Add CrimeSpot to your site with CrimeSpotExpress Recent Posts: Bad News from Weatherford Almost Famous Spottier Than Usual (UPDATE: Fixed) We Now Return To Our Regularly Scheduled Procrasti... The Season Of Giving Lock And Load New York, New York The Best Idea EVAR Stanley Synchronicity Tragedy in Minnesota Complete Archives: 01/01/2006 - 02/01/2006 02/01/2006 - 03/01/2006 03/01/2006 - 04/01/2006 04/01/2006 - 05/01/2006 05/01/2006 - 06/01/2006 06/01/2006 - 07/01/2006 07/01/2006 - 08/01/2006 08/01/2006 - 09/01/2006 09/01/2006 - 10/01/2006 10/01/2006 - 11/01/2006 11/01/2006 - 12/01/2006 12/01/2006 - 01/01/2007 02/01/2007 - 03/01/2007 03/01/2007 - 04/01/2007 04/01/2007 - 05/01/2007 06/01/2007 - 07/01/2007 07/01/2007 - 08/01/2007 08/01/2007 - 09/01/2007 09/01/2007 - 10/01/2007 10/01/2007 - 11/01/2007 11/01/2007 - 12/01/2007 12/01/2007 - 01/01/2008 01/01/2008 - 02/01/2008 Bad News from Weatherford Wednesday, January 30, 2008   Prolific Texas writer James Reasoner today reports on his blog that his house has been destroyed by fire. He is the author of more than 200 books, including the classic Texas Wind, last year's well-reviewed Dust Devils, and the new anthology Graveyard Shift. The good news: no one was injured. I can't be sure at this point but I the fire was probably caused by yesterday's windstorm here in north Texas. I know that there was a wildfire in the Benbrook area - about ten miles from my house - and that about 20 homes were destroyed in other fires. Please keep James and his family in your thoughts and prayers. posted by Graham Powell at 5:53 PM     Almost Famous Tuesday, January 22, 2008   Just got an email from Daniel Hatadi the other day. Seems that this humble site was mentioned in a Reuters article entitled "Web yields deadly tricks for crime writers", which has been widely syndicated. Woohoo! I expect a flood of tens of new visitors. This news comes hard on the heels of a book called "The Bookaholics Guide to Book Blogs" (via Bill C.), which also mentions CrimeSpot. There has got to be a way to make some money from this. RIP, Ed Hoch and Benjamin Schutz. Edward D. Hoch died at 77 last week. Hoch was best known as a prolific short story writer who had a short story in every issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine for 35 years, with popular series featuring thief Nick Velvet, New England doctor Sam Hawthorne, police detective Captain Leopold, and many, many others. This week also brought news that Benjamin Schutz had died of a heart attack. Schutz wrote a number of well-received novels featuring Washington, D.C.-based private eye Leo Haggerty, but to my mind the best thing he ever wrote was the Shamus award winning story "Mary, Mary, Shut The Door", one of the best PI stories ever. I understand that Schutz was also a forensic psychologist, and he left writing for many years to concentrate on that other career. More recently he had published a follow up to "Mary, Mary" entitled "Lost and Found", and had published a new novel, The Mongol Reply. posted by Graham Powell at 11:11 AM     Spottier Than Usual (UPDATE: Fixed) Saturday, January 05, 2008   Due to technical issues, updates to CrimeSpot.net will be intermittent over the next couple of days. Issues with my provider mean that the updates can only run when I'm sitting at my computer to run them manually. Sorry about this, and I'll have it resolved as soon as possible. Update: The support staff at Applied Innovations got the problem fixed quickly, much to my relief. Thanks, guys! posted by Graham Powell at 6:41 AM