Picture, if you dare, last month’s meeting of Book Club: We gathered on Zoom with grave faces, struggling to figure out how to fill the two hours with talk about a very dull book. As it turned out, we made short shrift of a desultory conversation about The Gutenberg Murders and devoted the bulk of our time in a group … Continue reading DEATH AND DELIGHT ON THE HIGH C’S: Edmund Crispin’s Swan Song
HOLMES, SWEET HOLMES: Elementary, Season 2
Welcome back to our exploration of Elementary, Robert Doherty’s modern take on the Great Detective, that ran on CBS from 2012 to 2019. I lasted about a season when the show first appeared, but high praise from friends like Sergio and JJ – and a wee bit more time on my hands for watching TV than … Continue reading HOLMES, SWEET HOLMES: Elementary, Season 2
PODCAST MANIA, PART I: Five Little Pigs
“It’s psychology that interests you, isn’t it? Well, that doesn’t change with time. The tangible things are gone – the cigarette end and the footprints and the bent blades of grass. You can’t look for those anymore. But you can go over all the facts of the case, and perhaps talk to the people who … Continue reading PODCAST MANIA, PART I: Five Little Pigs
A HALTER WITH BITE: The Mask of the Vampire
Let us consider the vampire. What other monster is simultaneously so alluring and so repellent? Immortal, eternally youthful, a creature whose method of attack has been compared in centuries of fiction as something akin to kinky sex! And yet it dwells in darkness, sleeps in a coffin, subsists on human blood, and is a close friend … Continue reading A HALTER WITH BITE: The Mask of the Vampire
KRIMES FOR KIDS, DOWN UNDER EDITION: Sabotage on the Solar Express
After dragging myself through a Book Club selection that aimed for the moon but sputtered at take-off, I wanted a read that would take me for a wild ride. Thankfully, the latest chapter in the Adventures in Trains series had only recently arrived at my door. Those masters of ferroequinology, Mara Leonard, Sam Sedgman and Elisa Paganelli … Continue reading KRIMES FOR KIDS, DOWN UNDER EDITION: Sabotage on the Solar Express
NO SHIRT, SHERLOCK: Elementary, Season One
Somewhere between the Hardy Boys and Agatha Christie, some kindly relative introduced me to the World’s Greatest Detective with a collection of six or seven of Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous stories about Sherlock Holmes. I think the first story I read was “The Red-Headed League” where, even at the age of 8 or 9, … Continue reading NO SHIRT, SHERLOCK: Elementary, Season One
BOOK CLUB BLUES: Bristow/Manning Sequel Drags the Marsh
Three months after the fact, the world is still reeling from my extraordinary upset win in the 2021 Reprint-of-the-Year Awards, when Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning’s 1930 debut novel, The Invisible Host, beat out J.D. Carr’s Till Death Do Us Part for the grand prize, (a deluxe lounge suite from Broyhill). The folks over at Dean Street Press … Continue reading BOOK CLUB BLUES: Bristow/Manning Sequel Drags the Marsh
“Inhuman, indecent, and the quintessence of gruesomeness . . . “Our Final Noir Triple-Bill
For our final 1950’s film noir class, our teacher Elliot Lavine handed us three films, and all I can say is . . . nobody said making it to the end in a noir world would be easy. First of all, these films are not all late examples; rather they span most of the decade, from 1953 – 1958, so you … Continue reading “Inhuman, indecent, and the quintessence of gruesomeness . . . “Our Final Noir Triple-Bill
AS GOODIS AS IT GETS: The Burglar and Nightfall
It takes a special person to write noir . . . a bitter, lonely person plagued with disease and/or mental illness, awash in booze and/or drugs, who somehow manages to produce these dark nuggets of gold before dying in some horrible, lonely, bitter fashion. Ah, the life of a writer! Don’t you wonder how Dashiell Hammett, Raymond … Continue reading AS GOODIS AS IT GETS: The Burglar and Nightfall
NOIR IN THE KEY OF KUBRICK: The Killing and Killer’s Kiss
Stanley Kubrick is an auteur who can irk me no end. There is always beauty in his formalistic layout of shots, but there can be coldness, too. He was also the slowest of the classic directors, sometimes taking years to put a film together. His career spanned roughly the same amount of time as that … Continue reading NOIR IN THE KEY OF KUBRICK: The Killing and Killer’s Kiss
Ah Sweet Mystery! 