I love talking to my agent. I always feel inspired and motivated after I get off the phone with him. He always has time for me, and it’s not unusual for our conversations to go on for the better part of an hour, which is unusual for me, since I am usually not very fond of talking on the phone.
The Edgar Award nominees were announced today, which also happens to be Poe’s birthday. I was hoping for a Thin Ice nomination but then I realized there’s no anthology category in the Edgars. Judith Green’s story “A Good Safe Place” from the anthology was nominated, though. Also nominated was Thrillers: 100 Best Reads, edited by David Morrell and Hank Wagner. Delighted by that one, as it contains my essay on Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon.
Took a brief diversion in my reading last night to start The Valley of Fear by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Got it for free on my Kindle. I must have read this at some point, but my memory of it is vague. Did you know that Professor Moriarty appears in only two Sherlock Holmes stories? It’s easy to think of him as Holmes’s perpetual nemesis, but he wasn’t really. He’s mentioned in a few stories after Reichenbach Falls, but he’s an active participant in only this novel and “The Final Problem.”
How do you class up an already classy and fun show? Insert Bob Newhart, who appeared as a guest star on last night’s NCIS as Ducky’s predecessor. At first he was his usual droll self, making a typically complex, long-winded phone call to Willie Wong’s Wok, a Chinese restaurant long supplanted by a burrito stand. His character’s wife shares his real wife’s first name (and NCIS is her favorite show). The comedic side turned serious when Magnus was revealed to have Alzheimer’s and Newhart had a strong turn as the angry man who feels his memory slipping away from him. Well done. The episode also handled “don’t ask, don’t tell” and may be alluding to the possibility that Vance won’t be director much longer.
