Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments is the second book in the Edinburgh Nights series. You can read my review of the first book, Library of the Dead, here. These books are narrated by Ropa Moyo who has the ability to speak with ghosts. She’s a struggling teenager in Edinburgh, Scotland who supports her aging grandmother and younger sister by delivering messages to and from ghosts.
Because of the events in Library of the Dead, Ropa becomes the intern in Magic to Sir Callander, Edinburgh’s most powerful magician. But, since the internship doesn’t pay any money, Ropa takes on a case at the magical hospital Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments. Two students are in mysterious comas and Ropa is hired to find how how that happened…and how to reverse their conditions.
So, basically, Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments is a detective novel as Ropa and her friends follow the clues and use their magical powers to discover a secret society of Monks and users of Dark Magic.
Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments is perfect for Summer Reading. I suspect the target market is the Young Adult market, but I enjoyed the twisty plot and off-beat characters, too. GRADE: B
Burt Wulff, Barry N. Malzberg’s agent of vengeance on the drug trade, extends his violent damage in Havana Hit and Chicago Slaughter. Wulff, obsessed with avenging the death of his fiancé by targeting the operations of the drug cartels, travels from city to city as an agent of destruction.
Yes, Wulff’s attempts at exterminating the drug gangs resemble Whack-A-Mole. As Wulff’s brand of carnage captures many of the elements of the 1970s: corrupt politics, sluggish economy, and increasing number of Americans turning to drugs to deal with Nixonian Reality.
Havana Hit continues the Wulff’s violent adventures from Desert Stalker. Martin Wulff is flying out of Las Vegas on route to NYC with a valise full of heroin worth over a million dollars. Somehow this heroin was removed from the NYPD evidence room and got into the hands of organized drug traffickers. And during his last escapade in Vegas, Wulff went on a killing spree and blew up a hotel casino to get it back. No TSA and drug-sniffing dogs back in 1974!
The plane Wulff is on is hijacked and forced to land in Cuba. Taken into custody by a Cuba official named Delgado, Wulff’s valise is seized and he is sent to be executed. Delgado plans to keep the uncut heroin, sell it, and leave Cuba to live it up. But of course Wulff escapes and sets out to get the valise back again.
With a little help from a cowardly American helicopter pilot, Wulff kills Delgado along with scores of other people and destroys the headquarters building. But the valise of heroin isn’t there. Delgado turned it over to DiStasio, who is the head of Cuban Intelligence. DiStasio has the same plan as Delgado had, take the heroin and get out of Cuba. More mayhem results! GRADE: B
In his Afterward to Chicago Slaughter, Barry N. Malzberg writes about hitting his stride in this book, the sixth in the series (with 8 novels to go in The Lone Wolf series): “It was stern and flagrant impetus as Chicago Slaughter burned on, as Nixon flailed at the release of the tapes, as Goldwater and several grim accounting Republican Senators trudged upstairs to deliver Tchaikovsky the news.” (p. 227)
Chicago Slaughter takes The Lone Wolf series to a whole new level of corruption with Wulff dealing with the Mob and dirty cops…debasement caused by the drug trade. Malzberg creates a world slipping into double-dealing, decay, and festering immorality. And Wulff’s strategy–burn it all down–doesn’t seem so strange. Don’t miss this one! GRADE: A
In July of 1972, Curtis Mayfield’s soundtrack to the movie Superfly became a landmark in exposing the threat of drugs to the Black Community. A year after Marvin Gaye’s What’s Goin’ On, Mayfield’s songs on Superfly showed how the impact of heroin, cocaine, and the rampant abuse of other drugs resulted in significant deadly repercussions on Inner City residents.
Marc Myers of the Wall Street Journal recently wrote about this iconic album:
In December 1971, Curtis Mayfield was movin’ on up. After 10 years of writing and recording hits for the Impressions, such as “Keep on Pushing,” “People Get Ready” and “We’re a Winner,” the lead singer caught a big break. He was approached backstage after a solo concert at New York’s Philharmonic Hall by a screenwriter and film producer who invited him to write and record the soundtrack for a feature film called “Superfly.”
Jetting home to Chicago the next day, Mayfield leafed through the script about a Harlem drug dealer’s struggle to quit the business and sketched out several songs. But when Mayfield saw the film’s rushes a short time later, he recounted in Peter Burns’s 2003 biography, the movie had become a “cocaine infomercial.” Rather than quit, he wrote lyrics that exposed what the film ignored—the punishing impact of drugs on black inner-city neighborhoods and families.
