After dispatching a poor New York Jets team, the Buffalo Bills face a tougher divisional opponent in the Miami Dolphins. The Bills are favored by 3 points. Both teams have significant injuries. How will your favorite NFL team preform today?
Susanna Lee’s Detectives in the Shadows: A Hard-Boiled History starts with Carroll John Daly’s “The False Burton Combs,” first published in 1922 in Black Mask and moves on to Daly’s next story Black Mask story, “Three-Gun Terry,” featuring Terry Mack, a detective. But it was the 1923 story, “Knight of the Open Palm,” that introduced the world to Race Williams and true hard-boiled detectives.
Less hard-boiled but just as tough as Race Williams was Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op. Black Mask launched the first installment of Red Harvest in it’s November 1927 issue. A few years later, Raymond Chandler’s short stories appeared and found their way into book form like The Big Sleep (1939), Farewell, My Lovely (1940), High Window (1942), The Lady in the Lake (1943), The Little Sister (1949), and The Long Goodbye (1953).
Susanna Lee explores the long career of Mickey Spillane starting with I, the Jury (1947), My Gun is Quick (1950), Vengeance Is Mine (1950), One Lonely Night (1951), The Big Kill (1951), and Kiss Me, Deadly (1952). Mike Hammer is the quintessential hard-boiled detective who shoots first and asks questions later.
Things became a bit more complicated (and more sophisticated) when Ross Macdonald and Robert Parker showed up with their more modern detectives. Lee writes about TV detectives–James Rockford and Harry O–but ignores the dozens of series detectives that filled the airwaves in the 1960s and 1970s. My only quibble about Detectives in the Shadows: A Hard-Boiled History is that many paperback detectives–Mike Shayne, Shell Scott, Johnny Liddell–are left out of this book. Maybe they’ll show up in the sequel. Who’s your favorite detective? GRADE: B+
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction. A Silhouette 1
Chapter One. Arriving on the Scene 11
Chapter Two. A Moral Compass 51
Chapter Three. A Rugged Individual 85
Chapter Four. A Lone Wolf 123
Chapter Five. A Person of Honor 149
Appendix: Selected Authors’ Fictional Works 169
Notes 183
Bibliography 199
Index 209
I like to listen to Joe Cocker occasionally. His gravelly voice isn’t conducive to lengthy listening, but in small doses I find Cocker’s singing enjoyable. Organic was released in 1996 and I’d classify this CD as “mellow.” Randy Newman plays on it and so does Billy Preston. Cocker does a nice job covering songs like “Into the Mystic” and “Don’t Let Me be Misunderstood” (with a reggae arrangement).
My favorite song on this CD is “Can’t Find My Way Home,” the Steve Winwood classic. But there’s plenty to like on this collection of cover songs. Are you a fan of any of these songs? GRADE: B+
TRACK LIST:
You’ll find some very strange short stories in Angela Slatter’s The Heart is a Mirror for Sinners and Other Stories. Being a fan of Lovecraft’s work, I enjoyed “Reading Off the Curriculum” which features a conniving student who decides he can use The Necronomicon without his professor’s approval. “Lavinia’s Wood” takes Lavina Whatley from Lovecraft’s famous story, “The Dunwich Horror,” and gives her a new eerie story.
Jack the Ripper stories have mined most of the possibilities of that tale, but Angela Slatter decided to see what would happen if a woman explored the Ripper case. “Ripper” presents a different kind of of investigator with surprising results. “Ripper” is the longest story in the book and takes its time to unfold with unpredictable results.
I also enjoyed Slatter’s “Author’s Notes” where she writes about how each story in The Heart is a Mirror for Sinners and Other Stories came about and what effects she was trying to achieve. Angela Slatter is certainly a new author to keep an eye on. I’ll be buying her next book. GRADE: B+
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Previous Publication Credits xi
Introduction 1
The Soldier 5
Egyptian Revival 21
Neither Time nor Tears 49
No Good Deed 65
The Little Mermaid, in Passing 87
But for an I. 97
Ripper 119
Better Angels 211
The Heart is a Mirror for Sinners 225
Our Lady of Wicker Bridge 239
Reading Off the Curriculum 255
Change Management 267
Lavinia’s Wood 281
Finnegan’s Field 295
Author’s Notes 327
I enjoyed the Miss Fisher series on PBS and now a DVD of Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears showed up at my local Public Library. Miss Fisher is a wealthy woman who loves to investigate crimes. She also packs a gun.
Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears feels more like an Indiana Jones movie as Miss Fisher (Essie Davis as Phryne Fisher) gets involved in an investigation into a village that was destroyed by a sandstorm. Miss Fisher helps to rescue a young Bedouin girl called Shirin from imprisonment in 1920s Jerusalem. Then, of course, a couple of murders occur and Miss Fisher finds herself embroiled in a complicated plot.
If you’re looking for some light entertainment, you’ll enjoy Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Fears and the Miss Fisher TV series. GRADE: B+
The first thing you’ll notice while reading My Life As A Villainess is the many missing letters. You’ll be reading one of Laura Lippman’s essays and you’ll see “…even if their partner is under twenty fi e.” (p. 62). Every few pages, words will be missing letters which becomes annoying.
If you can get over the missing letters, you’ll find a range of essays where Laura Lippman writes about her life and her career. Lippman worked as a reporter for 20 years so there are some great War Stories about her former profession. I was interested in Lippman’s transition from a reporter to full-time writer. I found these essays revealing and compelling. GRADE: B+
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction: The Accidental Essayist – 1
Part I: Game of Crones
The whole 60 — 9
Game of crones — 28
Natural selection — 48
The art of losing friends and alienating people — 67
Part II: This be the other verse
My father’s bar — 91
The thirty-first stocking — 99
Swing, interrupted — 111
Revered ware — 118
Part III: My life as a villainess
The Waco kid — 125
Tweety bird — 149
My life as a villainess — 164
Part IV: Genius
A fine bromance — 179
Saving Mrs. Banks — 202
My brilliant friend — 223
Men explain The wire to me — 243
Acknowledgments — 269
Credits –271
These has to be the weirdest start to an NFL season ever! No OTA’s, no Pre-season games, little hype, and a constant worry that a Covid-19 outbreak could cancel the season.
The Buffalo Bills face the New York Jets in their home opener. Rain is in the forecast. No fans in the stands. The Bills are 6 1/2 point favorites, but who knows what will happen under these bizarre conditions. How will your favorite NFL team fare today?
In 1980, Diane and I bought a new Magtag washer. The Maytag washer worked tirelessly and reliably for 40 years. We only had repairmen come out a couple times to fix minor problems. But, with the Second Wave of the coronavirus about to hit, Diane decided she wanted a new clothes washer instead of dealing with any potential problems a 40-year-old appliance would present during a pandemic.
The last time we had the Magtag serviced a few years ago, we asked the repairman what washer should we consider if we wanted to replace the Magtag. “I would recommend a Speed Queen washer,” he said. “They’re the closest thing to these old Maytag washers around.”
Since we hadn’t used the Government Stimulus Debit Card yet, Diane and I decided to buy the new Speed Queen washer with Government money. How are you and your washer getting along?
Here’s another book I’ve had on my shelves for decades. I bought The Virgin & The Wheels (1976) because of the cool wrap-around cover by Don Maitz. The Virgin & The Wheels consists of two novellas: “The Virgin of Zesh” and “The Wheels of If.”
“The Virgin of Zesh” is the fourth book of de Camp’s Viagens Interplanetarias series and the third of its sub-series of stories set on the fictional planet of Krishna. Chronologically, it is the fifth Krishna novella. Originally published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, February 1953, “The Virgin of Zesh” tells the story of Earth missionary Althea Merrick, who is stranded on the planet Krishna and fleeing from an unconsummated marriage to a corrupt and cruel Viagens Interplanetarias official. Merrick joins a scientist and poet who travel to a utopian Terran colony on the island of Zesh. Of course, many things go wrong. Althea Merrick finds her faith shaken by events. GRADE: B+
“The Wheels of If” is an alternate history science fiction story first published in the magazine Unknown Fantasy Fiction for October, 1940. “The Wheels of If” first appeared in book form in de Camp’s collection The Wheels of If and Other Science Fiction (1948). Lawyer Alister Park finds himself in alternate histories and needs to solve the puzzle of how to get back to his own time-line. GRADE: B
The Virgin & The Wheels collects two entertaining novellas from de Camp’s early writing career. If you’re looking for fun and diversion, here it is.