SEPARATION of CHURCH and STATE by Leigh Lundin Last week, I wrote about the police raid of the private home of the Gizmodo editor who obtained Apple’s lost iPhone and returned it to Apple. Prosecutors acted on the presumption that news blogs don’t enjoy the same First and Fourth Amendment rights as newspapers they are […]

NEWSWORTHY by Leigh Lundin The city: Palo Alto. A Silicon Valley engineer celebrates his 27th birthday in a Redwood City pub. A little tipsy, he leaves his cell phone on a barstool before he leaves the bar. Customer finds phone and discussions ensue how to return it. Customer leaves bar with cell phone. Next morning, […]

MOVIE MAKING and STORY TELLING by Leigh Lundin At lunch last week, my friend Steve mentioned a sequel is under way for Sherlock Holmes, the British-American movie from four months ago. What? I thought the movie (still found in some theaters) was adequate, "serviceable" as my father might say, but not anything to write about […]

VAMPIRES DON’T SUCK by Leigh Lundin Last week, I wrote about Terrie Moran‘s top flight banshee mystery, ‘The Awakening’ in the MWA anthology, Crimes by Moonlight. The sounds you hear are Irish fairies singing its praises, especially since Women of Mystery are giving copies of the anthology for free! With a slight detour for a […]

The AWARENESS by Leigh Lundin I received a surprise gift, Crimes by Moonlight, the latest MWA anthology edited by Charlaine Harris. This volume is unusual in that each story combines traditional mystery with the paranormal. Terrie Moran I flipped through its contents looking for authors I might know. James knows more writers than the word […]

100 BEGINNINGS by Leigh Lundin Sharon (a friend, teacher, editor, writer) sent me a link to an article denoting the one hundred best opening lines in (mostly) English literature, as chosen by the editors of American Book Review. Rather than point you to the list or repeat the list and knock off early for the […]

SEX and VIOLENCE, I SWEAR! by Leigh Lundin Janet Hutchings, my favorite editor of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, posed a quandary on the Dell Magazines web site. She mentioned readers criticizing editors both for allowing and disallowing adult treatment of sex, violence, and foul language (which suggests she probably has the balance about right). She […]