life.

One of our Femmes recently attended Forensic University, the brainchild of Sisters In Crime, where she got hands-on experience with an Uzi. Click the link at the right, Forensic University Scores a Bullseye, for a report and a photo of Donna Andrews as you've never seen her before.

Our Criminal Carnival world tour began in Australia, moved on to London, then crossed the Atlantic to Ohio where we last visited the lovely Julia Buckley. She has a nice write-up today on one of her mystery heroes, Mary Stewart. I'm a little farther south in Nashville, Tennessee, home of all things twangy. In area news, one of our Southeastern region Mystery Writers of America members, Richard Helms, has a new hardboiled/noir webzine called The Back Alley with some terrific stories including one by Shamus nominee Jack Bludis. Richard, a Shamus nominee himself, also has a new short story at The Thrilling Detective.

I loved a recent article in the New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell called Dangerous Minds. He tells how a local psychiatrist, consulted by the NYPD in the 60's, became the father of criminal profiling, along with the fascinating work of profilers on the BTK killer case.

CSI lovers and writers looking for forensics help, check out Booked.TV. Crime experts give short talks by podcasts and 'webisodes' on all sorts of investigative work. Some of the topics included are Cold Case DNA, Disarming a Bomb, and, my favorite, Cycle of Insects on a Corpse. Booked.TV also has podcasts by several mystery authors.

Links to just about everything associated with investigation and crime fiction can be found over at In Reference To Murder. General topic links, like Crime Scene Investigation, Crimes by Topic, Mysteries by Topic, and Publishers take you to pages with many websites and articles to choose from. The November 15th blog has Men's Journal's recent list of what it considers the fifteen top thrillers of all time.

Several weeks ago, when J. Kingston Pierce hosted the second Carnival blog at The Rap Sheet, I got caught in up in the One Book Project. He asked over 100 crime novelists which one mystery they considered “most unjustly overlooked, criminally forgotten, or underappreciated over the years.” Each author wrote quite persuasive defenses of their favorite, thus sending me on elaborate and invigorating book hunts. Great fun.

Fans of noir books and movies will revel in the podcast candy of Out Of The Past: Investigating Film Noir and its companion Behind The Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed, both from Clute and Edwards at Noircast. Noir readers can also find great reviews at International Noir Fiction. And, if you're in the mood to hang out on the dark side with like-minded readers and writers, NoirCon looks like a good bet. This convention will be in Philadephia, April 3rd-6th, 2008. I like their idea for 20-minute noir slots on classic authors like Dorothy B. Hughes, Jim Thompson and Charles Willeford. Best of all, there will be an interview with my very favorite writer, Ken Bruen.

Let's catch the flip and go over to the Cozy Library. Leave your shoes, covered with all that unspeakable gunk from the mean streets, outside. There's a large bathroom just as you come in. Take a nice hot shower and let the depressing ways of the cruel world go down the drain. Relax and enjoy the cozy reviews and articles, and with the holidays upon us, be sure to check the Library's page of holiday reads.

I have two comfort blogs that I check regularly. Neither blasts the internet with non-stop self-promotional commercials, so you may not have heard of them. They are by mature seasoned mystery authors who only want to share a thought or two with friends. At Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life, Nancy Pickard might blog about writing, she might blog about meditation, or a book that has inspired her. John Baker's blog takes a similar approach. Bits of writing advice may enter the mix, along with political or other newsworthy topics. What I love are the descriptions of plays he has recently seen. I find his down-to-earth commentaries soothing, a good end to the internet day.

The Carnival will hit the road again around December 1st. Next stop: Ireland! Our host will be Declan Burke, author of The Big O. If you haven't already found his blog, Crime Always Pays, don't wait until December. You'll not want to miss anything on one of the funniest, most entertaining blogs around. I don't know how he got that photo of me partying in Brazil. I thought I had destroyed all prints and negatives.

In case you missed earlier Carnival blogs, all previous road trips are archived at the home site, Carnival of the Criminal MInd. Thanks for stopping by!