The release and relative success of “Capote” (which had a modest budget but a brilliant actor in the eponymous role) has revived interest in Truman Capote’s influential masterpiece “In Cold Blood,” which found itself back on the New York Times bestseller list 40 years after it was published. Did you know that the director of the 1967 film version, Richard Brooks, was a borderline fanatic about adhering to the true events when he made his docudrama?

The crew was flown to all the real-life locations in Missouri, Colorado, Texas, Nevada, Mexico, and Holcomb, Kan., including the actual house in which the Clutter family was murdered. Nancy Clutter’s horse, Babe, was used in several scenes, the trial scene was shot in the original courtroom, and six of the jurors who judged Perry Smith and Dick Hickock sat in the filmed version. As a final and macabre testament to Brooks’s quest for authenticity, the hangman who executed Smith and Hickock performed the same function in the movie.

***

It may well be argued that the greatest writer the United States ever produced is Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who as Mark Twain created such American icons as Huckleberry Finn, Jim, Tom Sawyer, and Aunt Polly, as well as such famous works as “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” “The Prince and the Pauper,” and “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” But did you know that Twain is responsible for one of the most significant landmarks in the history of mystery fiction?

His semiautobiographical “Life on the Mississippi,” published in 1883, contains a complete short story, “A Thumb-Print and What Became of It” (Chapter 31) that contains the first fictional use of fingerprints as a method of identification. Though Twain’s novel “The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson” (1894) is frequently cited as the first use of fingerprints in a detective story, it followed his short story by 11 years. It nevertheless remains historically significant because the entire plot revolves around Pudd’nhead’s courtroom explanation of the uniqueness of a person’s print – the first novel to do so.

***

Steve Martin’s superb performance in the new “The Pink Panther” must inevitably be compared with that of the creator of the role, Peter Sellers, who demonstrated that comic genius can overcome plot weakness. The success of “The Pink Panther” (1963) was so great that United Artists quickly released a second film in the series the next year, “A Shot in the Dark.”

But did you know that Sellers insisted on doing his own stunts in both films? The strain of following one pratfall with another, slamming into walls and doors, falling out of windows, and vigorously defending himself against martial arts attacks by his manservant, Kato, was a major factor in Sellers’s serious heart attack, which kept him from working for several years. He did not play the demanding role of Inspector Clouseau again for 11 years.

***

One of the greatest of all hardboiled novels is the little-known “You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up” (1938) by Richard Hallas. This noir tale of a man in Oklahoma who comes home from a day of hard work in the mines to find that his wife has left him, taking their child with her, has been compared with James M. Cain’s “The Postman Always Rings Twice” and Horace McCoy’s “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” It is the only novel of its type that Hallas, who had some success as a Hollywood screenwriter and once famously had a long night of drinking with Ernest Hemingway and Dashiell Hammett, ever wrote.

But did you know that this quintessentially American novel of the Great Depression was written by an Englishman? Richard Hallas was the pseudonym, for this book only, of Eric Knight, who became both rich and famous for writing the quintessentially British novel,”Lassie, Come Home.” Sadly, his good fortune was short-lived, as he was killed in World War II in 1943 at the age of 46.

***

For younger fans of Sherlock Holmes, the greatest actor to portray him was Jeremy Brett. For those whose screen experience goes back a bit further, the ultimate Holmes was Basil Rathbone, who played him in 13 fulllength motion pictures. The first two, “The Hound of the Baskervilles”(1939) and “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” (1939), were good A-movies made by 20th Century Fox. They were so well received that Universal made 11 more B-movies between 1942 and 1946. Now famous and instantly recognizable as Holmes, Rathbone went on to do the radio series, as well.

But did you know that the role of Sherlock Holmes ruined Basil Rathbone’s career? Once a major stage star, notably in Shakespearean dramas, and a constantly working film star with a career that began in the silents and grew into major roles in “The Bishop Murder Case,” “David Copperfield,” “Anna Karenina,” “A Tale of Two Cities,” “Captain Blood,” “Adventures of Robin Hood,” and “Dawn Patrol” among dozens of others, he became so typecast as Holmes that he worked little in ensuing years, and then most often in cheap horror flicks.

***

Those with a sense of history will recall that the crown jewels were once stolen from the Tower of London. In 1671, Colonel Thomas Blood and his confederates overpowered the keeper of the Jewel House in the Tower and got away with the orb, the scepter, and the crown of England. A cry went up, and the culprits were immediately captured.

But did you know that the king, Charles II, pardoned Blood? He was apparently so amused by the audacity of the wild Irishman that he even gave him a pension.

Tune in again soon for more useless trivia.

Mr. Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan and the series editor of the annual “Best American Mystery Stories.” He can be reached at ottopenzler@mysteriousbookshop.com.