About a week ago, Jeff Meyerson mentioned the delight of Trader Joe’s Brownie Crisp Coffee Ice Cream Sandwiches. Jeff made them sound so good I had to do some research. Here’s what I found:

“When you eat ice cream, it’s best to put it in a bowl. When you drink coffee, it’s best to put it in a cup. What if we told you it was possible to enjoy both ice cream and coffee without a bowl or a cup-and also with some brownies added into the mix? It seems like something only achievable in dreams, but Trader Joe’s Brownie Crisp Coffee Ice Cream Sandwiches make those dreams a reality.

We first take two TJ’s Brownie Crisps. Then, we take coffee ice cream-made with coffee syrup, Colombian coffee extract, and espresso grounds-and put a scoop between the brownies. The best part? The ice cream softens up the crisps just enough to give them a deliciously fudgy texture.

The chocolaty chunks in the brownie crisps and the espresso grounds in the ice cream make for some sophisticated flavors you might not expect in an ice cream sandwich–but ones you’ll be overjoyed to encounter. And though these lil’ Sandwiches are bursting with coffee flavor, we don’t blame you if you want to pair it with even more coffee. What could be better than an ice cream sandwich and a glass of Trader Joe’s Cold Brew Coffee Concentrate?”

Well, that description sold me. I drove over to Trader Joe’s and bought a box of Brownie Crisp Coffee Ice Cream Sandwiches. I love coffee and I love brownies so this was a perfect blend of tastes I enjoy. Excellent! You should try Brownie Crisp Coffee Ice Cream Sandwiches, too! GRADE: A

Here are two compilation CDs that seek to capture the essence of 1976. Very little overlap. “Saturday Night” by the Bay City Rollers appears on both CDs. I like the ROCK ON CD compilations because they list the Chart Positions of the songs included.

I found it interesting that BILLBOARD TOP HITS 1976 has “Theme From S.W.A.T.” while ROCK ON 1976 has “Baretta’s Theme (Keep Your Eye on the Sparrow) showing TV’s impact on the year’s pop music.

We’re at the beginning of the Disco Years in 1976. Do you remember these songs? Any favorites? GRADE: B (for both)

TRACKLIST:

Bay City Rollers–Saturday Night 2:54

Gary Wright–Love Is Alive 3:25

K.C. & The Sunshine Band*–(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty 3:04

Dr. Hook–Only Sixteen 2:43

The Sylvers–Boogie Fever 3:25

Orleans–Still The One 3:52

Bellamy Brothers–Let Your Love Flow [rerecording] 2:48

Rhythm Heritage–Baretta’s Theme (Keep Your Eye On The Sparrow) 3:13

Silver Convention–Get Up And Boogie 2:45

Dorothy Moore–Misty Blue 3:35

Starbuck (2)–Moonlight Feels Right 3:34

Rufus Featuring Chaka Khan*–Sweet Thing 3:19

TRACKLIST:

Just a few short weeks ago, I read and reviewed The Wild Adventures of Cthulhu, Volume 1 by Will Murray (you can read my review here). The Wild Adventures of Cthulhu, Volume 2 collects more of Will Murray’s Lovecraftian stories.

I enjoyed “God General Nakji” where Raymond Redpath, a medicine man, (“I walk with Wakiya medicine. Very powerful. My Lakota name is Ray Thunder Cloud” p. 2), is recruited by Cryptic Events Evaluation Section to investigate an incident in North Korea.

A careless vacationer stumbles over a creepy event in “Evacuation Day.” You would think some people would realize Dunwich isn’t quite Disneyland.

“In The Lightless Chambers of N’gah-Kthun” takes a Cryptic Events Evaluation Section agent to a distant planet which might be Cthulhu’s original home.

If you’re in the mood for some Lovecraftian stories, check out The Wild Adventures of Cthulhu, Volume 1 and 2! GRADE: B

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction — ix

God General Nakji — 1

Evacuation Day — 33

The Hindmarsh Abomination — 53

Moonday — 71

Smoking Mirror — 109

In The Lightless Chambers of N’gah-Kthun — 125

The Purple Emperor — 161

The Cow-Men of Coburn — 169

The Arcade — 189

The Wild Ones of Weirport — 201

SOURCES — 241

ABOUT THE AUTHOR — 243

ABOUT THE ARTIST — 247

Diane loves HALLMARK movies. She watches at least one HALLMARK movie per week. I’m not that enthusiastic about HALLMARK movies mostly because of the formulaic and predictable plots. However, I will watch an occasional HALLMARK MYSTERY MOVIE with Diane. Yes, some of those can be formulaic and predictable, too. But on some occasion, a HALLMARK MYSTERY MOVIE can prove to be entertaining. That was the case with the new silly The Dancing Detective: A Deadly Tango.

