It’s hard to believe Long Long Road (2026) is Ringo Starr’s 22nd album. Paul McCartney has released 27 albums since the Beatles broke up–with Wings and his solo work.

Ringo Starr, with assistance from T Bone Burnett (as producer, player, and songwriter) on 2025’s Look Up album resulted in an unexpected critical and commercial hit for the ex-Beatle. Although Ringo had been recording well-received albums in a pop/rock genre for the decades, the success of Look Up practically guaranteed that a follow-up album was inevitable.

Long Long Road continues Ringo’s country-infused sound. T Bone Burnett brought along many of the same hand-picked backing players and guests (Molly Tuttle and Billy Strings) from his past albums. That explains why the sound of Starr’s Long Long Road is scintillating. The ten dynamic performances were mostly written or co-composed by Burnett (Ringo is co-credited with three).

It’s hard to believe that at 85, Ringo sounds just like he did warbling “Don’t Pass Me By,” “This Boy,” “Octopus’s Garden” and a handful of other Beatle tunes a half-century ago. Ringo’s affable, easygoing, pleasant vocals are genial, upbeat, and fun to listen to.

My favorite tunes on Long Long Road are “It’s Been Too Long” and “Returning Without Tears”–a duet with Molly Tuttle. But all the songs are very listenable with great sound.

I’ve always considered Ringo Starr an underrated performer. Long Long Road shows that Ringo is better than you thought. Are you a Ringo fan? GRADE: B+

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TRACK LIST:

Returning Without Tears
Baby Don’t Go
I Don’t See Me In Your Eyes Anymore
It’s Been Too Long
Why
You and I (Wave of Love)
My Baby Don’t Want Nothing
Choose Love
She’s Gone
Long Long Road

I have a weakness for Lovecraft pastiches. And I also have a weakness for Sherlock Holmes pastiches. Those two come together in The Necromonicon of Sherlock Holmes, Volume 1 (2026). Brian and Derrick managed to edit an anthology full of fun stories that mix the Mythos with Holmes successfully.

My favorite story is Will Murray’s “The Doom of the Gordian Nightmare.” Holmes and Watson encounter a Lovecrafean threat from the Beyond. I also enjoyed “The Jermyn Inheritance” where Holmes and Watson confront a menacing mystery. I think this sentence opens the door to a sequel: “…he [Holmes] said simply, ‘It is my opinion that we have skimmed across deep waters, Watson, and barely dipped our toes in.'” Sounds like a promise of more Lovecraft horrors ahead!

If you’re in the mood for a mix of Lovecraft and Holmes, The Necromonicon of Sherlock Holmes, Volume 1 will supply several stories that will keep you up at night.

I was so satisfied with this volume, I ordered The Necromonicon of Sherlock Holmes, Volume 2! GRADE: B

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

“INTRODUCTION: Doyle, Lovecraft, and the Great Detective” by Derrick Belanger, BSI — 1

“INTRODUCTION: Valleys of Fear” by Brian Belanger — 7

THE DOOM OF THE GORDIAN NIGHTMARE – Will Murray — 11
THE FLOWERING HAND OF EZRA BOONE – Derrick Belanger, BSI — 43
THE ADVENTURE OF THE GOLDEN LOTUS – Sonya Kudei — 67
THE FAMILY – Brian Belanger — 95
THE JERMYN INHERITANCE – Josh Reynolds — 115
THE SHADOW OVER KENSINGTON – Kai R. Hastur — 133
THE NEW MOON OVER BATH – Gustavo Bondoni — 161
THE ADVENTURE OF THE FALSE IDOL – Naching T. Kassa — 189
THE CASE OF THE SILVER RING – J. Edward Tremlett — 209
THE BARON OF BERWICK – Paul Sheldon — 237
THE CHILDREN OF DARKNESS – Mike Adamson — 265

Acknowledgements — 323

Diane and I drove down to Kleinhan’s Music Hall to hear Imani Perry talk about the color Blue. Imani Perry, who won a National Book Award for South To America and is a Professor at Harvard University, brought her illuminating insights to Buffalo. In 2023, Imani Perry was named a MacArthur Fellow.

