I’m a big fan of Joe R. Lansdale’s work and you will be too if you read Thing Get Ugly: The Best Crime Stories of Joe R. Lansdale just published by Tachyon Press. The first line in “The Steel Valentine” is: “Even before Moseley told him, Dennis knew things were about to get ugly.” So that’s where the title of this excellent collection comes from. My favorite story is “Driving to Geronimo’s Grave” where two young people are sent to retrieve the corpse of their uncle during the Depression. Lansdale gets the setting right and has the knack (that few writers do) of creating child characters that sound like real child characters.

Joe R. Lansdale has written hundreds of short stories but these are the cream of the crop! Highly recommended! Are you a Joe R. Lansdale fan? GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Foreword by S. A. Cosby –7
Introduction by Joe R. Lansdale — 9

“The Steel Valentine” — 13
“Driving to Geronimo’s Grave” — 31
“Mr. Bear” — 59
“The Job” — 79
“Six Finger Jack” — 85
“The Shadows, Kith and Kin” — 107
“The Ears” — 125
“Santa at the Café” — 129
“I Tell You It’s Love” — 139
“Dead Sister” — 145
“Booty and the Beast” — 169
“Boys Will Be Boys” — 187
“Billie Sue” — 207
“The Phone Woman” — 215
“Dirt Devils” — 231
“Drive in Date” — 249
“Rainy Weather” — 263
“Incident On and Off a Mountain Road” — 277
“The Projectionist” — 299

I’m fond of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (especially the 1996 film version starring:

When this local production of a musical version of Twelfth Night showed up, Diane and I went to see it. The musical opens with an accordion-playing Jester who sets the scene.

On Twelfth Night, Viola and Sebastian are young twins who are performing on a ship and use their likeness to entertain their audiences. During their journey, Viola and Sebastian are caught in a storm, shipwrecked, and separated. Viola and other survivors end up on the shore of Illyria. A devastated Viola believes her brother is dead. Viola decides to pretend she’s a young man and disguises hereself to join the court of the local Duke Orsino . Viola becomes a page, using the name “Cesario”.

Violia’s boss, Duke Orsino, is madly infatuated with Countess Olivia , who is in mourning due to her brother’s recent death. The Countess uses the tragedy as an excuse to avoid seeing the Duke, whom she does not love. The Duke sends Cesario to the Countess to do his wooing and Olivia falls in love with the messenger, unaware of Cesario’s real gender. Realizing Olivia’s feelings for her, Viola is caught in even more of a quandary when she realizes that she is now in love with her boss, Duke Orsino.

A lot of silliness follows as the plot moves toward a final resolution of the couples love interests. The music in this production had a jazzy flavor that fit the antics on the stage. Of course, for Shakespeare purists, this would be a travesty. But we enjoyed it. Are you a fan of Twelfth Night? GRADE: B

“There are thirty-two ways to write a story and I’ve used every one, but there is only one plot–things are not as they seem.”

The quote above by Jim Thompson kicks off a detailed survey of modern storytelling in books and movies. David Bordwell, Professor Emeritus of Film Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, seemingly has seen a thousand movies and still found time to read a couple thousand books. Perplexing Plots takes a roughly chronological approach at the beginning to describe the field of interest Bordwell wants to concentrate on: plot.

My favorite chapter in Perplexing Plots is Chapter 11: Donald Westlake and the Richard Stark Machine. Bordwell makes a distinction between the Donald Westlake comic capers and the “Richard Stark” serious caper novels. I had no idea that Westlake divided the Parker novels into four parts with Parker the focus of Part One and Part Four while Part Two or Part Three would be told through one of the other characters to provide a contrasting viewpoint. Westlake structured the plots of the Parker novels to give maximum flexibility. This gives Parker (and his heist accomplices) the options of not just knocking over armored cars, but a football game, a casino, a convention of coin collectors, an Air Force base, an African embassy, a rock concert, a revival meeting, a jewelry auction, and a rural race track (p. 346).

I also enjoyed the contrast of Erle Stanley Gardner’s plotting with Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe mysteries. Throughout Perplexing Plots Brodwell refers to Tarantino who seems to embody the kind of plotting Bordwell holds up as the Gold Standard.

