Crime Fiction in the news and on the 'Net: Weekly Round-up

There have been some more great crime fiction stories on the Web this past week - from newspapers, magazines, and fellow bloggers. Hopefully you will all like finding an interesting article or two linked here, that you enjoy reading. Of course several of the blog posts and stories from early in the week related to the terrific Bouchercon by the Bay crime writing festival held in San Francisco last weeked. It sure looked like a fantastic time, and I hope to make it to a Bouchercon one day myself.

Onto the round-up.

Crime Watch Weekly Round-Up: In the News and on the 'Net

• John Barber of the Globe and Mail looks at the strengthening crime fiction cohort at the upcoming Toronto Festival of Authors (where IFOA Noir has become something of the 'centrepoint'), asking if this is the year when 'murder got respectable', after Canadian crime writers suffered blatant snobbery by other authors in years past.
• The Hollywood Reporter takes a look at the TV retelling of the classic Sherlock Holmes character, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as a modern-day Holmes and Martin Freeman as Watson, calling it "superior sleuth TV".
• In an interesting interview with BBC News, Welsh author and Gold Dagger recipient Belinda Bauer (the first person to win the top award with a debut novel in 40 years) talks about enjoying horror fiction before writing crime (like our own rising star Paul Cleave), unexpected success, and the writing of BLACKLANDS.
• The Sowetan has an article on South African crime writer Diale Tlholwe, who will be appearing for the Miriam Tlali Reading and Book Club session at the African Literary Bookshop in Johannesburg today (Saturday).
• In good news for the crime fiction world, The Bookseller reports that Titan Books has acquired worldwide distribution rights to paperback series Hard Case Crime, whose former publisher Dorchester Publishing ceased mass market paperback publishing in August.
• Bob Patterson of OpEdNews.com gives one fan's perspective of the happenings at the recent Bouchercon festival. You can also read some other thoughts on Bouchercon from Ruth Jordan of Crimespree magazine here, from J.Kingston Pierce of The Rap Sheet here, from Jen Forbus of Jen's Book Thoughts here, and from Peter Rozovsky of Detectives Beyond Borders here.
• In an interesting interview with a new author, The Anchorage Daily News takes a look at a new crime novel written by Juneau Fisheries Biologist Scott Kelley.
• In a long-ish article, Peter Craven in The Australian takes a broader look at crime fiction, particularly Scandinavian crime fiction, on TV and in books, including comments about art and trash, popularity and quality, as he examines the second Swedish-language film instalment in Stieg Larsson's trilogy, which is now showing in Australian cinemas.

Have you (or will you) read Bauer's Gold Dagger-winning debut BLACKLANDS? Do you think the literary world is starting to respect crime fiction more? What do you think of the modern-day Sherlock Holmes? Have you been to Bouchercon? Thoughts and comments welcome.