I’ve read several of Max Allan Collins’s Nathan Heller novels and enjoyed them all. In his Introduction, Max Allan Collins delineates how he came up with the idea of Nathan Heller Private Detective, his character (with a bit of Mike Hammer mixed in), the time period (from the Thirties to the Sixties), and the element of historical facts in every case.

Marilyn Monroe shows up in “Kisses of Death.” Heller finds a way to commit the perfect crime in “The Perfect Crime.” Heller investigates the deaths of homeless people (and others) who had been insured shortly before they died–another real spam from that time period. “Screwball,” set in Miami Beach in 1941, features gangsters, a stand-up comic who tells dirty jokes, and a pair of young women who liked to party.

My favorite story in Kisses of Death is “Strike Zone” where Heller is hired by Bill Veeck to guard the midget Veeck used to bat in a major league baseball game. Mixing historical incidents with Collins’s clever brand of fiction made these stories a delight to read! GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

INTRODUCTION — 9

Kisses of Death — 13

Kaddish for the Kid — 57

The Perfect Crime — 80

Natural Death, Inc. — 102

Screwball — 124

Shoot-Out on Sunset — 145

Strike Zone — 171

AFTERWORD: I OWE THEM ONE — 197

A MAX ALLAN COLLINS CHECKLIST — 199

In Picard’s third and final season, the 10 episodes feature just about every Star Trek character willing to participate in this grand farewell. Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) reappear, and so do virtually all of the Star Trek: The Next Generation ensemble at one point or another, including former Enterprise doctor — and Picard’s old flame — Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden), Klingon warrior Worf (Michael Dorn), and the visored engineer Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton). Astonishingly Season Three even finds a way to get Brent Spiner back, even though — as Jean-Luc points out in one episode — we’ve already seen Data die twice: once in Star Trek: Nemesis, once at the end of Picard Season One.

Raffi (Michelle Hurd) returns, as does Jeri Ryan as Star Trek: Voyager Borg survivor Seven of Nine, but the rest of the Picard ensembles from Seasons One and Two are gone. Dr. Crusher is being hunted by parties unknown, for reasons unknown, and her desperate situation results in most of the Enterprise-D bridge crew teaming up to help her.

This is must-watch TV for Star Trek fans who will be sad when this series ends on April 20, 2023. Are you a Star Trek fan? GRADE: Incomplete (but trending towards a B+)

Back in 1967 when I was preparing to take the SAT exam, I found the word “jejune” in the list of possible words I might encounter when I took the test. Jejune was not a word I was familiar with. I hadn’t seen it in the books I read or the people I talked to. Jejune means dull, uninteresting, and juvenile. And, surprise surprise, jejune showed up on the SAT exam when I took it!

I took three years of Latin so I’m pretty good at Latin expressions. But the French and the German words and phrases baffle me.

Ross and Kathryn Petras think smart people should know these 100 words. How many of them do you know? GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

• ACKNOWLEGEMENTS — vii
• INTRODUCTION — 1
• ad hominem — 5
• anethema — 6
• antediluvian — 8
• appurtenance — 11
• ascetic — 12
• atavistic — 14
• bespoke — 15
• bate noire –17
• betimes — 18
• bildrunsroman — 20
• cacophony — 21
• capricious — 23
• casuistry — 25
• catch-22 — 26
• churlish — 28
• crepuscular — 29
• de facto / de jure — 31
• denouement — 33
• didactic — 34
• disingenuous — 36
• doppelgänger — 37
• egregious — 39
• empirical — 40
• ennui — 42
• epistemology — 43
• ersatz — 45
• evanescent — 46
• exegesis — 48
• existential — 49
• extenuating — 51
• fascist / fascism — 53
• feckless — 54
• fungible — 56
• gnostic — 57
• hagiography — 59
• hermeneutic — 61
• heuristic — 62
• hubris — 64
• iconoclast — 66
• implicit — 67
• inchoate — 69
• insouciant — 70
• internecine — 72
• inveterate — 73
• je ne sais quoi — 75
• jejune — 76
• laconic — 78
• legerdemain — 79
• limpid — 81
• louche — 82
• mea culpa — 84
• metaphor / simile — 85
• mot juste — 87
• neologism — 88
• nihilism — 90
• ontology — 91
• opprobrium — 93
• panegyric — 94
• pedant — 96
• perfunctory — 97
• peripatetic — 99
• polemic — 100
• postmodern — 102
• prima facie — 104
• protean — 105
• putative — 107
• QED — 108
• quantum — 110
• quid pro quo — 112
• quintessential — 113
• quixotic — 115
• quotidian — 117
• realpolitik –118
• recondite — 120
• risible — 121
• sangfroid — 123
• sanguine — 124
• saturnine — 126
• Schroedinger’s cat — 127
• sclerotic — 129
• semiotics — 131
• sententious — 133
• shibboleth — 134
• sine qua non — 136
• solecism / solipsism — 137
• storm und drang — 139
• sub rosa — 140
• sui generis — 142
• sumptuary — 143
• sword of Damocles — 145
• sycophant — 146
• syllogism — 148
• syntax — 150
• teleological — 151
• trope — 153
• ubiquitous — 155
• wabi sabi — 156
• weltschmerz — 158
• zeitgeist — 159
• NOTES — 161
• ABOUT THE AUTHORS — 183

