Saturday, April 30, 2016

Daniel Berrigan, R. I. P.

Activist priest and Vietnam war protester Daniel Berrigan dies at 94: Daniel Berrigan, a Jesuit priest and peace activist, passed away on Saturday, reports James Martin, SJ, editor-at-large of the Jesuit magazine, America.  

I always thought of him when I heard Paul Simon's "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard":  "When the radical priest came to get me released we was all on the cover of Newsweek."

Free for Kindle for a Limited Time

Dead White Female (The Sam Jones Mysteries Book 1) - Kindle edition by Lauren Henderson. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

Walt Whitman Update

Newly Found Walt Whitman Series Reveals He Advocated for Paleo Diet

Song of the Day

1956 HITS ARCHIVE: Since I Met You Baby - Ivory Joe Hunter - YouTube:

I'm Sure You'll All Agree

Top Ten Literary Detective Novels 

Today's Vintage Ad


A Texan Led the Way

1944 memo from manager sick of "gobbledygook"

PaperBack



Nelson Nye, A Bullet for Billy the Kid (Pistols for Hire), Avon, 1950

The Weird Week in Review

The Weird Week in Review

Louise Erdrich: By the Book

Louise Erdrich: By the Book

I Found a Penny in the Walmart Parking Lot

Spanish construction crew unearths 1,300 pound hoard of Roman coins

Friday, April 29, 2016

Yet Another List I'm Not On

Year's Best Crime Novels: 2016

15 Highly Collectible Facts About Topps

15 Highly Collectible Facts About Topps 

Song of the Day

Bobby Bare - Streets of Baltimore - YouTube:

Weeding the Worst Library Books

Weeding the Worst Library Books

Today's Vintage Ad


Once Again Texas Leads the Way

Lunchroom Lunacy: ISD cops investigate $2 bill spent on school lunch

PaperBack



Albert L. Quandt, Baby Sitter, Original Novels, 1952

I Miss the Old Days

"In “Dead Ringer,” one of N.Y.C.'s last pay phones remembers the good old days

Brooklyn Leads the Way

Artist Duke Riley Is Doing Something Crazy With 2,000 Pigeons On The Brooklyn Waterfront

First It Was the Thin Mint Melee . . .

. . . and now it's the boneless wing mixup!

Jenny Diski, R. I. P.

The New York Times: Jenny Diski, a British writer who channeled the turmoil of her early years, which included suicide attempts and confinement in mental hospitals, into a stream of richly observed and mordant novels, memoirs and essays, died on Thursday at her home in Cambridge, England. She was 68.  

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

Phil Kives, R. I. P.

Manitoba - CBC News: Winnipeg businessman Phil Kives, who brought you everything from hamburger patty stackers to hit music records with his company K-Tel International, died on Wednesday. He was 87.  

Hat tip to Deb.

An Old Review of Mine

A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review: BRUNO FISCHER – The Silent Dust.

Another Retro Review by Me

A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review: BRUNO FISCHER – So Wicked My Love.

FFB: The Last Talk with Lola Faye -- Thomas H. Cook

Thomas H. Cook is one of those writers who's so good that you wonder why he's not better known.   Often, as in the case of The Last Talk with Lola Faye, they're about crimes in the past that have an effect on the present, and they're always beautifully written and paced.

This one is narrated by Lucas Paige, a man who escaped his Alabama hometown, went to Harvard, and became an author and historian whose books have never been the kind of significant works he'd hoped to write and whose personal life is even less successful.  

One night at a book signing in St. Louis, a woman appears.  She's Lola Faye Gillroy, originally from Lucas' hometown, and she's traveled there specifically to see him and to get a book signed.  But that's not the only reason.  She's there to have a talk with him, and most of the novel is just that, two people having a talk, one that's filled with flashbacks to the past.

It's quite a past, as we gradually discover, and it involves murder, guilt, blame, and misunderstanding.  What we believe to be true about the past might not turn out to be true at all.  Cook reveals his secrets carefully and masterfully, creating a great deal of suspense along the way.  What does Lola Faye really want?  What's her real reason for coming to St. Louis?  You should read the book to find out.  It's a good one.

Thursday, April 28, 2016

First It Was the Thin Mint Melee . . .

. . .  and now it's the toilet paper prank!

