Fiction is fiction. It’s made up. Still, you can tell a lot about an author by reading the stories that he or she chooses to write, and the way in which they are written.

If you’ve read only a couple of books by Michael Connelly, for example, you know – I mean, you just know – this is an utterly decent and compassionate human being. It would be impossible for him to write with such clear insight into the souls of his cops, his victims, and his killers if he weren’t, himself, such an intelligent and sensitive man.

No book can illustrate his humanity more than the just released “Crime Beat” (Steven C. Vascik Publications, 250 pages, $30). As proof of Mr. Connelly’s enormous success as a mystery novelist, this is a collection of his journalistic work as a crime reporter, mainly for the Los Angeles Times. Unsuccessful, or even so-called “midlist” writers, just don’t get books published that contain reprints of long-forgotten police stories.

It should be stated, however, that this is not a cynically motivated publication looking to cash in on Mr. Connelly’s fame by pawning off a bunch of second-rate prose on an unsuspecting public. There is some great stuff here, which provides a picture-window view of the making of a crime novelist.

The introduction, no kidding, is worth the price of this handsomely produced book. “My experiences,” Mr. Connelly writes, “with cops and killers and days on the crime beat were invaluable to me as a novelist. There could not have been the novelist without there first being a reporter on the crime beat. I could not write about my fictional detective, Harry Bosch, without having written about the real detectives first. I could not create my killers without having talked to a few of the real ones first.”

This acknowledgment of the sequence of his writing career is significant. Chronology is an important element in any successful endeavor. Rape, pillage, and burn just don’t work as well if you reverse the order.

The first edition of “Crime Beat,” by the way, was only 5,000 copies, of which the publisher donated 1,000 to libraries. So if you want one – and you should – you ought to get it sooner rather than later.

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If you don’t think good books can have a positive effect on children, think again. In Watermark Books in Wichita, Kan., a boy stuffed a book under his shirt and headed for the door. As he passed a life-sized cardboard cutout of the evil Count Olaf, the villainous character so prominent in Lemony Snicket’s books, he was stopped cold in his tracks.

The figure contains a motion-activated sensor chip that plays messages complete with a sinister laugh. This time, it bellowed, “Where did you get that book?” sending the boy scurrying back to return his booty.

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As a reader of mystery fiction, it is possible you may not recognize the name David Benioff, which is both understandable and regrettable, especially since that situation is unlikely to change.

Mr. Benioff has written only one mystery, a first-rate novel titled “The 25th Hour.” It may be a long time before he writes another. Still in his 20s, Mr. Benioff had written three unpublished novels when he sold “The 25th Hour” – after it had been rejected by 14 publishing houses. He was teaching high school English when things turned around.

Spike Lee bought the film rights to “The 25th Hour.” Mr. Benioff then wrote a screenplay, “Stay,” for which he was paid (gasp!) $1.8 million. On a roll, he convinced Warner Bros. to allow him to adapt Homer’s “The Iliad” for the screen, calling it “Troy.”

Having recently seen that interminable epic, which I believe has a running time of 37 hours, I can say that either Mr. Benioff peaked early in his career or he should go back to crime writing. He seems to like Hollywood, so maybe the good news is that his next screenplay is an adaptation of a mystery novel by the ultratalented George Pelecanos.

Let’s hope that Mr. Benioff has better luck with this modern Greek writer than he did with the ancient one.

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The mystery world lost one of its nicest ladies on January 14, when Charlotte MacLeod passed away at the age of 82 after a lengthy stay at a nursing home in Lewiston, Maine. She was the author of more than 30 novels which together sold more than a million copies in the United States; she had a large following in Canada and Japan as well.

MacLeod’s books were, without exception, cozy, with never any graphic violence, sex, or bad language. Her work was laced with gentle humor and lots of tea and cookies.

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Borders (and, as an independent bookseller myself, I’ll have to ask that you excuse my language) gives a prize each year, called the Original Voices Award. This is a good thing, designed to encourage readership of exceptional works that might otherwise pass unnoticed, since these books are not written by bestselling authors.

The fiction winner this year is “The Shadow of the Wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, which I enthusiastically wrote about when it was released early last year. The paperback is out now, and you should definitely get a copy. Whether you choose to get it at Borders is up to you.

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How about this, ah, lofty approach to bookselling? Gulf Air, an Arab airline, has instituted a “Sky Bookshop” on its flights from London to the Persian Gulf region. And what do you suppose they’re selling? Mystery fiction and thrillers, of course.

You can read into that whatever you like.

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 openzler@nysun.com.