Christmas came early at the Kelley household. Diane decided since Patrick and Katie were home, they could help us choose and install a new HDTV. Our trusty SONY 46″ Bravia was obsolete and it was time to upgrade. Patrick researched HDTVs and found the SONY XBR X850D offered the best value. Diane and I have had very good luck with our other SONY products over the years. We considered SAMSUNG but with their phones catching on fire and their washers flinging parts around, we decided to make the Safe and Dependable choice. The new HDTV was delivered a couple days ago, Patrick set it up, and now we’re enjoyed the bigger, crisper brilliant screen and the enhanced sound. Highly recommended!

Hope Santa leaves that Special Gift you’ve been yearning for under your tree!

I’ve been a fan of the Waugh, Greenberg, and Asimov anthologies. This Avon paperback appeared in 1981. I liked Ellery Queen’s “The Dauphin’s Doll,” Edward D. Hoch’s “The Problem of the Church Steeple,” Stanley Ellin’s “Death of Christmas Eve,” and August Derleth’s “The Adventure of the Unique Dickensians.” If you’re looking for mystery stories to put you in the Christmas spirit, I recommend The Twelve Crimes of Christmas. GRADE: A-
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
INTRODUCTION: Noel, Noel! by Isaac Asimov
CHRISTMAS PARTY by Rex Stout
DO YOUR CHRISTMAS SHOPLIFTING EARLY by Robert Somerlott
THE NECKLACE OF PEARLS by Dorothy L. Sayers
CELEBRATES CHRISTMAS by Alice Scanlan Reach
THE CHRISTMAS MASQUE by S. S. Rafferty
THE DAUPHIN’S DOLL by Ellery Queen
BY THE CHIMNEY WITH CARE by Nick O’Donohoe
THE PROBLEM OF THE CHRISTMAS STEEPLE by Edward D. Hoch
DEATH ON CHRISTMAS EVE by Stanley Ellin
THE ADVENTURE OF THE UNIQUE DICKENSIANS by August Derleth
BLIND MAN’S HOOD by John Dickson Carr
THE THIRTEENTH DAY OF CHRISTMAS by Isaac Asimov

If you’re a fan of Robert van Gulik’s Judge Dee mysteries, you’ll enjoy Elsa Hart’s Jade Dragon Mountain. An itinerant scholar, Li Du, arrives in a village just a week before the Emperor of China is due to visit. Li Du talks to a Jesuit astronomer about the upcoming eclipse. Li Du also hears an argument between the Jesuit and an East India Company merchant. Shortly thereafter, Li Du finds the body of the murdered Jesuit. The magistrate asked Li Du to investigate the crime and he uncovers many secrets. As the day of the Emperor’s arrival approaches, the tension increases as plots abound. If you enjoy twisty plots, political intrigue, and red herrings, Jade Dragon Mountain is the mystery for you! I hope Elsa Hart writes another mystery featuring the brainy Li Du! GRADE: B

Francine Prose’s latest novel is a screwball comedy involving a musical play based on a best selling children’s book titled Mister Monkey. The play is terrible but kids love it. It’s the story of a larcenous pet chimpanzee and his antics in New York City. The play generates a lot of jobs and money. Prose shows how many of the principle characters involved in the play react to its continuing success. Ray, the author of the best selling children’s book, realizes the musical is bad but the allure of the money overwhelms him. Lakshmi, the musical’s costume designer, imagines herself as the star of the production. Margot, who plays the chimpanzee’s lawyer in the musical, struggles with her success in a dreadful production and begins to see her acting career goals slipping away. Wacky, surprising, and funny, Mister Monkey tells a tale of success and its costs. GRADE: B

I’m a fan of these DC animated movies. In Batman: Bad Blood (2016), Batman battles Firefly, Tusk, and Killer Moth. But after a titanic battle, Batman disappears. Robin and Nightwing form an uneasy alliance with Batwoman and newcommer, Batwing. Together, they take on a new villian, Heretic. This Blu-ray feture looks great! Special features include: “Putting the Fight in Gotham: and “Expanding the Batman Family” featurettes, two bonus cartoons from the DC Comics Vault, and a Sneak Peek at the next DC animated movie, Justice League VS. Teen Titans. This Blu-ray would make a great stocking stuffer! GRADE: B+

My mother was the daughter of two Polish immigrants. She and her sister and brother grew up in Niagara Falls, The Honeymoon Capital of the World. They spent most of their lives there. Growing up, my mother liked ice skating and going to the movies especially those featuring Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney, Gene Kelly, and Rock Hudson. My mother had beautiful penmanship. In 1948, she married my father. They raised three demanding daughters and two mischievous sons who all would earn Master’s Degrees (and I went on for a Ph.D.) My mother somehow found time to read books after cooking, cleaning, doing the laundry, and checking our homework. We always had LIFE, TIME, THE SATURDAY EVENING POST, READER’S DIGEST, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, and many other magazines in our mailbox. When I was in third grade, my mother (aka, “Santa”) placed Tom Swift and the Caves of Nuclear Fire under our Christmas tree for me and ignited a lifetime passion for reading. Baking was her passion so we always had cookies and cakes galore. My mother’s specialty was placek, a Polish dessert bread. The happy Kelley household always had the scent of apple pie or taffy tarts in the air. She also enjoyed playing card games and board games. Her favorite musicals were My Fair Lady and Oklahoma!.

