Been a while since I collected my freelance-y stuff of late so, to wit:

At NPR.org, I wrote about HIT LIT by crime writer James W. Hall, his non-fiction treatise on the 20th Century bestseller and how 12 of them - well, eleven plus THE DA VINCI CODE — could be distilled down to 12 basic elements that are present in every megaseller past and present. I used 50 SHADES OF GREY as the peg since, as I read the book, I realized Hall explains fairly convincingly why that book is such a lightning in a bottle — even though he ruled out the possibility of another big sex-based bestseller. Which is why the book business is the way it is….

My most recent Crimewave column for the National Post ran last week and featured new releases by Robert Pobi, John McFetridge, and Stephen Legault. The next column will appear in early May, schedule permitting.

And for Maclean’s, I reviewed James Renner’s wonderfully mind-bending debut novel THE MAN FROM PRIMROSE LANE, which I think is even better now as time passes than when I first read it, and I really dug it when I hit “The End.”

Also, the 3 Grofield novels by Richard Stark for which I wrote a blanket introduction — THE DAMSEL, THE DAME, and THE BLACKBIRD — were published this week and are available at your nearest physical or digital retailer.