When a high-profile CEO (brother to a U. S. Senator) is murdered on the eve of his company’s corporate event in Malta – a high stakes ballroom competition between senior executives – Detective Bailey is sent undercover as one of the contestants to find the killer.

The murder victim runs an international dancing school. He insisted on a dance competition each year at the company’s corporate event where members of the management team would be judged and promotions and demotions resulted.

Detective Constance Bailey (Lacey Chabert) is a brilliant police detective who prefers to work alone. She’s been through three partners in three years because she doesn’t play well with others. Bailey is over-due for promotion, but needs to solve a Big Case to get it. Her Captain reluctantly agrees to send Bailey to Malta to help INTERPOL solve this murder at the request of the Senator. Bailey is supposed to go undercover as a recent management hire of the international dancing school.

The only problem? Bailey can’t dance. To convincingly compete, Bailey must team up with charismatic and free-spirited performer Sebastian Moore (Will Kemp). But with a killer on the loose and a growing list of suspects, it’s going to take more than a little fancy footwork to solve this case.  Lacey Chabert and Will Kemp have great on-screen chemistry and I appreciated the humor of Sebastian Moore claiming he was a great detective because he watched COLUMBO. Detective Bailey teases Moore by calling him “Poirot” and “Inspector Morris.” Set the bar low, and you’ll enjoy this twinkle-toed mystery! GRADE: B

Yesterday I reviewed Charles Stross’s Season of Skulls, written during the Pandemic where Stress decided to attempt Something Different and mixed a Regency Romance with a Lovecraftian Time Travel adventure. Today, I’m reviewing Martha Wells’s Witch King that blends magic and Epic Fantasy and feudal warfare into a compelling story. Martha Wells, best known for her Murderbot series (you can read my reviews, here, here, here, here, here, and here), where a SECURITY UNIT robot who hacks his governor module and goes rogue.  This is a Far Cry from Wells’s latest novel.

Witch King opens with a scary scene as the Witch King, Kai, finds himself “dead” and buried in a tower of water (water makes it hard for witches to work their magic) with his companion, Ziede, another type of witch. Together, they escape to find out how they “died” and who buried them.

I suspect the Pandemic led Martha Wells to forgo another episode in the Murderbot series and to tackle this long, complex, and exciting Fantasy novel, instead. If you’re in the mood for some action/adventure Fantasy in the George R. R. Martin and Robert Jordan style, you might want to give Witch King a try. GRADE: B+

Russell Letson of LOCUS magazine (May 2023) wrote that Charles Stross’s new novel, Season of Skulls, is “a mash-up of the Regency gothic and Lovecraftian horrors and intrigue-thriller variations of his Laundry world.” (p. 18) That about sums it up.

In his ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS at the end of the book, Stross delineates how Season of Skulls came to be written during the Pandemic. Stross writes that he was stalled…and then decided to mix Regency romance elements and time travel with the usual spooky aspects of the Laundry world: vampires, sorcerers, secret agents, sinister cultists, horrific alien creatures, and undead powers who want to rule Earth.

Whether you will enjoy reading Season of Skulls depends on your tolerance for England of 1816 with its pirates, highwaymen, evil scientists, and monsters. Magic is in the air, but the air of London “stank of coal smoke and sewage which nearly covered the even more noisome stench of decaying food waste.”

If you’re a fan of Charles Stross’s Laundry series, this oddity may both puzzle and delight you. I, for one, prefer the action take place in the 21st Century. GRADE: B

It’s hard to believe the first animated Miles Morales Spider-Man movie came out in 2018 (you can read my review here). Now Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse arrives with more new characters and threats to the multiverse. Directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse takes on larger challenges. The focus remains on 15-year-old Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), who is just learning how to use his Spider-Man powers, but Miles shares the stage with his love-interest: Ghost-Spider (Hailee Steinfeld). Both teenage super-heroes are struggling with their parents and the stress of a life fighting crime.

Scriptwriters Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and Dave Callahan create worlds with incredible production design by Patrick O’Keefe that brings those words to life in wild, animated worlds full of bizarre Earths (like the universe where Mumbai and Manhattan are blended into “Mumhattan”).

