Wandering Eye: A neo-noir crime blotter, data on parking in Baltimore, and more

[Dave Monroe]

Routine police coverage, ever a staple of local reporting, was
epitomized in Baltimore by The Sun's Dick Irwin, who retired in 2010
after 44 years of slogging out the minutiae of blood and busts, and
died in 2013. The Baltimore Guide also has a long history of producing
neighborhood-level crime reporting, especially under late editor
Jackie Watts, who died in December. But here's a whole other take on
the genre: "Jim Knipfel Crime Blotter." Noir-loving Knipfel, writer of
the long-running Slackjaw column and author of several books
(including 1999's memoir "Slackjaw," which Thomas Pynchon famously
adored, and the soon-to-be-released novel "Residue"), has thankfully
started re-telling stories of misdemeanors and mayhem in fact-packed,
aside-laden, entertaining prose on the regular. When one reads a
sentence like this—"It became the first murder ever recorded in the
little town of Duck (and let's not even get started with that name),
but you gotta admit it's a pretty memorable one, what with the
Antichrist killing a guy in church and all"—more is a tantalizing
necessity. (Disclosure: I used to share an office with Knipfel when we
both were staff writers for the now-defunct New York Press.) (Van
Smith)

http://www.citypaper.com/blogs/the-news-hole/bcp-wandering-eye-a-neonoir-crime-blotter-date-on-parking-in-baltimore-and-more-20150305,0,1269875.story#sthash.bsoLmMEc.dpuf
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l