Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press 2012 - Red Circle of ...

Mar 12 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press
Baker St, a New York-based pop-rock band made up of former and current Co-
lumbia University students, has just released their third CD: Irregulars.
You can download the album at , and there will
be an EP available there soon; you can find their music videos at YouTube,
and their web-site is at . Michelle Hutt, the band's
songwriter, explains that they decided on the name because she has been a
huge fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories since high school; they also feel
that in some ways their musical style is a bit more like that of rock music
in the UK right now.
Booktrack reports that its "enhanced" edition of "The Speckled Band" (with
sound effects and a soundtrack) for reading on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod
Touch (Sep 11 #4) has been downloaded more than 100,000 times, and is one
of the most downloaded global eBooks of 2011. It helped, of course, that
it was available without charge. Booktrack's books can now also be played
on Androids, PCs, and Macs .
Lenny Picker has reported that Benedict Cumberbatch has played a young Rum-
pole of the Bailey on BBC Radio 4: "Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders"
(2009) and "Rumpole and the Family Pride" and "Rumpole and the Eternal Tri-
angle" (2010) featured Timothy West as the older Rumpole, and they played
the same parts in "Rumpole and the Man of God" and "Rumpole and the Explos-
ive Evidence" in March.
SN2apps has released four "Sherlock Holmes Interactive Radio Apps" for the
iPads (other devices to follow): the stories are "The Speckled Band", "The
Speckled Band", "The Five Orange Pips", and "The Man with the Twisted Lip",
and the apps ($2.99 each) come with radio scripts and dramatizations that
star Edward Petherbridge and David Peart (from the fine Independent Radio
Drama Productions series broadcast by National Public Radio in the 1990s),
a map of London, colorful artwork, and a treasure hunt. There's more about
the series at , and the apps are available at Apple's apps
store.
There's a Puffin Classics edition of THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (London:
Puffin Penguin, 2011; 243 pp., £6.99/$4.99) with a new introduction by Jud-
ith Kerr and cover art by Bill Sanderson.
"In the beginning there was Sherlock Holmes,' according to someone who uses
the on-line pseudonym daasgrrl, "And from Holmes was brought forth House,
played by Hugh Laurie. Who in Fortysomething as Peter Slippery was father
to Rory Slippery, played by Benedict Cumberbatch. Who grew up to play Sher-
lock. And then my head exploded." Cindy Coppock spotted daasgrrl's mash-up
of all this at .
Bill Crider's monthly "Blog Bytes" column in Ellery Queen's Mystery Maga-
zine recommends interesting sites such as "Stop, You're Killing Me" (main-
tained by Lucinda Surber and Stan Ulrich); it won an Anthony (best blog) at
Bouchercon last year, and it lists more than 3,800 authors, with chronolo-
gical lists of their books (more than 43,000 titles) and much more informa-
tion, including lists for characters .