While the combination of crime, cinema and literary fiction/poetry makes for something of an odd mix, and while fiction and poetry seem to have taken a back seat to the new material, there's no denying the quality of the writing here. Along with reviews of half a dozen new films, the current RR includes a number of excellent features, particularly the survey by Richard James Havis of the work of Hong Kong-based director King Hu (in the world of martial arts filmaking, an innovator on par with John Wu), an essay on Hitchcock by Paul Duncan, and Stephen Walker's diary of his "pursuit" of French filmmaker Erick Zoncaat at last year's Cannes film festival. Also, worth noting is Crime Time staffer Charles Waring's extraordinarily-in-depth retrospective of the life and work of Jim Thompson, the American crime novelist (a contemporary of David Goodis and Raymond Chandler) who gave us After Dark My Sweet and The Grifters.

Even without the added content, one feature of RR alone makes it a must-bookmark: the "electronic library" portion of the site which archives all the poems stories and essays published in RR proper since its inception. This includes fiction by the likes of James Elroy, John Gardiner, and Booker Prize winner James Kelman. Equally impressive is "A Mirror of England", the complete poems of WWI-era poet Edward Thomas. An obscure but important poet who died in the trenches of France well before his literary star could shine, Thomas has been mentioned as an influence by a host of contemporary British poets. Unfortunately, his work has long been out of print (particularly in the States), and if not for the largess of RR's editors, most of us would never have the chance to read it.

The only negative about The Richmond Review is the rather unapologetic hawking of the literally dozens of books reviewed or excerpted in each issue. And although we're told that the majority of those involved with the magazine work in the world of London book-publishing, we're asked to trust in the promise that any/all conflicts of interest will be avoided. (In all fairness, the reviews thus far have been the very model of objectivity.) Then again, The Richmond Review is such a consistently good read, who can begrudge the staff the pennies (or pence) they're making annually from Amazon.com's associates program?

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