Its 1947 and pulp magazines are still selling on newsstands. Pentecost and Parker are approached by Holly Quick, a woman who writes stories for the pulp magazines under a variety of pseudonyms. Quick claims that three murders have been committed, based on stories she wrote.

Will Parker and Lillian Pentecost take the case and discover a trail that leads to the Black Museum Club, a group of rich and powerful people obsessed with murder and those who commit it.

The search for the psychopath who bases murders on Holly Quick’s stories is tangled up in the world of art collectors, publications, and the staging of elaborate murders. GRADE: B

“Ruby Donner was a circus woman. She was gracious and and kind and sometimes mean and always a little sad. She was a fearless as a daredevil, and stronger than any man here who swung a sledge. She was a stubborn as me on my worst days, and as cunning as me on my best. She knew who she was, and she never applied for it. She was the best of us. She was a circus woman through and through. And I’ll miss her something fierce.” (p. 118)

Murder Under Her Skin (2021) is the second book in the Pentecost and Parker series (you can read my review of the first book in the series, Fortune Favors the Dead here). Willowjean “Will” Parker is Archie Goodwin transformed into a feisty twenty-something female assistant to Lillian Pentecost, Nero Wolfe morphed into an elderly lady with multiple sclerosis.

Will Parker spent five years with a traveling circus before she left it for New York City and her surprising recruitment by Ms. Pantecost. Parker and Pentecost are contacted by the head of the circus, Big Bob Halloway, to investigate the murder of Ruby Donner, The Amazing Tattooed Woman, who was stabbed in the back. Valentin Kalishenko, Will Parker’s mentor who taught her how to throw knives in a circus act, is being charged with the murder.

It’s 1946. Parker and Pentecost travel to Stoppard, Virginia where the circus is stalled because of the murder. Stoppard also happens to be the town where Ruby Donner grew up and fled. Secrets of Ruby’s past come to light. Was the murderer a member of the local Blood of the Lamb Church who considered Ruby a “Jezebel”? Or was there someone in the circus who had a motive to murder Ruby?

I enjoyed reading about Park and Pentecost sifting through the lies and red herrings to finally discover the truth about Ruby’s killer. Murder Under Her Skin captures the thrills of a circus and contrasts it with the deep secrets of a small town. Another clever, entertaining mystery! GRADE: A

James Hadley Chase (aka, René Lodge Brabazon Raymond, James L. Docherty, Raymond Marshall, R. Raymond, and Ambrose Grant) was a British writer of thrillers. He wrote 90 novels and 50 of them were made into movies.

Chase’s first novel, No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1939), became an international best seller. It established the style Chase would employ in his other thrillers: plenty of action, amoral characters, and violent villains. Common elements of a James Hadley Chase novel are a tough protagonist, a beautiful woman, deadly villains, a few fistfights, and manic shootings.

All of those elements are prominent in I’ll Get You For This (1946) and the movie version I’ll Get You for This,, Lucky Nick Cain, with George Raft and filmed in Italy(1951 ). Gambler Chester Cain, travels to Paradise Palms, a coastal community seventy miles from Miami, to start a new life after killing five men in four months in New York City. “It got so bad that I was driving around in an armored car, putting newspapers on the floor around my bed so no one could get at me without waking me, and toting a gun, even in my bath.” (p. 14)

Cain gets involved with the bodacious Miss Wonderly, a former showgirl who attracts men and danger. Both Cain and Wonderly get framed for the murder of John Herrick, a reform political candidate, and go on the run. Part of that escapade takes Cain into a woman’s prison for some of the most grizzly and creepy action in all of Chase’s oeuvre. GRADE: B+

The Paw in the Bottle (1949) is both a novel about a heist gone wrong and the story of obsessions. Julie Holland is motived by wealth and power. Julie becomes involved with Harry Gleb on a plan to steal valuable fur coats from a rich woman. The heist goes wrong, there’s a murder, and Julie is faced with life-altering decisions: continue the dangerous schemes to seize the valuable furs, or take some safer, less lucrative options.

Although the heist failed and everything went wrong with the gang-leader arrested for a murder he didn’t commit, Julie still emerged from the botched crime with a thousand pounds of income per year and a swanky Mayfair flat. But…that’s not enough for Julie. Greed leads to a shattering conclusion. GRADE: B

James Hadley Chase’s noirish thrillers are doom-laden anthems of contemporary life.