“One morning I woke up with my head in the shower and my feet by the toilet. The children were with their grandparents for the weekend, and I used that as an excuse to binge. My knuckles were bleeding, my face was red, my body was bloated, and my mind was on edge. It scared me. All the rules I had set years before when I reentered the drinking world had gone out the window by the end of that first year of the pandemic. I was drinking away my crippling fears about the end of the world and how the children I’d brought into it would navigate it. Meanwhile, I couldn’t navigate it myself.” (p. 267-268)

Margo Price, a Nashville-based singer and songwriter with three albums, a nomination for a Grammy for Best New Artist, and a performance on Saturday Night Live, narrates this harrowing story of her difficult life.

Margot struggled as a kid, never fitting in. But she was drawn to music and taught herself how to play the guitar. For years, Margot worked as a waitress while she pursued her dream of becoming a singer. She wrote songs and performed on street corners. She fell in love with another musician, Jeremy, but their relationship was stormy.

The music industry, as Margot describes it, is harsh and difficult. As a result, she and Jeremy turned to drugs and alcohol. That did not improve their relationship. As far as I can tell, it did not improve their chances at success in the the music industry, either. Only years of persistent performing and touring finally brought some acclaim and a growing audience for Margot’s songs.

If you want to read a no-holds-barred description of life as a performer today with endless tours and a myriad of problems navigating life on the road, Maybe We’ll Make It is the Real Deal.  GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

• Prologue
• Chapter 1. The Unpaved Road
• Chapter 2. Rearview Mirror
• Chapter 3. Fifty-Seven Dollars
• Chapter 4. Strays
• Chapter 5. Lay Around with the Dogs
• Chapter 6. This Town Gets Around (and Around and Around)
• Chapter 7. Black Water
• Chapter 8. Stealing from Thieves
• Chapter 9. Floating
• Chapter 10. Pearls to Swine
• Chapter 11. Hell in the Heartland
• Chapter 12. Everywhere
• Chapter 13. Mesa Boogie
• Chapter 14. C for California
• Chapter 15. Aimless Fate
• Chapter 16. Ball and Unchained
• Chapter 17. New Mama
• Chapter 18. Ezra and Judah
• Chapter 19. Drowning
• Chapter 20. Uppers, Downers, Out-of-Towners
• Chapter 21. Burn Whatever’s Left
• Chapter 22. Treading Water
• Chapter 23. Weekender
• Chapter 24. A Band of My Own
• Chapter 25. Midwest Farmer’s Daughter
• Chapter 26. One Dark Horse
• Chapter 27. The Recent Future
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments

“Singing is not a real job,” a guidance counselor once told a teenage Margo Price. What she shows us in her moving memoir is what a heck of a lot of work it is. She arrives in Nashville as a 19-year-old college dropout. She drinks too much, does drugs, duct tapes a bloody foot because she doesn’t have health insurance—and that’s in her first weeks. Ms. Price is a deeply original singer-songwriter—her sound is influenced by alt-country, folk rock and psychedelic music. Her songs veer from autobiographical to almost novelistic, like “Lydia,” about a woman at the doors of an abortion clinic. “Maybe We’ll Make It” gives us a glimpse into the life of a touring musician (“small spaces, bad sound equipment, and hordes of drunk folks”) and the rejection she faced (“We are aware of who Margo is and we are not interested,” one label writes). It wasn’t until she was in her mid-30s, and had been writing and performing in Nashville for close to two decades, that she was nominated for the 2019 Grammy for best new artist. Here, you sense, is someone who has fought every day for what she wants to do—and a reminder of how much unseen toil goes into a creative life.