First off, Imani Perry is a gifted speaker. Her half-hour presentation was spell-binding. Most of it was based on her latest book, Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People (2025). Here’s a sample of the facts she shared with the 1000 people in attendance: “After the war, those Union uniforms were repurposed. Soon they attired police forces. It was the color of emancipation and became the color of law and order. (p. 99)

Imani Perry also idolizes George Washington Carver. Carver was a polymath who used his genius to help the people of the South. Because of misuse and greed, the land in the South which suffered from the pursuit of cotton wealth, was damaged. “And so Carve introduced the practice of crop rotation. That where his famous peanuts came in. He instructed the people to grow cotton one year, then peanuts the next. And so on. Carved believed that if you loved anything enough, it would tell you its secrets. He loved the Alabama soil and it was his teacher.” (p. 118)

In addition to Imani Perry’s brilliant presentation and Q&A, Barbara Cole of the Just Buffalo Literary Center also announced the 2026-2027 BABEL series. Check out the authors below. Of course, Diane and I will subscribe. GRADE: A

“Dune was a box-office bomb. It was also, as Lynch himself later put it, both a ‘failure’ and a ‘huge gigantic sadness’ in his life. It wasn’t just that Lynch had made a mistake in signing a contract that explicitly states he would not have Final Cut on the film. It’s that he knew–even as he signed it–that he was making a mistake.” (p. 45)

Scott Maslow analyzes the quirky reality of the 1990s seasons of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks on ABC. Lynch, fresh from his successes with Eraserhead and The Elephant Man, together with his partner Mark Frost, approached ABC with a project where a young girl is murdered and the investigation reveals the secrets of a small town. Twin Peaks  premiered on ABC on April 8, 1990, and ran for two seasons until its cancellation in 1991. The show returned in 2017 for a third season on Showtime.

Lynch found out that making episodes for a TV Network was NOT like making a movie. Meddling by TV executives and censors caused problems. Lynch, who was also filming a movie, Wild at Heart, had to depend on other writers and directors to produce the Twin Peaks episodes. And, like Dune, Lynch slowly lost control of his original conception of Twin Peaks.

Scott Maslow follows the arc of initial success with Twin Peaks and the slow build-up of factors that doomed it. Twin Peaks–famous for its music–still has a loyal following decades after ABC cancelled it. Are you a fan of Twin Peaks? GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Foreword / Harley Peyton — viii

A woman in trouble — 1

Welcome to Twin Peaks — 19

A whole damn town — 45

Filled with secrets — 65

I promise, I will kill again — 83

When you see me again, it won’t be me — 99

And now, an ending — 121

The last seven days of Laura Palmer — 139

Is it happening again? — 167

It is happening again — 185

Gotta light? — 205

People are under a lot of stress — 219

What year is this? — 235

Acknowledgements — 251

Bibliography — 253

Index — 255

We must live on the lowest part of our block because when it rains, our sump pump runs all the time. Lately, during our rainy season, the sump pump started to emit a grinding sound. Not good.

Since we had Joe the Plumber installing new bathroom faucets, Diane and I decided to ask him to replace our 12-year-old Zoeller submergible sump pump. Joe’s face lit up when I mentioned Zoeller. “That’s the sump pump brand I recommend to all my clients,” Joe said.

After Joe returned from a trip to the plumbing supply store, the sound of a drill and some hammer began. Within an hour, Joe was pouring a bucket of water into the sump and wah-lah!

The new Zoeller sump pump worked flawlessly and much more quietly. Do you have a sump pump?

We use our bathroom faucets every day. And use means wear and tear over time. Diane noticed our bathroom faucets were showing their age: loose handles and parts starting to separate. Time to call Joe the Plumber.

