Six seasons on PBS and three feature films later, the franchise of Downton Abbey looks like it’s coming to an end (unless this movie makes a ton on money).

The movie is set in 1930, a year after a stock market crash that threw the world into The Great Depression. The Crawley family is forced to tighten its economic belt but not so much that they’ve given up their staff of servants and their assorted holdings. Dower House, former residence of Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham (the late Maggie Smith, honored with a dedication as well as oil painting of the countess looming over the front hall) remains along with renovation plans to generate cash.

The family is visited by American businessman Harold Levinson (Paul Giamatti), brother of Cora Crowley (Elizabeth McGovern). Levinson’s brought another American, Gus Sambrook (Alessandro Nivola), a financier who, Harold says, helped keep the matriarch’s side of the family solvent after the crash. Unfortunately, Gus made bad decisions after that, depleting the nest egg that the Crowleys thought they could break open to renovate Downton Abbey and turn it into a rental property that could generate future income.

” Lady Mary is getting a divorce, the news ripples through the surrounding community, making her a pariah among the high society people she used to call friends (even though they really weren’t). Some levity is added by actor Guy Dexter (Dominic West, totally believable as a Clark Gable-style movie star), who was at the center of the last movie. Dexter is reintroduced as the star of a London play by Noël Coward (Arty Froushan, who is absolutely credible playing one of the most charming men who ever lived).”

If you’re a Downton Abbey fan, don’t miss this! GRADE: B+

John Brunner’s Science Fiction novels were a constant presence in ACE Doubles in the 1960s. Later, DAW Books reprinted many of Brunner’s works like Quicksand (1967) and a collection of his short stories in The Book of John Brunner (1976).

Quicksand follows the interaction of psychiatrist Paul Fidler with a mysterious woman who shows up in rural England naked and confused. Fidler has the young woman learn English and learns some incredible facts about where she might be from. As Fidler becomes more involved, he falls deeper in to the quicksand of circumstances surrounding the young woman and her incredible past. GRADE: C

The Book of John Brunner includes five of Brunner’s most unusual SF stories–none of them have previously appeared in paperback. Also included in this volume are five of Brunner’s most significant SF and futurological articles–none of which have ever appeared in book form before. If you’re a John Brunner fan, The Book of John Brunner is worth checking out. GRADE: B+

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Premumble — Crossword — Limerick #1 — A different kick, or how to get high without actually going into orbit — “Lullaby for the mad scientist’s daughter” — Bloodstream — Domestic crisis 2017 — Hide and seek = cache-cache / by Gérard Klein ; translated by John Brunner — Limerick #2 — The technological folk-hero : has he a future? — “The ballad of Teddy Hart” — Who steals my purse — Excerpt from a social history of the 20th century — Feghoot I — Die spange / by Stefan George — Limerick #3 — Them as can, does — “Faithless Jack the spaceman” — When Gabriel… — What we have here — Feghoot II — The Spartans’ epitaph at Thermopylae (from The Greek Anthology) — Limerick #4 — The educational relevance of science fiction — “The spacewreck of the Old 97” — Manalive (excerpt) — Matthew XVIII, 6 — Feghoot III — Corrida / by Rainer Maria Rilke — Limerick #5 — The evolution of a science fiction writer — “The h-bombs’ thunder — The new thing — The atom bomb is twenty-five this year — Epigrammata LXV / by Decimus Magnus Ausonius — Solution to crossword.

The 2-0 Buffalo Bills face the 0-2 Miami Dolphins in an AMAZON Prime Video extravaganza. No…not really. The Bills are favored by 12 1/2 points and the Dolphins look like a dumpster fire. Head Coach of the Dolphins, Mike McDaniel, may be fired soon. Many Dolphin players will celebrate that move.

The Bills beat the NY Jets 30-10, but lost three starters to injuries. Will that make a difference tonight? We’ll see…

The Eyes Still Have It, from 30 years ago, still stands out as one of the best collection of Private Eye stories ever collected. Bob Randisi provides a compelling introduction and adds comments before each story to put the authors and their works in context.