“Why are hard-boiled plots so hard to follow, let alone remember? In part because of all the lying, but we get that in whodunits too. More markedly, hard-boiled plots tend to abandon the Gold Age tidiness of physical clues, timetables, and a closed circle of suspects. Instead we must keep track of secrets shared among a vast cast spread across an urban milieu.” (p. 200)

Perplexing Plots both delights and informs. I know you are all well versed in mystery novels and noir movies, but I can guarantee you will learn new facts about the plotting of those genres that will make you sit up and exclaim, “Wow! I didn’t know that!” Highly recommended! GRADE: A

Oh, and does anyone know which movie that cover photo came from? It’s only credited to 20th Century Fox.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Acknowledgments — xi
Introduction: Mass Art as Experimental Storytelling — 1
Part I
1. The Art Novel Meets 1910s Formalism — 29
2. Making Confusion Satisfactory: Modernism and Other Mysteries — 55
3. Churn and Consolidation: The 1940s and After — 81
Part II
4. The Golden Age Puzzle Plot: The Taste of the Construction — 119
5. Before the Fact: The Psychological Thriller — 157
6. Dark and Full of Blood: Hard-Boiled Detection — 194
7. The 1940s: Mysteries in Crossover Culture — 235
8. The 1940s: The Problem of Other Minds, or Just One — 261
Part III
9. The Great Detective Rewritten: Erle Stanley Gardner and Rex Stout — 285
10. Viewpoints, Narrow and Expansive: Patricia Highsmith and Ed McBain — 318
11. Donald Westlake and the Richard Stark Machine — 336
12. Tarantino, Twists, and the Persistence of Puzzles — 357
13. Gone Girls: The New Domestic Thriller — 382
Conclusion: The Power of Limits — 405
Notes — 413
Index — 467

Alex Pappademas and & Joan LeMay start Quantum Criminals by giving the origin story of Steely Dan beginning with Donald Fagan and Walter Becker meeting at Bard College as students in the 1960s. They began writing songs together and drifted into the music business. Fagan and Becker formed Steely Dan in 1971 and their first album, Can’t Buy a Thrill (1972), featured a blending of rock, jazz, Latin music, R&B, and blues. Both Fagan and Becker were perfectionists and brought a ultra-sophisticated studio production to their albums filled with songs with cryptic and ironic lyrics. Steely Dan achieved critical and commercial success through seven studio albums, peaking with their top-selling album Aja, released in 1977. The group disbanded in 1981 with a couple of reunion albums issued years later.

“They [Fagan & Becker] meet Roger Nicols, a studio engineer at ABC who tells an interviewer years later that he got into the technical aspect of recording music because ‘I hated clicks, pops and ticks on records.’ He’ll become their closest collaborator in the studio, a partner in perfectionism, the nearest thing to a third full-time contributor to the Steely Dan sound. ‘It wasn’t a drag for me to do things over and over until it was perfect, [which] would have driven a lot of other engineers up the wall,’ Nicols said. ‘In my own way, I’m just as crazy as they are.'” (p. 55)

Fagan and Becker’s obsessive natures became legionary. Donald Fagan mixed “Babylon Sisters” 250 times before he would let it go, just typical of the borderline-psychotic commitment to quality control (p. 181). The result was intricate songs that still thrill listeners today.

Pappademas and & LeMay pick over a dozen Steely Dan songs and describe how the song came about, who played on the songs–there are dozens of character sketches of the various musicians and singers who Fagan and Becker included on the various Steely Dan albums. One of my favorite Steely Dan songs is “Deacon Blues” so it was a delight to read about the musician who played the famous tenor saxophone solo:

“Donald and Walter first heard [Pete Christlieb] on the Tonight Show, playing in Doc Seversinsen’s band. ‘We did our best work behind the Alpo dog food commercials,’ Christlieb said. ‘I sold a lot of dog food.’ He dropped by one day after a Tonight Show taping and tried the solo twice; the second take is the one on the record. ‘I was gone in a half hour,’ Christlieb remembered in 2015. ‘The next thing I know I’m hearing myself in every airport bathroom in the world.'” (p. 184)