We first met Joe the Plumber years ago when we converted out downstairs bathroom tub to a walk-in shower. While we were at it, we had Joe replace our upstairs bath tub with a new tub. I’ll never forget Joe carrying the new tub up the stairs on his shoulder. That tub was HEAVY! But Joe handled it like it was a feather!

Diane told Joe that she wanted a chrome faucet in the upstairs bathroom and a brushed metal faucet in the downstairs bathroom. Joe recommended we go with MOEN and we agreed. A few hours later, Diane and I were delighted by brand new faucets replacing our worn out ones. Have you had any plumbing problems lately?

STARK HOUSE’S new release of Raoul Whitfield’s Green Ice brings the return of an early classic hardboiled detective novel. Private Eye Mal Ourney takes a fall for a crime he didn’t commit. After serving a two-year sentence at Sing Sing prison, Ourney meets Dot Ellis, the woman he protected with his voluntary admission of fault (she killed someone while drunk driving), on the day of his release–and Dot is murdered within minutes.

Dot Ellis’s death triggers a series of murders while Ourney tries to figure out why. Whitfield provides a complicated plot as the dead bodies mount up. But those deaths are just to build up to the fistfights and the epic tommy-gun massacre.

“The plot does not matter,” Dashiell Hammett wrote in a review of Green Ice in the New York Evening Post “… What matters is that here are 280 pages of naked action pounded into tough compactness by staccato, hammerlike writing.”

Slick plotting, relentless action, and hardboiled dialogue make Green Ice one of the great detective novels of that Black Mask era. GRADE: B+

The story first saw print as a 6-part serial in Black Mask, beginning in December 1929 (along with part 4 of the serialized Maltese Falcon). Though green ice provided the motive for most of the killings, it failed to get the title role. Instead, the serial was called “The Crime Breeders.” Green Ice was published in hardcover by Knopf in 1930. It was reprinted in paperback by Avon Murder Mystery Monthly in 1946.

This Rhino Records compilation came out in 2000 under the VH-1 banner. For many of these groups and singers, their heyday was 20 years in the past by the time this CD hit the market. So this is a retro CD of semi-memorable bands and One-Hit Wonders.

Will we have a Cruel Summer this year? Banarama thinks we will. And, how about relationships? Soft Cell thinks about “Tainted Love.” And one of Cap’n Bob’s favorite groups–Bow Wow Wow–delivers their provocative message: “I Want Candy.”

Then there’s the epic “I Touch Myself” by Divinyls. They should have listened to The Waitresses’ “I Know What Boys Like.”

Do you know where these groups are now? Do you remember these songs? GRADE: B

TRACK LIST:

1	Big Country–	In A Big Country	3:55
2	The Cars–	Good Times Roll	3:47
3	The Motels–	Only The Lonely	3:17
4	Squeeze (2)–	Pulling Mussels (From The Shell)	3:59
5	Mr. Mister–	Kyrie	4:16
6	Kim Carnes–	Bette Davis Eyes	3:48
7	The Alarm–	Sixty-Eight Guns	3:18
8	Divinyls–	I Touch Myself	3:47
9	The Beat (2)–	Save It For Later	3:36
10	Adam Ant–	Goody Two Shoes	3:32
11	Bananarama–	Cruel Summer	3:34
12	The Dream Academy–	Life In A Northern Town	4:17
13	The Hooters–	And We Danced	3:51
14	Soft Cell–	Tainted Love	2:42
15	Bow Wow Wow–	I Want Candy	2:47
16	The Waitresses–	I Know What Boys Like	3:15

There was a time that I would automatically buy Year’s Best anthologies as they were published: Year’s Best SF, Year’s Best Mysteries, Year’s Best Fantasy, Year’s Best Horror. But about 10 years ago, I stopped.

After over 50 years, I found the Year’s Best anthologies now contained stories I was not engaged with. And the writers I knew and respected were replaced by new names and writers whose talents didn’t connect with me.

The bright side of this situation is that I have many Year’s Best anthologies on my shelves that I bought long ago…and never got around to reading. The Best American Mystery Stories: 2001 is one of these books.

