A few updates...

My review of Duane Swierczynski's excellent The Wheelman ran earlier this week in the Philadelphia Inquirer. I've talked about the book before, but this is my formal take on it. Obviously, I liked it a lot.

There are a slew of new reviews over on Mystery Ink, including several UK books critiqued by Fiona Walker, plus a review of Randall Hicks' The Baby Game by Yvette Banek.

On the novel (and Bet) front, I have modest progress to report. I'm up to 50,000 words, so it's a little more than half done. I think Guyot's written "Once upon a time..." but that's about it.

In other writing news, the short story anthology that Guyot and I are putting together now officially has an agent representing it. Considering that Ken Bruen has already written his story (and yes, it's excellent), I hope we're able to place the book somewhere.

I started reading debut thrillers for the ITW Awards. (I'm one of the judges for Best First Novel.) I've plowed through about 8 so far. I'm probably not supposed to comment on them publicly, so I won't say much. It hasn't been the strongest year for debuts, though, I'm sorry to say.

That's it for now. Let me know if there are any books I need to read or authors I need to write about. I'm always looking for good ideas to steal.