Tarquin Hall's series about Vish Puri, Most Private Investigator, was recommended by Jeff Meyerson in a comment a while back. Since Jeff and I often agree on books, I decided to give one of Hall's a try. I'm glad I did.
The setting is Delhi, India, where it's even hotter and more humid than Alvin, Texas, and Hall does a great job of getting that across. In fact, he does so well with the setting that it's almost like being there. He captures the language, too, and that's another part of the book's charm.
Vish Puri is a middle-aged p.i. who likes eating lots of food, preferably spicy, and keeping cool. He also likes challenging cases, and he has one this time, and "impossible crime" of the classic sort. A man appears to have been killed in a very public place, surrounded by witnesses, by a fire-breathing manifestation of the goddess Kali, who plunges a sword into him. Kali then disappears, as does the sword. The suspects include a "godman," who reminded me of nothing so much as a good old televangelist. Puri learns a good bit about magic as he studies the case. Meanwhile, his wife and mother are involved in a case of their own ("The Kase of The Kitty Party Robbery" would be my title for it), his daughter is about to have twins, and his brother-in-law is involved in yet another get-rich-quick scheme.
Puri's assistants include Facecream, Tubelight, and Handbrake. Puri's fond of nicknames. The most intriguing of these is Facecream, but all the characters are well done. The book is funny, the mystery is complex, and the pace is quick. Check it out.
Richard Ellington wrote only a handful of private-eye novels before disappearing from the publishing scene. One of them was Just Killing Time, reprinted in paperback as Shakedown. 
"TV News: Betty White, Calendar Girl" by TV Tracker: "Workman Press just announced that Betty is getting her own 2011 calendar, which will feature our ageless gal pal in a variety of cheeky poses. (The March page shows a satin-clad Betty being attended to by attractive shirtless men.) It goes on sale in September. The calendar retails for $12.99, and all proceeds will benefit the Morris Animal Foundation."
Tarquin Hall's series about Vish Puri, Most Private Investigator, was recommended by Jeff Meyerson in a comment a while back. Since Jeff and I often agree on books, I decided to give one of Hall's a try. I'm glad I did.
The e-book revolution is breaking out all over. Writers are trying all sorts of different things. Some of the, like me, are making their backlist available. Others are branching out in new ways, and one of these others is Jack Cassidy. That's not his real name, but he's an established writer with dozens if not a hundred or so books to his credit in just about every genre there is. What he's done is to establish his own e-book press and publish novella-length fiction of his own. He's doing his own covers, too, and you must admit they're eye-catching. Nothing if not a guy with an eye for marketing, Cassidy's also selling t-shirts.
Tennessee man's plans for pool turn up ancient fossil that could be rare archaeological find - WHNT: "When Jim Leyden picked the site for his pool, he had no idea he hoped to go swimming where massive mammals once walked.
I really regret not having seen this movie in a theater showing it in 3-D. I could tell by watching the flat-screen version that the 3-D would have made it even better. Not that it's not a lot of fun even flattened. I got a huge kick out of it, maybe because I saw nearly every old monster movie referred to in it back in the days when those were the only kind of SF you could see in a theater.
61 Hours is a cold-weather book. I like those, especially in the summer. The setting is the small town of Bolton, South Dakota, in deepest winter. Lots of snow, temperatures well below freezing, the kind of thing that Alistair MacLean did so well. 