The most graphic story in The Best American Mystery Stories: 2001, not surprisingly, is Joyce Carol Oates’ “The Girl with the Blackened Eye.” The abuse is stomach-churning. T. Jefferson Parker’s “Easy Street” concerns bank robberies. I liked Bill Pronzini’s “The Big Bite” with a private investigator involved in a blackmail scheme.

For those who like historical mysteries, Peter Robinson’s “Missing in Action”–set at the beginning of World War II in England–focuses on a missing young boy whose father was aboard the fleet carrier Courageous which was sunk by a German U-boat off the southwest coast of Iceland. Over 500 men had been lost include the missing boy’s father.

Lawrence Block and Otto Penzler did a nice job with this anthology. GRADE: B+

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Foreword by Otto Penzler — ix

Introduction by Lawrence Block • xiii

Jennifer Anderson “Things That Make Your Heart Beat Faster” • 1

Russell Banks “Lobster Night” • 25

Michael Downs “Prison Food” • 43

Leslie Edgerton In the Zone • 61

William Gay “The Paperhanger” • 75

Jeremiah Healy “A Book of Kells “• 91

Steve Hockensmith “Erie’s Last Day” • 111

Clark Howard “Under Suspicion” • 133

Michael Hyde “Her Hollywood” • 157

Dan Leone “Family” • 169

Thomas Lynch “Blood Sport” • 182

David Means “Carnie” • 193

Kent Nelson “Tides” • 202

Joyce Carol Oates “The Girl with the Blackened Eye” • 228

T. Jefferson Parker “Easy Street” • 239

Bill Pronzini “The Big Bite” • 271

Peter Robinson “Missing in Action” • 285

Roxana Robinson “The Face-Lift” • 305

John Salter “Big Ranch” • 318

Nathan Walpow “Push Comes to Shove” • 327

Contributors’ Notes • 337

Other Distinguished Mystery Stories of 2000 • 347

Water For Elephants: The Musical is based on the 2006 novel of the same name by Sara Gruen. Diane’s Book Club read the book and loved it. A young man loses his parents in a traffic accident and joins the “Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth” circus during the Great Depression. Jacob Jankowski was forced to withdraw from the Veterinary program at Cornell University after the death of his parents. The greedy owner of the circus, August, hires Jacob because of his veterinary knowledge to care for the circus animals.

The circus buys an elephant named Rosie and August beats the beast when it doesn’t follow his orders. Jacob solves that problem, but encounters another problem when he falls in love with August’s wife, Marlena.

I found the gymnastic exploits on the stage to be incredible! Think of Cirque du Soleil squared! The music was fairly bland and unmemorable. Clearly Water For Elephants: The Musical is more of a visual experience than an auditory one for me. The story was predictable. But the cast held my attention until the unsurprising end. GRADE: B-

Musical numbers:

Act I Overture – Orchestra Prologue – Company “Anywhere/Another Train” – Jacob, Camel, Wade, Company “The Road Don’t Make You Young” – Company “Easy” – Marlena “The Lion Has Got No Teeth” – August, Jacob, Company “I Choose the Ride” – Camel, Jacob, Company “Ode to an Elephant” – Mr. Jankowski, Jacob, Marlena, August “Just Our Luck” – Mr. Jankowski, Barbara, Camel, Walter, Vera, Sue “I Shouldn’t Be Surprised” – Marlena, Mr. Jankowski “Silver Stars” – Jacob “The Grand Spec” – August, Company

Act II “Funny Angel” – Mr. Jankowski “Zostań” – Company “Squeaky Wheel” – Barbara, Walter, Camel, Jacob “You’ve Got Nothing” – August, Jacob, Marlena, Camel, Walter, Wade “What Do You Do?” – Marlena “Wild” – Marlena, Jacob “The Road Don’t Make You Young (Reprise)” – Wade, Company “Go Home” – Jacob, Company “Zostań (Reprise)” – Jacob, Mr. Jankowski, Company “I Choose the Ride (Reprise)” – Company