When Mayfield’s “Superfly” soundtrack was released 50 years ago, in July 1972, a month before the film’s debut, the music was smarter and more sophisticated than the movie itself. The record spent four weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s album chart, sold a half-million copies in two months and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998, a year before Mayfield’s death. It also inspired soul albums to address the deterioration of black urban life. The record’s sales were remarkable given that “Superfly” played like a public-service ad. For the soundtrack, Mayfield had created a series of soft-funk hope songs designed to counter the movie’s glamorization of cocaine and the playboy lifestyle of dealers.
The album arrived at a pivotal moment in black music. It came out two years after Mayfield’s first solo album, “Curtis” (1970)—a socially conscious record that predated Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” and Gil Scott-Heron’s “Pieces of a Man” (both 1971). In turn, “Superfly” set the tone for message albums by artists such as Stevie Wonder, Lou Bond and Sam Dees.
As for black film, the so-called blaxploitation genre had just emerged in Hollywood with the success of Melvin Van Peebles’s “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” and Gordon Parks’s “Shaft” in 1971. Both featured black leading actors and casts taking on police corruption and, in the case of “Shaft,” organized crime’s grip on black communities.
Growing up in Chicago, Mayfield had witnessed the corrosive effects of drug and alcohol addiction and thought “Superfly” required a fresh approach to lyric writing. “General statements [in songs] are all very well,” Mayfield told British journalist Roger St. Pierre in 1972, “but [if you] fit the statement into a personal context which the listener can place himself into, you have something with much more impact.”
Shot on location and directed by Gordon Parks Jr. , son of the “Shaft” director, “Superfly” provides a fascinating pigeon’s-eye view of a crumbling New York on the cusp of recession. While the film today sags under the weight of wooden acting, clichéd dialogue and stereotypes, Mayfield’s songs and cooing falsetto remain exceptional.
The record’s orchestral drama was created by Johnny Pate, a leading Chicago jazz-soul producer and arranger who had worked with Mayfield and the Impressions since 1963 and gave their hits and albums a brassy urgency.
“Superfly” opens with organ chords, a restless conga and wailing electric guitar on “Little Child Runnin’ Wild.” Mayfield’s lyrics address the demand side of the drug epidemic: “Broken home / Father gone / Mama tired / So he’s all alone . . . Don’t care what nobody say / I got to take the pain away / It’s getting worser day by day / And all my life has been this way.”
The supply side comes next on “Pusherman,” and features Joseph “Lucky” Scott’s funky electric bass line, which captures the dealer’s seductive personality: “Want some coke? Have some weed / You know me, I’m your friend / Your main boy, thick and thin / I’m your pusherman.”
Supply and demand collide on the third track, “Freddie’s Dead.” The hit song features a catchy bass riff with a flute on top, strings and fuzz guitar—all reminiscent of Isaac Hayes’s “Theme From Shaft”: “Everybody’s misused him / Ripped him up and abused him / Another junkie plan / Pushin’ dope for the man.”
“Eddie You Should Know Better” chastises the dealer’s partner, who doesn’t want to quit: “Must be something that’s freezin’ his mind / That has made him, through greed, so very blind / And I don’t think he’s gonna make it this time.”
Musically, “No Thing on Me (Cocaine Song)” is reminiscent of Gaye’s “Mercy Mercy Me”—a lush, upbeat recap, with the lead character finally free of dealing: “I’m so glad I’ve got my own / So glad that I can see / My life’s a natural high.”
The album ends with the track “Superfly,” which hammers home why a dealer is a predator, not a patron: “This cat of the slum / Had a mind, wasn’t dumb / But a weakness was shown / ’Cause his hustle was wrong.”
Despite its inability to eliminate the drug culture, “Superfly” is one of the finest expressions of social-realist messaging in a soul soundtrack. In the years that followed, the album became a model for dozens of blaxploitation film scores, yet none of them could top Mayfield’s sincerity, empathy or success.
—Mr. Myers is the author of “Rock Concert: An Oral History as Told by the Artists, Backstage Insiders and Fans Who Were There” (Grove Press).
I was very moved the first time I heard “Freddie’s Dead” on the radio in 1972. Curtis Mayfield’s music was ground-breaking for the early Seventies. But, 50 years later, we’re still battling the destruction drug abuse inflicts on our society. And more Freddies are dead. GRADE: A
I’ve been reading Matthew Hughes’s delightful Jack Vance Dying Earth pastiches for over 20 years. Hughes created a number of characters like Luff Imbry, a master thief who can steal just about anything to generate the funds that allow him to indulge in his obsession for exquisite food. Imbry’s adventures in “Arboghasz Dal Xander Rides Again” display his cleverness and cognitive skills. It’s my favorite story in Mixed Bag (2022), Matthew Hughes’s latest Print on Demand volume available on AMAZON (there’s also an e-book).