Hardcore Steely Dan aficionados will love Quantum Criminals with all the details about the two geniuses who devised this music and all the effort it took to produce their brilliant albums. Casual fans will also enjoy the humor and irony in the Steely Dan story. Steely Dan (aka, Donald Fagan–Walter Becker died in 2017 of cancer) is now touring with surviving members of The Eagles. GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

• 1. Jack — 1
• 2. Walter — 7
• 3. Donald — 19
• 4. King Richard/King John — 28
• 5. Lady Bayside — 33
• 6. Chino & Daddy Gee — 35
• 7. Michael/Jesus — 43
• 8. The Charmer — 48
• 9. The Fella in the White Tuxedo — 53
• 10. Dan — 58
• 11. David — 63
• 12. Mr. Whatever — 68
• 13. Louise — 77
• 14. Cathy — 78
• 15. The El Supremo — 83
• 16. The King of the World — 90
• 17. Rikki — 95
• 18. The Major Dude — 102
• 19. Mr. Parker — 107
• 20. Buzz — 110
• 21. Napoleon — 116
• 22. The Archbishop — 119
• 23. Dr. Wu — 124
• 24. Mr. LaPage — 127
• 25. Owsley — 131
• 26. A Bookkeeper’s Son — 136
• 27. The Eagles — 141
• 28. Babs & Clean Willie — 144
• 29. The Old Man — 149
• 30. Pepe — 152
• 31. A Wooly Man without a Face –156
• 32. Peg — 161
• 33. Sayoko — 166
• 34. The Expanding Man — 181
• 35. Broadway Duchess — 187
• 36. Josie — 190
• 37. The Babylon Sisters — 193
• 38. Hoops McCann/The Dread Moray Eel — 197
• 39. The Dandy of Gamma Chi/Aretha Franklin — 205
• 40. The Gaucho — 210
• 41. A Jolly Roger — 214
• 42. Third World Man — 217
• 43. Abbie/Dupree — 219
• 44. Franny from NYU — 227
• 45. Lizzie — 230
• 46. Jill — 235
• 47. Gina — 238
• 48. Dave from Acquisitions — 242
• 49. Daddy — 247
• Acknowledgements — 249
• Notes — 251

The first season of Good Omens (you can read my review here) was based entirely on Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s international best-selling novel Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (1990), and was dedicated to stopping the Apocalypse. 

It’s been four years since Good Omens, Season One showed up on AMAZON Prime Video. This Second Season has Neil Gaiman extending what he and Pratchett set up with the battles between Hell and Heaven. One thing that hasn’t changed in that time is the chemistry between leads David Tennant and Michael Sheen. Tennant plays the demon Crowley who’s dissatisfied with Hell, and Sheen plays Aziraphale, an angel who is dissatisfied with Heaven. Together, the demon and the angel work to save the Earth (and the Universe).

The Major Conundrum is the appearance in Aziraphale’s bookstore of the Archangel Gabriel (Jon Hamm). But Gabriel has lost his memories and Aziraphale investigates why that happened. Meanwhile, Crowley gets involved in matchmaking the woman who who runs the nearby coffee shop with the woman who runs the nearby record shop. Three Nazi zombies wander around as well as 70 demons who attack the bookshop. However, the six episodes of Good Omens 2 drag. Plenty of meandering subplots and tedium. Don’t waste your time (like I did) on this disappointment. GRADE: D (for dull)

A few weeks ago I posted about Jonathan Latimer’s The Fifth Grave (you can read my review here). In his comment on my review, Art Scott mentioned that his favorite Jonathan Latimer mystery was Lady in the Morgue (1936;  filmed 1938 (aka The Case of the Missing Blonde in the UK); Preston Foster as Crane). I decided to reread Lady in the Morgue and then reread my favorite Jonathan Latimer mystery, Headed for a Hearse (1935; filmed 1937 as The Westland Case; Preston Foster as Crane).