I was impressed that Randisi included TWO stories by Loren De. Estleman and Lawrence Block…both excellent!

If you’re in the mood for some superb P.I. short stories, don’t miss The Eyes Still Have It. GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction by Robert J. Randisi — vii

What you don’t know can’t hurt you / by John Lutz –1

Cat’s paw / by Bill Pronzini — 21

By the dawn’s early light / by Lawrence Block — 45

Eight mile and Dequindre / by Loren D. Estleman — 65

Fly away home / by Rob Kantner — 89

Turn away / by Ed Gorman — 105

The crooked way / by Loren D. Estleman — 117

The killing man / by Mickey Spillane — 139

Final resting place / by Marcia Muller — 165

Dust devil / by Nancy Pickard — 185

Mary, Mary, shut the door / by Benjamin M. Schutz — 203

The merciful angel of death / by Lawrence Block — 229

Kaitlin Olson‘s Morgan Gillory is back to solve crimes and provide fun. Taran Killam, who plays Morgan’s friendly ex-husband, Ludo, returns to help with the kids. Morgan juggles her three children while dealing with her complicated Life. The mini-skirt-wearing genius who has agreed to help the LAPD’s Major Crimes unit with their cases continually surprises in these episodes.

If you’r looking for mysteries and humor, check out High Potential! Premieres: Tuesday, Sept. 16 at 10/9c on ABC, streaming next day on Hulu. GRADE: INCOMPLETE but trending towards a B+

“In 1976 when we were both based in Brussels, my BBC mentor, the great Charles Wheeler, came back to the office from a grand US embassy party one evening and remarked: ‘The cleverest and most entertaining people at these things are always CIA. Makes it all the harder to understand why they get everything wrong.’ An exaggeration, of course, but one with a degree of truth to it. Why has an organisation with huge amounts of money at its disposal, a record of recruiting the brightest and the best, and the widest of remits, failed to notch up a better record? It’s true that we may not know about many of the CIA’s successes. But we know about a lot of its failures, and some of them have marked US history ineradicably.” — John Simpson, The Guardian

Tim Weiner, who wrote the classic Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (2007), returns with a book that will become another classic, The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century. Weiner shows how the CIA’s power has slowly been eroded after the debacle of 9/11 where rival intelligence agencies withheld information about a possible terrorist attack. Yes, the attack on the Twin Towers could have been prevented with some data sharing.

Weiner shows the disaster Trump is causing to America, and to the CIA today. Weiner’s example of the incompetent John L Ratcliffe, given the job of CIA Director by Trump, who unhesitatingly complied with Trump’s extraordinary demand that the CIA should send the White House the first names and initials of every recent CIA recruit by non-secure email. An incredible intelligence breach! And that is the tip of the serious intelligence violations…

The Mission explains why the CIA and our other intelligence agencies won’t protect us with the DOGE cuts and Trump’s fools running the organizations. Things are grim for our National Security. GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

• Prologue: The spy and the scribe — 1
• The dark horizon — 7
• Denial and deception — 15
• “It was all sadly absurd” — 25
• The Bay of Goats — 32
• The new world — 41
• “We were all making it up as we went along” — 56
• Unprecedented trouble — 72
• What you do when you do not know — 92
• Sufi mystics and walking zombies — 105
• A beautiful operation — 119
• The butcher’s bill — 131
• Guerrilla warfare — 140
• The black cloud — 160
• “How far were we prepared to go?” — 177
• The god’s-eye view — 189
• No middle ground — 200
• The keys to the castle — 213
• The right side of history — 228
• “Someone is always watching” — 238
• Lethal and legal — 251
• Face-eating baboons — 265
• The useful idiot — 280
• Ring-kissing and kneecapping — 298
• The enemy of intelligence — 310
• “We are on the way to a right-wing coup” — 326
• The glory gate — 343
• Human intelligence — 358
• The morality of espionage — 371
• Epilogue: Autocracy in America — 388
• Acknowledgements — 397
• Notes — 399
• Index — 441

Breece Hall is no Derrick Henry. Justin Fields is no Aaron Rodgers. But the pesky Jets give the Bills a tough game almost every time they play. While the Buffalo Bills are 6 1/2 point favorites in this game, the Jets almost beat the Steeler last week. The 34-32 score shows how close the Jets came to winning the game. I’m expecting a close game this afternoon.