Other Old Earth stories in Mixed Bag include “The Friends of Masquelayne the Incomparable” that features a battle of wizards. I enjoyed “Hapthorn’s Last Case” where a mystery is solved while Reality is being transformed. Erm Kaslo, Hughes’s Sam Spade of the Future, plies his investigative skills in “Thunderstone” and “The BiColor Spiral.”
Mixed Bag delivers plenty of thrills, sly humor, and detection. Perfect Summer Reading! GRADE: B+
“Star Trek: No Man’s Land is a rich, fully dramatized Star Trek: Picard adventure as Michelle Hurd and Jeri Ryan pick up their respective characters once more. Written for audio by Kirsten Beyer, a cocreator, writer, and producer on the hit Paramount+ series Star Trek: Picard, and Mike Johnson, a veteran contributor to the Star Trek comic books publishing program, this audio original offers consummate Star Trek storytelling brilliantly reimagined for the audio medium.
In addition to riveting performances from Hurd and Ryan exploring new layers of Raffi and Seven’s relationship, Star Trek: No Man’s Land features a full cast of actors playing all-new characters in the Star Trek: Picard universe, including Fred Tatasciore, Jack Cutmore-Scott, John Kassir, Chris Andrew Ciulla, Lisa Flanagan, Gibson Frazier, Lameece Issaq, Natalie Naudus, Xe Sands, and Emily Woo Zeller, and is presented in a soundscape crackling with exclusive Star Trek sound effects. Drawing listeners into a dramatic, immersive narrative experience that is at once both instantly familiar and spectacularly new, Star Trek: No Man’s Land goes boldly where no audio has gone before as fans new and old clamor to discover what happens next. “
I found Star Trek Picard: No Man’s Land a mixed bag. Michelle Hurd (Raffi) and Jeri Ryan (Seven of Nine) sound great! Raffi and Seven of Nine get involved in a Romulan scheme to find immortality. This audio drama has plenty of cool sound effects–phaser blasts, alarms, and pounding background music–but there’s a soapy love story subplot. If you can put up with the mushy stuff, the adventure and excitement should entertain you. GRADE: B
Put Agatha Christie and Ed McBain and John Le Carre in a blender and the result will be Peter Spiegelman’s astonishing A Secret About a Secret (2022). Set in a creepy rural campus of what was a private school in England, the shadowy Ondstrand Biologic company alerts the Government when one of its key researchers, the beautiful Dr. Allegra Stans, is discovered dead in a walk-in refrigerator.
Because of the secret projects at Ondstrand Biologic, the murder is not reported to the local police. Instead, an agent of the dreaded Standard Division arrives to investigate the murder. Agent Myles starts by putting together a profile of the murdered scientist. Allegra Stans was a brilliant, gifted researcher who also was an obsessive runner. She formed a runners club and other scientists joined. Allegra Stans slept with many of the members of the runners club. Myles discovers a trail of ex-lovers–some who loved Allegra…and some who hated her.
Learning what Allegra Stans did a Ondstrand Biologic proves problematic. The high security of the campus provides Myles will plenty of documentation and video of the comings and goings of various staff members. But, nothing shows how Allegra entered the building on the morning she was murdered.
Myles also finds clues that suggest Allegra Stans engaged in suspicious activity after she was transferred to a different lab in Ondstrand Biologic seven months before she was killed.
You can read A Secret About a Secret as a police procedural or a spy novel–it has elements of both. The plot includes some of Agatha Christie’s tricks so you’ll be mislead by red herrings more that once (I was!). I’m hoping Peter Spiegelman writes more novels featuring Agent Myles who possesses elements of Hercule Poirot and Jack Reacher. A Secret About a Secret is the best mystery I’ve read this year! GRADE: A
Diane saw the book review of Breadsong in BookPage and then Diane and I watched the feature on CBS Saturday Morning about Breadsong and the story behind it the next day. Kitty Tait was suffering from depression. Her father, Al Tait, left his job to take care of her. Kitty then discovered the joy of baking bread and her father encouraged her to consider becoming a baker. Check out the video below.
The result of all this baking is both a book–Breadsong–and a store that sells the bread that Kitty Tait bakes. Breadsong tells Kitty and Al’s story and then includes delicious recipes for all sorts of bread and tasty baked treats. We found this story inspiring and the bread…wonderful! Are you a fan of baking your own bread? GRADE: A
The Gray Man is based on Mark Greaney’s series about a CIA assassin, Courtland Gentry (aka, Six) (Ryan Gosling). Gentry is recruited to join the super secret Sierra group (where the agents have Numbers) by the CIA’s Donald Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton). Fast-forward 18 years and Gentry is on a mission to kill a man who he later discovers is a member of the Sierra group. Four, before he dies, warns Gentry that the CIA will kill him next. Then Four gives Gentry a MacGuffin and the chase is on!