One reason I’m fond of Headed for a Hearse is the relentless pressure Latimer puts on the plot and the characters. At the center of the story is a locked room mystery involving Chicago stockbroker Robert Westland, who has been convicted of the murder of his estranged wife. Sentenced to the electric chair and with only six days left to establish his innocence. Westland hires criminal lawyer Charles Finklestein, who in turn hires two agency detectives from New York: William Crane and ‘Doc’ Williams. Latimer keeps the countdown to the execution in the forefront of the action.

The evidence against Westland is that his wife’s body was found shot in a locked apartment to which only Westland and his wife had keys. Westland had been decoyed there on the night of the murder by a phone call that seemed at first to have come from his fiancée, Emily Lou Martin. Additional evidence was that neighbors beneath the Westland apartment, heard a shot at the time of the killing. The weapon used was a wartime Webley pistol of a type owned by Westland, which has now disappeared from his desk. The evidence seems damning but William Crane, Latimer’s brilliant investigator finds some clues that lead to a final confrontation just minutes before the scheduled execution (with a little manipulation by Crane). I just love the suspense in this mystery! GRADE: A

Lady in the Morgue is nearly as good. The corpse of a young woman disappears from the morgue and William Crane, while initially baffled by the incident, slowly reveals what happened to the missing corpse and the hijinks behind the wickedly clever plot. If you’re in the mood for some classic mysteries that will test your detection skills, give Headed for a Hearse and Lady in the Morgue and try and learn why Jonathan Latimer is one of the great underrated genre writers! GRADE: A-

The Hard to Find 45s on CD initially began as a compilation series collecting songs that appeared on 45s back in the 1960s. After a few volumes, the series branched out to include songs from a time when 45s were disappearing. You have to take “Seventies Pop Classics” with a grain of salt when you consider the 20 songs on this CD. Perhaps “Songs Not Heard Much Any More” would be a better subtitle.

There’s “Kung Fu Fighting” by Carl Douglas which hit Number One in October 1974. Marlyn McCoo & Billy Davis, Jr.’s “You to Have to Be a Star (To Be in My Show) was their first single after they left The Fifth Dimension. I’ve always liked Jennifer Warnes “Right Time of the Night.” And Bob Welch’s “Ebony Eyes.”

Do you remember some of these obscure hits? Any favorites? GRADE: B

TRACK LIST:

David J. Schow’s detailed Introduction gives us the basic arc of Charles Beaumont’s writing career. Beaumont was a workaholic and wrote over a 100 short stories until he died in 1967 at the age of 38. Ray Bradbury wrote this insightful comment on Beaumont for The Magic Man (Fawcett, 1965): “Some writers are one idea people. Other writers, far rarer, far wilder, are pomegranates. They bust with seed. Charles has always been a pomegranate writer. You simply never know where his love and high excitement will take him next.”

I’ve read some of Charles Beaumont’s short story collections back in the 1960s. But most of you will recognize Beaumont for his stories filmed for The Twilight Zone: “The Howling Man“, “Static“, “Miniature“, “Printer’s Devil“, and “Number Twelve Looks Just Like You“, but also penned the screenplays for several films, such as 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, The Intruder, and The Masque of the Red Death.

The Carnival and Other Stories (Subterranean, 2022) opens with a “deal with the Devil” story, “The Devil, You Say?” I enjoyed Beaumont’s comic pastiche of the Mike Hammer novels in “The Last Caper.” And I was amused by “The Love Master” and “Genevieve, My Genevieve” that were published in Rogue, a men’s magazine that featured “spicy” stories. What you will find in any Beaumont short story collection is a variety of stories, all completely different. If you’re looking for a master short story writer, the prove is in The Carnival and Other Stories. GRADE: A

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: The Return of the Magic Man by David J. Schow — 7
• The Devil, You Say? — 23
• Elegy — 51
• The Last Caper — 61
• Mass for Mixed Voices — 73
• Hair of the Dog — 87
• The Quadriopticon — 103
• The Love-Master — 129
• A World of Differents — 139
• Anthem — 147
• Mother’s Day — 163
• The Trigger — 177
• Genevieve, My Genevieve — 193
• Buck Fever — 207
• Dead You Know — 219
• Mourning Song — 227
• Something in the Earth — 241
• Insomnia Vobiscum — 253
• My Grandmother’s Japonicas — 257
• Appointment with Eddie — 269
• The Carnival — 287
• The Crime of Willie Washington — 305
• The Man with the Crooked Nose — 321
• The Wages of Cynicism — 333
• The Child — 337
• The Life of the Party — 359
• Beast of the Glacier  — 367