You can read the complete article here.

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/margo-price-on-her-two-year-sobriety-reinventing-herself-with-new-album/

Stephen King’s informative introduction provides background to a writer I wasn’t familiar with. William Sloane wrote To Walk the Night in 1937 and The Edge of Running Water in 1939. Both stories contain elements most of us would consider Lovecraftian. There are a couple of strange deaths, a beautiful but mysterious woman, cryptic mathematics, peculiar machines, bizarre science, and all around weirdness.

To Walk the Night is narrated by Barkley whose friend has just died. Barkley relates the events leading up to the death to the father of his friend. Barkley and his friend, Jerry Lister, discovered the burnt body of Professor LeNormand who was investigating some arcane mathematics. Somehow, LeNormand’s body looked like someone had taken a blow-torch to it…in the locked observatory. Jerry becomes obsessed with the mathematics LeNormand was working on…and equally obsessed with LeNormand’s beautiful, but eerie, wife.

The Edge of Running Water is narrated by Richard Sayles, friend of polymath Julian Blair, who calls for help when his weird project hits a sticking point. It takes time for Sayles to discover what Blair is secretly working on. Meanwhile, Mrs. Marey, the housekeeper, is found dead. Is it related to Blair’s secret project? Stephen King praises the first line of The Edge of Running Water: “The man for whom this story is told may or may not be alive.” You know from that moment that this story will be creepy!

William Sloan worked for a number of publishing housing and served as the managing director of the Rutgers University Press. He also established and managed his own company, William Sloan Associates and served on the faculty of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont. Stephen King laments that Sloan didn’t continue to write in this sophisticated horror genre. But, at least we have two scary stories to enjoy in The Rim of Morning. GRADE: B+ (for both)

This compilation CD from 1996 mixes well known groups like ABBA with more obscure groups like Rusted Roof. There doesn’t seem to be any theme to this music CD other including songs that were hits in their day. Do you recognize these songs? Any favorites? GRADE: B+

TRACK LIST:

1	ABBA–	Dancing Queen	4:08
2	Van Morrison–	Brown Eyed Girl	3:03
3	Rusted Root–	Send Me On My Way	4:20
4	John Cougar Mellencamp–	Jack And Diane	4:14
5	Smokey Robinson & The Miracles*–	The Tracks Of My Tears	2:55
6	The Moody Blues–	Nights in White Satin	7:24
7	Cream (2)–	Sunshine Of Your Love	4:10
8	Bon Jovi–	Wanted Dead Or Alive	5:06
9	The Police–	Every Breath You Take	4:13
10	Frankie Valli–	Grease	3:23
11	Bryan Adams–	Summer Of ’69	3:33
12	Rush–	Tom Sawyer	4:32
13	Barry White, Love Unlimited Orchestra–	Love’s Theme	4:08
14	James Brown–	Cold Sweat	2:51
15	Peter Frampton–	Show Me The Way	4:39
16	Rod Stewart–	Every Picture Tells A Story	5:57

I picked up this anthology of H. P. Lovecraft pastiches and set the bar low. Jennifer Brozek’s “To Fight the Black Wind” involves a psychologist named Carolyn Fern who is treating a woman who bloody wounds on her back seem to be caused by something inside of her…trying to get out! I especially enjoyed the journey Fern and her patient take to The Dreamlands. GRADE: B-

My favorite story in Grim Investigations is “Blood of Baalshandor” by Richard Lee Byers. I love stories about arcane, mysterious books with hellish powers! Stage magician Dexter Drake and his lovely assistant Molly run into a group in Arkham who want to use to use the forbidden knowledge in The Blood of Baalshandor to bring forth an evil being from a different plane. Hair-raising adventures result! GRADE: B