(MILD SPOILER ALERT) The AMC Theater where Diane and I watched Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse broke into groans when after 2 hours and 20 minutes the dreaded words TO BE CONTINUED… appeared on the screen. We’ll have to wait until 2024 to find out what happens to Miles and Gwen and all the other Spider-people. GRADE: INCOMPLETE (but trending toward a B+)

It’s been over 20 years since Ellen Nehr called me up and asked if I would write an article for a project she was working on: Deadly Women: The Women Mystery Reader’s Indispensable Companion. I, of course, agreed and the wonderful volume was published in 1998. Just glance at the Table of Contents below and check out all the writers involved in providing information and recommendations for mysteries written by women or featuring women characters.

Just by serendipity, I discovered my copy of Deadly Women which had been mis-shelved for a couple of decades. I spent an hour rereading several of the essays Jan Grape, Dean James, and Ellen Nehr brought together for mystery readers. Bill Crider is here. So is Nancy Pickard, Marcia Muller, Bill Pronzini, and Ed Gorman.

Most of the best known women writers of the 1990s show up here in one form or another. The interviews reveal key facts about the writers. The checklists–although slightly dated–still are valuable.

Deadly Women is a browser’s delight! Many of these detailed articles will send you down mysterious rabbit-holes and generate Want-Lists. If you don’t own a copy of Deadly Women, copies are available for reasonable prices on-line. Do you have a favorite female mystery writer? GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

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Eva Cassidy’s Live at Blues Alley was originally self-released in May 1996. The album was recorded live at the Blues Alley nightclub (Washington, D.C.) in January 1996. It was the last album recorded by Cassidy before her death in November 1996. Eva Cassidy died of melanoma at the age of 33. Eva Cassidy sang a mix songs, some traditional, some classic pop–like “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” “People Get Ready,” and the song she’s most known for: “Fields of Gold.” I love her talent and sound. Eva Cassidy died too young.

TRACK LIST:

1. “Cheek to Cheek” (Irving Berlin) – 4:03
2. “Stormy Monday” (T-Bone Walker) – 5:49
3. “Bridge over Troubled Water” (Paul Simon) – 5:33
4. “Fine and Mellow” (Billie Holiday) – 4:03
5. “People Get Ready” (Curtis Mayfield) – 3:36
6. “Blue Skies” (Irving Berlin) – 2:37
7. “Tall Trees in Georgia” (Buffy St. Marie) – 4:05
8. “Fields of Gold” (Sting) – 4:57
9. “Autumn Leaves” (Joseph Kosma, Johnny Mercer, Jacques Prévert) – 4:57
10. “Honeysuckle Rose” (Andy Razaf, Thomas “Fats” Waller) – 3:14
11. “Take Me to the River” (Al Green, Mabon “Teenie” Hodges) – 3:51
12. “What a Wonderful World” (Bob Thiele, George David Weiss) – 5:50
13. “Oh, Had I a Golden Thread” (Pete Seeger) – 4:46 [Studio recording]

Gregg Allman, like his brother Duane, also died too young. But this concert at the Beacon Theatre (New York City) from March 2000 bursts with energy with the Allman Brothers Band delivering their mix of rock, jazz, country, and rhythm & blues.

Peakin’ at the Beacon was the first Allman Brothers Band album to include Derek Trucks on guitar and Oteil Burbridge on bass, and the last to include founding member Dickey Betts.

The instrumental “High Falls” was nominated for Best Rock Instrumental Performance at the 44th Annual Grammy Awards, losing to “Dirty Mind” by Jeff Beck.

This version of the Idlewild South track “Please Call Home” was featured on their greatest hits album The Essential Allman Brothers Band: The Epic Years. GRADE: A (for both live CDs)

TRACK LIST:

All songs written by Gregg Allman, except where noted.

1. “Don’t Want You No More” (Spencer Davis, Edward Hardin) – 3:06
2. “It’s Not My Cross to Bear” – 5:12
3. “Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More” – 5:46
4. “Every Hungry Woman” – 5:56
5. “Please Call Home” – 4:30
6. “Stand Back” (Gregg Allman, Berry Oakley) – 5:44
7. “Black Hearted Woman” – 6:30
8. “Leave My Blues at Home” – 5:07
9. “Seven Turns” (Dickey Betts) – 4:48
10. “High Falls” (Dickey Betts) – 27:27