I enjoyed the first season of Foundation (you can read my review here). I loved Isaac Asimov’s trilogy when I was a kid. When I reread The Foundation Trilogy decades later, I was surprised by how chatty it was. The folks behind this TV series have transformed Asimov’s cerebral classic into more of an action series. The first season set up the galactic Empire setting and now in the second season, the Foundation has to deal with a mutant who can totally disrupt the Plan to spare humanity thousands of years of barbarism.

Hari Seldon’s (Jared Harris) entire Plan of Psychohistory to reset the Empire after an anticipated Dark Age is predicated on the movement of the masses, not on individuals. Nevertheless, that notion is challenged throughout season 2 when the Plan meets its second Crisis Point.

Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell), Hari Seldon’s former student, becomes obsessed with stopping a threat from 150 years into the future called The Mule. Goal and Salvor (Leah Harvey) try to connect as recently united mother and daughter, even as they attempt to follow Seldon’s instructions for establishing a Second Foundation to stop the Plan from failure.

Llobell and Harvey are compelling as Gaal and Salvor as their characters’ journeys stress each of them. Hari Seldon gets a bigger role this season as the Plan is threatened. Harris engages the audience as more of Hari’s backstory is revealed. Hari Seldon struggles with the consequences his actions have on the people dedicating their lives to a future they’ll never see but only dream about. 

I’ve watched the three episodes (of 10) that are available right now (new episodes drop on Fridays) but I’m totally hooked! GRADE: INCOMPLETE (but trending towards an A-)

Katy Hessel’s The Story of Art Without Men covers artwork from 1500 to the present and introduces the reader to Artemisia Gentileschi, Frida Kahlo, Wilma af Kline, Tracey Amin, Kara Walker, Elisabetta Sirani, Marie Denise Villers, Lady Butler, and dozens of women artists.

I liked the book’s traditional chronological approach to women artists over the centuries. Hessel points out a number of “firsts” achieved by women artists: Lavinia Fontana is considered to be the first woman in Western art to paint female nudes in 1595; Alma Thomas is the first African American woman to achieve a solo exhibition at the Whitney in 1972; “A Lesbian Show” was the first all-lesbian art show in the U.S. (held in New York City in 1978).

If you’re interested in Art History, you’ll love Katy Hessel’s The Story of Art Without Men. With over 300 images, this book is a feast for the eyes! Do you have a favorite female artist? GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Part one: paving the way c.1500-c.1900

Chapter 1: Painting herself into the canon — 19

Chapter 2: Looking to a heroic past — 52

Chapter 3: From Realism to Spiritualism — 69

Part two: what made art modern c.1870-c.1950

Chapter 4: War, identity and the Paris avant-garde — 110

Chapter 5: The aftermath of the First World War — 156

Chapter 6: Modernism in the Americas — 188

Chapter 7: War and the rise of new methods and media — 208

Part three: postwar women c.1949-c.1970

Chapter 8: The great era of experimentalism — 236

Chapter 9: Political change and new abstractions — 262

Chapter 10: The body — 298

Chapter 11: Weaving new traditions — 312

Part four: taking ownership 1970-2000

Chapter 12: The era of feminism — 327

Chapter 13: The 1980s — 355

Chapter 14: The 1990s — 374

Chapter 15: Radical change in Britain — 392

Part five: still writing 2000-present

Chapter 16: Decolonising narratives and reworking traditions — 414

Chapter 17: Figuration in the twenty-first century — 432

Chapter 18: The 2020s — 452

Glossary — 460

Timeline —462

List of Illustrations and Photographic Acknowledgements — 500

Acknowledgements — 505

About the Author — 507

INDEX — 508