Garth Hudson, the last surviving member of The Band, died on January 21, 2025. He was 87 years old. Although Hudson was a gifted musician, he constantly faced financial problems. Hudson released his first solo album, The Sea to the North, on September 11, 2001.  In 2002, with his home in foreclosure and Robbie Robertson having bought out his stake in The Band, Hudson declared bankruptcy for the third time.

In recent years, Hudson battled a series of health problems. Hudson died in his sleep at a nursing home in Woodstock, New York. Most critics credit Hudson with developing The Band’s unique “sound” and style.

I first heard The Band in 1965 at a Bob Dylan concert at Kleinhans Music Hall. Music from Big Pink was released in July 1968 and I eagerly bought it and the next few albums by The Band. Despite their success, the members– Rick Danko (bass, guitar, vocals, fiddle), Garth Hudson (organ, keyboards, accordion, saxophone), Richard Manuel (piano, drums, vocals) and Robbie Robertson (guitar, vocals, piano, percussion), and Levon Helm (drums, vocals, mandolin, guitar, bass)–dealt with conflict mostly caused by drug use.

The Band performed their farewell concert on November 25, 1976. Footage from the event was released in 1978 as the concert film The Last Waltz, directed by Martin Scorsese. It would be the last performance of the original five members. Do you like The Band’s music? Do you have a favorite song? GRADE: A

Track listing:

All tracks are written by Robbie Robertson, except where stated

Album origin

I’m a sucker for H.P. Lovecraft pastiches and the novella, Missing in Miskatonic (2024) by JP Behrens, certainly fits the bill. It’s 1928 and Travis Daniels is a private detective who specializes in the weird and supernatural. Daniels is hired by a sinister figure, Sir Edward Martin Mandeville, to find his niece, Leslie Owens, who has gone missing from the Armitage Memorial Library at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts. Daniels learns Leslie Owens was doing research in the Rare Books section…where The Necronomicon and other restricted, dangerous books were kept.

Needless to say, Dark Forces show up to threaten Daniels in his search. If you’re a fan of the Mythos and enjoy private eye fiction with a twist, Missing in Miskatonic will provide you with some thrills. GRADE: B-

I found this DVD from 2002 as I was sorting through my DVDs. I didn’t recall ever watching it so I popped it into my SONY Blu-ray player and was delighted by the music videos from over 20 years ago.

The Corrs are an Irish family band consisting of siblings Andrea (lead vocals, tin whistle, mandolin, ukulele), Sharon (violin, keyboards, vocals), Caroline (drums, percussion, piano, bodhrán, vocals) and Jim (guitar, piano, keyboards, vocals). Their music combines pop rock with traditional Irish themes.

During the 1990s and early 2000s, The Corps had a string of hit songs. They toured the world and built a fan base for their music. The Corrs have released seven studio albums and numerous singles which have reached Platinum in many countries. They have sold 40 million albums worldwide.

I enjoy The Corrs music and the care they took to refine their music videos. Are you a fan of The Corrs? GRADE: A

TRACK LIST:

I used Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You when I was teaching PRINCIPLES OF MANAGEMENT. At the end of the semester, many of my minority students told me that Newport’s book inspired them and gave them hope they could succeed in a tough job market.

Cal Newport’s new book, Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout, focuses on the common problems of workplace stress, aggravation, pressure to produce, and job burnout. Newport provides dozens of examples where changing work routine can lead to better outcomes. I liked the story of The Beatles touring America in 1966 where John Lennon’s comment–“Christianity will go, it will vanish and shink…We’re more popular than Jesus now”–triggered a uproar where Beatle albums were burned and the Ku Klux Klan threatened violence. As a result, The Beatles decided not to tour anymore and just focus on making much better albums. The result was Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band which sold 2.5 million copies during its first three months and reached the Number One spot on the BILLBOARD charts where it resided for three months. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band has sold 32 million copies to date.