Gentry’s boss, Denny Carmichael (Rege-Jean Page), brings in a sadistic sociopathic killer, Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans, aka Captain America), to kill Gentry and retrieve the McGuffin–no expenses spared!
Some of the reviews I’ve read of The Gray Man questioned Netflix’s decision to spend $200 million dollars on this movie. I can testify that at least $100 million was spent on the incredible fire-fight in a European city that causes mass casualties and colossal destruction. The airplane scene must have cost a pretty penny, too!
I was also impressed that Ryan Gosling channelled ultra-violent John Wick in many of the fight scenes that featured hand-to-hand combat and close range shooting. I was less impressed that Anthony and Joe Russo (Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame) wasted Jessica Henwick (as CIA agent Suzanne Brewer) and Gentry’s sometime savior, Ana de Armas (agent Dani Miranda). Hopefully, they will get more screen time in a sequel.
If you’re in the mood for a Summer pop-corn action-movie, The Gray Man–despite the dreadful title–delivers almost non-stop thrills and a large body count. GRADE: A-
After Robert E. Howard’s iconic Conan the Barbarian, my favorite mystical warrior is Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane. Wagner burst on the scene in the 1970s and appealed to the audience that had read all the Conan books and were looking for something similar in that genre.
Sword and Sorcery became a publishing category. Fritz Leiber energized the genre with his Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series. Michael Moorcock unleaded Elric, the albino with the hungry sword, John Jakes had some success with his Brak the Barbarian books that were pastiches of Conan. But Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane extended the limits of Sword and Sorcery.
Kane is both a warrior and a sorcerer. Kane doesn’t have Conan’s distain for magic, he embraces it. In a series of three novels and about 20 short stories published between 1970 and 1985, Wagner established Kane as a character in Conan’s class.
Sadly, Karl Edward Wagner died in his home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on October 14, 1994, essentially due to the effects of his longterm alcoholism. But, Wagner created a bold character who can still be enjoyed today. Are you a fan of Sword and Sorcery? GRADE: A
THE KANE SERIES:
Novels:
Bloodstone (1975): In the treasure captured during a savage raid, Kane discovers a powerful relic.
Dark Crusade (1976): Kane encounters an ancient cult of evil, and its power-hungry leader.
Darkness Weaves (1978) (editorially altered abridgement published in 1970 as “Darkness Weaves With Many Shades”): The mad sorceress Efrel seeks war and revenge upon her erstwhile husband, king Netisten Maril, and enlists Kane as her general in command of an army of mercenaries and monsters.
Story collections:
Death Angel’s Shadow (1973)
“Reflections for the Winter of My Soul”: Kane encounters a shapeshifting enemy who knows him (sequel to Dark Crusade).
“Cold Light”: A knight forms a band of crusaders and mercenaries, in a quest to find and kill Kane.
“Mirage”: Kane meets another immortal and discovers that death isn’t the answer to his problems.
Night Winds (1978)
“Undertow”: A mistress of Kane seeks to escape from him with the aid of a young barbarian.
“Two Suns Setting”: In a stony desert, Kane encounters the last of an elder race.
“The Dark Muse”: Kane’s poet friend takes inspiration from a journey into chaos.
“Raven’s Eyrie”: A previous victim of Kane plans to send his soul to hell.
“Lynortis Reprise”: The survivors of a bloody siege meet a betrayer.
“Sing a Last Song of Valdese”: A mutilated wizard takes his revenge.
The Book of Kane (1985)
“Reflections for the Winter of My Soul”
“Sing a Last Song of Valdese”
“Raven’s Eyrie”
“Misericorde”: Kane enters the keep of the cruel Vareishei clan.
“The Other One”: The gods are sometimes merciful, while Kane is less so.
Other tales:
Kane also appears in “Lacunae”, collected in Why Not You and I? (1987), and in “At First Just Ghostly”, “Deep in the Depths of the Acme Warehouse”, and “The Gothic Touch” (which features Michael Moorcock‘s Elric of Melniboné), collected in Exorcisms and Ecstasies (1997). This volume also includes the fragment “In the Wake of the Night” and an early version of “Lynortis Reprise”.
Perhaps MJ: The Musical will show up next year with a touring company. Jukebox musicals tend to be popular with regional theater audiences. Are you a fan of Michael Jackson’s music? GRADE: B+