I wasn’t drawn into “Dark Revelations” by Amanda Downum where a writer visits Arkham to finish a novel of her fellow author. But, the words escape and all hell breaks loose! GRADE: C

If you’re a fan of Lovecraft pastiches, these novellas provide some diversion.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

“To Fight the Black Wind” By Jennifer Brozek — 7

“Blood of Baalshandor” By Richard Lee Byers — 151

“Dark Revelations” By Amanda Downum — 269

Investigator Origins — 393

ABOUT THE AUTHORS — 457

Noah Centineo (who looks like a young Mark Ruffalo) does a great job playing the lead character in this quirky series. Centineo’s role as Owen Hendricks, a rookie lawyer for the CIA who quickly gets in over his head, generates plenty of surprises and humor amid the violence.

Creator Alexi Hawley gives us a Central Intelligence Agency that is a nest of vipers ruled by Machiavellian rules. Trust no one!

As a CIA newbie, Owen is given stacks of “graymail,” written letters by people who threaten to release government secrets. Most of them are kooks, but Owen has to check them all. Sure enough, Owen finds someone who might be the real deal, a woman named Max Meladze (Laura Haddock), who is currently in an Arizona jail for murdering a truck driver. She is threatening to release secrets unless she is set free.

As Owen investigates Meladze’s claims, he’s beaten, tortured, and assaulted–much of the abuse caused by his naiveté and ignorance of spy craft. After all, Owen is a recent Law School graduate with little field training. But, Owen learns fast and as he follows the clues, larger issues emerge.

I love spy novels, spy movies, and spy series. If you’re looking for something different in the espionage realm, give The Recruit a try. GRADE: A-

I’m a sucker for books like Kristen Lopez’s But Have You Read the Book? (2023). Lopez chose 52 movies based on books and delivers a quick but pithy comparison of the original book and the resulting movie in short essays. Lopez shows which movies are exceptional adaptions faithful to the book…or completely altered by cinematic “creative license.”

For example, Lopez discusses the various versions of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (based on Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) and the controversy each iteration produced. I was also fascinated by Lopez’s commentary on movies that were deemed “unfilmable” like The Lord of the Rings and Dune that eventually got made.

Lopez shows why Stephen King hated Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. But King loved Mike Flanagan’s film version of Doctor Sleep (2019).

Of course I now want to rewatch several of these movies…and reread many of the books!

How many of these 52 movies have you seen? How many of the original books have you read? Any favorites? GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction — 8

Frankenstein (1931) — 11

The Thin Man (1934) — 15

Wuthering Heights (1939) — 19

Rebecca (1940) — 24

To Have and Have Not (1944) — 28

Mildred Pierce (1945) — 32

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) — 36

Kiss Me Deadly (1955) — 40

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) — 44

Psycho (1960) — 49

Dr. No (1962) — 55

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) — 59

The Haunting (1963) — 64

In Cold Blood (1967) — 68

Valley of the Dolls (1967) — 73

Rosemary’s Baby (1968) — 76

True Grit (1969) — 81

A Clockwork Orange (1971) — 86

The Last Picture Show (1971) — 90

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) — 94

The Godfather (1972) — 98

Jaws (1975) — 102

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) — 106

The Shining (1980) — 110

Blade Runner (1982) — 115

The Color Purple (1985) — 119

The Princess Bride (1987) — 124

Goodfellas (1990) — 128

The Silence of the Lambs (1991) — 132

The Age of Innocence (1993) — 136

The Joy Luck Club (1993) — 139

Jurassic Park (1993) — 143

The Remains of the Day (1993) — 147

Clueless (1995) — 150

Devil in a Blue Dress (1995) — 154

The Virgin Suicides (1999) — 158

Cruel Intentions (1999) — 162

Fight Club (1999) — 166

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) — 170

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) — 175

Children of Men (2006) — 179

No Country for Old Men (2007) — 183

Coraline (2009) — 187

The Social Network (2010) — 191

The Hunger Games (2012) — 195

The Great Gatsby (2013) — 199

Call Me By Your Name (2017) — 203

Crazy Rich Asians (2018) — 207

If Beale Street Could Talk (2018) — 211

Little Women (2019) — 215

Dune (2021) — 219

Passing (2021) — 223

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS — 227

BIBLIOGRAPHY — 229

About the Author — 240