My father retired after teaching and working as a guidance counselor for 35 years. My mother and my father traveled to Pearl Harbor (where my father was stationed for part of World War II) and were in the Rose Bowl for Super Bowl XXVII when the Buffalo Bills lost to the Dallas Cowboys. They flew to Florida and Arizona to visit my sisters on a regular basis.

That all came to an end when my father died suddenly in 2000 after a massive heart attack, probably triggered by a blood clot caused by his total knee replacement surgery; I began to visit my mother’s house every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday after that. My three sisters lived out-of-state. I would take my mother shopping. She loved Sam’s Club because of all the free food stations. But I noticed my mother was forgetting. I had extra car keys and house keys made because she kept losing them. Her short-term memory got shorter. Finally, I took my mother to a neurologist. After a battery of tests, the neurologist told my mother, “Mrs. Kelley, it’s likely you have Alzheimer’s. You can’t drive any more.”

For years, I drove my mother everywhere she wanted to go. She would have loved to live with Diane and me, but we already had our hands full with Diane’s 90-year-old-mother living with us. She refused to live with her daughters. “I’m not going to move to Florida or Arizona,” she declared. “This is my home.” My mother started falling in her house. She forgot to eat. I used to sit with her at dinnertime and kept reminding her to take a bite of her food. She was easily distracted. I suggested we get a companion to stay with her. My mother said, “I don’t want strangers in my house!”

Finally, my brother, my sisters, and I had a meeting and decided it wasn’t safe for my mother to live alone. We researched the local nursing homes and found my mother a room at the Northgate Alzheimer’s Unit. For seven years, my mother sang songs, made puzzles, played bingo, and made loops around the unit using her walker for safety. Each day I visited my mother, I tried to accomplish two things: make her laugh and stir her long-term memories. For the first few years, my mother laughed and remembered. But then she lost more memory. When my brother, who handled all of our mother’s financial matters, visited her a year ago, she asked him, “Do I know you?” He cried. My mother forgot who her daughters were, too. And this was about the time my mother stopped smiling.

My mother recognized me right up until the end, probably because I visited her the most and I always brought her a treat: pudding, cookies, candies, and her favorite snack, Snickers. My mother suffered a stroke around Thanksgiving. She rallied for a few days, then she suffered a second stroke. After that, her health declined fast. Had she lived a few more weeks she would have turned 89. As I visited my mother in the Alzheimer’s Unit over those seven years she spent there, I saw her diminished a little each day. What didn’t diminish was my love for my mother.

After last Sunday’s disappointing (but not unexpected) loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers, Bills fans hoped billionaire owner Terry Pegula would fire Head Coach Rex Ryan. Didn’t happen. The smart move would be to lose the last three games of the season to improve the quality of the upcoming Draft choices. But, Rex promises a win today over the 0-13 Cleveland Browns. How will your favorite NFL team do today?

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story answers that burning question: “How did Princess Leia get the plans to the Death Star?” When Disney bought the Star Wars franchise from George Lucas, they decided that to make money, they needed to bring out a Star Wars movie every year. But, in order to do that, they needed to develop alternate story lines…like Rogue One and the 2018 movie about the young Han Solo.

Rogue One begins with the Empire’s Director Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) forcibly “recruiting” scientific genius Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen) to build the Death Star. Erso’s young daughter, Jyn (Felicity Jones) escapes. Years later, the Rebel Alliance breaks Jyn out of an Imperial prison to recruit her. Jyn is not interested in helping the Rebels at first, but later she leads a small force to attempt to steal the plans to the Death Star before the weapon of mass destruction is finished. My favorite character in Rogue One is former Imperial security droid K-2SO (Alan Tudyk). If you’re a Star Wars fan, you’ll love this movie. GRADE: B+

This third volume of the Carpenter and Quincannon historical mystery series is set in 1890’s San Francisco. I assume Marcia Muller wrote the chapters labeled “Sabina” and Bill Pronzini wrote the chapters labeled “Quincannon.” Sabina Carpenter is a woman private detective who once worked for Pinkerton. John Quincannon was once a Secret Service agent. Together, Carpenter and Quincannon formed a partnership where their individual talents as detectives help to solve their cases. In The Body Snatchers Affair, two bodies go missing and Sabina and Quincannon are hired to find them. From the mansions of the Bay Area to the squalid opium dens of Chinatown, the parallel investigations produce surprising results. If you’re in the mood for a light-hearted historical series written by two consummate mystery writers, the Carpenter and Quincannon series delivers.

Carpenter and Quincannon Series:
1 The Bughouse Affair (2013)
2 The Spook Lights Affair (2013)
3 The Body Snatchers Affair (2014)
4 The Plague of Thieves Affair (2016)
5 The Dangerous Ladies Affair (2017)