I was also moved by Newport’s story of Jewel. “At the time (1990), Jewel was living out of her car, barely getting by with odd jobs and busking on the San Diego beachfront. Her existence was precarious. Not long before her remarkable run at the Inner Change Coffeehouse…Jewel found herself sick with a kidney infection, feverish and vomiting in the back seat of her car outside a hospital emergency room that had turned her away due to lack of insurance. A doctor who watched the scene unfold found her in the parking lot and gave her a free course of antibiotics–likely saving her life.” (p. 165-166)

Jewel recovered and found some success. But when a record company offered Jewel a million dollar signing bonus–at a time when she was homeless–Jewel turned it down to focus on improving her singing. Jewel’s first album, Pieces of You, was released in 1995…and fell flat. But, because the record company was paying Jewel so little, they proposed another album. Meanwhile, Jewel was touring the country building up her fan base. Jewel’s strategy of prioritizing art over money paid off when Pieces of You went 12 times Platinum and Jewel sold over 30 million copies of her albums.

Slow Productivity offers a different approach to success. Maybe we should slow down a little to get better results. GRADE: B+

Here we go again. The Buffalo Bills and the Kansas City Chiefs meet again in the Playoffs. The Chiefs have owned the Bills in the post-season posting a 4-0 record. The Chiefs also want to “Three-pete” by going back to the Super Bowl and winning a third straight Lombardi Trophy, something that’s never been done. The Chiefs are 2-point favorites.

But, hope springs eternal. The Bills have overcome numerous problems and injuries to end up in the AFC Conference Championship game against their nemesis. Do they have what it takes to finally defeat Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs? Diane says: “Yes!”

In the early NFC Conference Playoff game, the mighty Philadelphia Eagles are favored over the Washington Commanders by 6 points. Can the amazing rookie Quarterback, Jayden Daniels, pull off another miracle win? I’m not so sure. Who do you think will win today?

Oscar Award winner, Michelle Yeoh, returns to the Star Trek Universe as Emperor Philippa Georgiou, an escapee from a “mirror universe” where she ruled as a tyrant. Michelle Yeoh bears little resemblance to the Georgiou we first met in the Terran Empire during Star Trek: Discovery. Michelle Yeoh’s present character, who runs a swanky bar, is recruited by the Federation to join a team of Section 31 secret agents for a black ops mission to stop the sale of a super weapon.

The Section 31 team is wacky:  the leader (Omari Hardwick) is from the 20th Century, there’s a silly shapeshifter (Sam Richardson), a mechanical heavyweight (Robert Kazinsky), a sexy Deltan (Humberly Gonzalez), and a laughing Vulcan (Sven Ruygrok) who actually is not a Vulcan, but rather a microscopic organism in a tiny spaceship inside a Vulcan-shaped Golem body.  The team also includes my favorite character, a Starfleet “observer,” a young woman named Rachel Garrett (Kacey Rohl), who Star Trek fans will recognize as the pre-Picard Captain of the Enterprise.

With a large cast and little plot, the 100 minute episode is stuffed with plenty of hand-to-hand combat. Michelle Yeoh excels at this kind of fighting, but the other cast members…are lacking. Even the most ardent Star Trek fans will find Section 31 mediocre. GRADE: C

Fortune Favors the Dead (2020) is the first book in the Pentecost and Parker series. Imagine Nero Wolfe transformed into an elderly woman with multiple sclerosis and imagine Archie Goodwin morphed into a 20-something woman who ran away to the circus and is now the assistant to the best private investigator in New York City. Set in the 1940s, Pentecost and Parker are hired to solve the murder of Abigail Collins, a wealthy woman who inherited a multi-million dollar company after her husband, Alistair, committed suicide.

There are plenty of suspects in the Abigail Collins murder. Ariel Balustrade, a medium and spiritual advisor, conducted a séance the night of the murder in the Collins mansion. Olivia Waterhouse, a college professor who writes books like Speaking with the Dead: Spiritualists in the Twentieth Century was also present the night of the murder. Abigail Collins’s children, Rebecca and Randolph, had “issues” with their mother. Harrison Wallace, godfather to Rebecca and Randolph, and acting CEO of Collins Steelworks and Manufacturing, hires Pentecost and Parker to find the murderer.

Stephen Spotswood presents a locked room mystery that has tentacles that reach into the Past where hidden facts reveal a series of mysterious incidents. If you’re in the mood for a classical mystery with a Rex Stout flavor mixed with some gender bending, give Fortune Favors the Dead a try. I’m looking forward more of Pentecost and Parker. GRADE: A