How will your favorite NFL team perform today?

Only Murders in the Building might be showing some plot fatigue in Season 5. The format of investigating a cosy whodunnit with some social media satire might be wearing thin. Steve Martin and Martin Short still deliver their zippy one-liners with sight gags and physical comedy but the effects are lame. And then there’s the “cameos” of other actors who pop into the plots.

Lucy Mangan of The Guardian wrote: “Now, with season five, the centre is failing to hold. We ended the previous season in the traditional manner, with our heroes finding another murder in the building (or at least its grounds): this time of Lester the doorman (Teddy Coluca). Then we have another. Then the clues (including a missing finger, a mafia connection and an elevator crank) and suspects (including Téa Leoni as an Italian widow and potential love interest for Charles, who is taking testosterone supplements for his health; three billionaires; and Lester’s wife, Lorraine – Dianne Wiest, her brilliance eternal) begin to arrive. But they feel randomly scattered rather than meaningfully laid. The podcast element falls by the wayside, the proportion of red herrings to genuine progress is off, the action is too often located outside the Arconia, and the core team are too often split up – not least by the return of Streep as Oliver’s now-wife, Loretta. I know that I am probably in a minority in feeling that: a) a little of Streep goes a long way; and b) she should, wherever possible, be kept away from comedy.”

After one episode, I have to agree with Mangan. GRADE: Incomplete, but trending towards a C.

Secret Agent of Terra (1962) by  John Brunner. It is the first book of the Zarathustra Refugee Planets series. The other books are Castaways’ World (1963) and The Repairmen of Cyclops (1965). Brunner explores aspects of survival, societal structure, and the human conflicts likely to occur when facing harsh conditions after a planet’s star goes nova.  GRADE: B

A. Bertram Chandler created a series involving The Rim of Space (1958) where the unusual occurs. The crew of the starship Lorn Lady meet intelligent alien lifeforms and experience strange space anomalies in this novella.

Only one man ever survived contact with the Outsiders (aka, aliens) and Commander William Maudsley has always refused to speak of the horrors that destroyed his starship, killed his crew, and left him broken and confused.

Derek Calver intends to succeed where Maudsley failed. Despite the fears of his crew and vague rumors of terrible alien life form beyond the rim, Calver crosses the final frontier to enter the warped, unknown infinity of the “Outside” with all its dangers. This is #2 in the Commander Grimes series. GRADE: B

Are you a fan of ACE Doubles?

Once upon a time in the 1990s, retailers used compilation CDs as marketing tools. Some, like Starbucks, charged for the CDs–mostly the going rate of regular music CDs. Other retailers offered the compilation CDs for free with a purchase. Other retailers discounted the CDs to move them.

BOKS ROCK (1993) from Reebok had a more eclectic variety of songs. George Thorogood rubs shoulders with Slowdive. Beyond the Blues (1996) from Lane Bryant offers Name artists–like Patti LaBelle, Taylor Dayne, Etta James, Oleta Adams, Rod Stewart, Peter Frampton, Rita Coolidge, and Gloria Gaynor. And a couple Well Known groups: Gladys Knight and the Pips and Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

The fact that no corporation I know is offering music as part of the buying experience today–not even streaming–shows that this marketing tactic is now obsolete. But, back in the day, this was a fairly common practice.

Do you remember these songs? Any favorites here? GRADE: B (for both)

TRACK LIST:

TRACK LIST: