DARKLY DEBUTING ‘DEXTER’
For a sneak peek at DEXTER, Showtime’s new series based upon Jeff Lindsay’s novel DARKLY DREAMING DEXTER, the cable net has posted some clips on YouTube. SIX FEET UNDER’s Michael C. Hall stars as Dexter Morgan, a perfectly charming police forensics expert who moonlights as a serial killer. The series premieres Oct. 1. BOOKGASM was all hot and bothered to screen the entire rated-MA episode via an exclusive, super-secret link Showtime supplied us, but damn those online streams and their tendency to freeze up every three seconds. I couldn’t ev … en make it t … o the cred … its.

IT’S HARD OUT HERE FOR A PIMP
Hard Case Crime is profiled in the current issue of Time magazine in the “Innovators” section. Says editor Charles Ardai, the article comes “complete with a full-page photo of me trying desperately to look stylish and noir. It’s a doomed attempt – I’ll never look like anything other than the scrawny, effete New Yorker I am – but the handsome Remington manual typewriter in the foreground and the willowy blonde in a slinky red dress in the background make up for it.” We’re glad to see Hard Case get some big-time national publicity, but we didn’t even notice anything in the photo beyond the blonde.

R.I.P. JOSEPH HAYES
Joseph Hayes, author of the novel THE DESPERATE HOURS, died Sept. 11. Once adapted to a Tony Award-winning play starring Karl Malden and Paul Newman, HOURS also became big-screen material twice, first in William Wyler’s 1955 film with Humphrey Bogart, and again in 1990 with Michael Cimino’s Mickey Rourke-led remake.

CHESS: THE HOME GAME
If you haven’t read David Shenk’s THE IMMORTAL GAME: A HISTORY OF CHESS like we told you to, get on it. And you can also play along at home, if you’re the lucky winner of Shenk’s chess set giveaway. The set is “a reproduction of the 12th century Lewis Chessmen, the most vivid and important historical chess pieces of all time. Found in early 1831 on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland they are believed to be a Norse design carved from walrus tusk and whale teeth.” You can register to win here, and if you’re picked, you have to gift it to us. Deal? Deal.

CUE THE SILVER SHAMROCK JINGLE…
With Halloween now a month away, get ready for BOOKGASM’s 2nd Annual Halloween Horror Anthology Month. Last year, we covered a dozen of them. This year, while we aren’t likely to hit that many, we’re digging back in time a little and have a few gems already picked out. Just look for the disturbo pumpkin-head graphic at right; it’s your seal of approval for short-attention-span scares!

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