MWA Announces 2016 Edgar Award Winners

MWA Announces 2016 Edgar Award Winners

Once Again Texas Leads the Way

Texas church asks members to pay $500 to drink pesticide ‘elixir’ to cure erectile dysfunction

Will the Persecution Never End?

Celebrity wardrobe malfunctions  

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

Blackie Sherrod, R. I. P.

Dallas Morning News: Blackie Sherrod, the greatest Texas sportswriter of his generation or any other, now and forevermore, died Thursday afternoon at age 96.

John D. and Me

You may have noticed that the Sarasota Herald-Tribune has been publishing a series of columns entitled "John D. and Me" to celebrate the centenary of John D. MacDonald's birth.  I've linked to most of them.  So naturally I've been waiting for the call or the e-mail from Sarasota with a request for me to do one of those columns.  It's finally dawned on me that the call or e-mail isn't going to come, so I figured I'd just write the column, anyway.

The first JDM book I remember seeing on the newsstand, or rather the little paperback rack in my local drugstore, is The Damned.  That book came out in 1952, so I was ten or eleven years old when I saw it.  It caught my attention because of the title.  You didn't see titles like that in little East Texas towns in 1952.  And then there was that bold line in the middle of the cover: "I wish I had written this book" -- Mickey Spillane.  I had no idea who Mickey Spillane was at that time, but the name stuck in my head, as did that book and its cover. I knew it had to be a good book if some other guy said he wished he'd written it.  

Years passed.  The first JDM book I remember reading is The Girl, the Gold Watch, and Everything, a fantasy novel that was recommended to me by a friend who doesn't like fantasy novels.  That should've been a clue that JDM's work was something special, but I wasn't hooked immediately.  The next book I read was Murder in the Wind, which I also liked a lot but which also didn't hook me.  At the time I was reading almost nothing but spy novels, so that's probably why.

Then I picked up A Deadly Shade of Gold.  Why?  Probably for a couple of reasons.  For one thing, it was a Gold Medal Book, and I'd been reading a good many Gold Medal spy novels by Donald Hamilton, Edward S. Aarons, Philip Atlee, and Stephen Marlowe (the Chester Drum books had just started looking more like spy novels).  Also, the cover said something about a hunt for an Aztec idol.  That sounded great.  So I read the book, and this time I was hooked.  I went back and read all the other Travis McGee books.  This was in 1965, so there were only three or four at the time.  

Judy and I moved to Austin in 1966, and I discovered that there were stores selling used books all over the city.  It was in one of them that I ran across the first printing of Murder for the Bride, which looked a good bit different from the printing I'd read. So I decided I'd get the first printings of all the JDM paperbacks.  The result of that was, well, does the saying "Down that road lies madness" ring a bell?  

First it was just the JDM books, though, and I even won second place in a student book-collecting contest at The University of Texas at Austin for my collection of those.  Yes, I have Weep for Me (both printings).  I became one of the charter subscribers to The JDM Bibliophile, too, and, well, does the saying "Down that road lies madness" ring a bell?  My subscription to that publication led directly to my involvement in mystery fandom, my contributions to many mystery fanzines (including Jeff Meyerson's estimable The Poisoned Pen), my membership in DAPA-em (thanks, Steve Lewis!), and my eventual attendance at the 1980 Bouchercon and many subsequent ones.

John D. MacDonald's not the only influence on my reading and writing life, but he's certainly one of the biggest.  My greatest regret regarding him is that I didn't go to the Bouchercon in 1983 when he was guest of honor.  We'd just moved to Alvin at considerable expense, and the week we arrived, only a couple of months before the Bouchercon, we went through Hurricane Alicia.  We just weren't up to the trip to New York.  I figured that I'd get to meet MacDonald some other time.  It didn't happen, so I never got to tell him how much I owed him.  This post will have to do.

Song of the Day

Porter Wagoner - I've Enjoyed as Much of This as I can Stand (with lyrics) - YouTube:

Beverly Hills of the Dead

Beverly Hills of the Dead: Luxury Tombs complete with Kitchens & Air Conditioning

First It Was the Thin Mint Melee

Landscaper infuriates Florida man by running over his Trump sign with lawnmower — repeatedly

Today's Vintage Ad


Today's Vintage Ad


10 Out-of-This-World Facts About ‘Plan 9 From Outer Space’

10 Out-of-This-World Facts About ‘Plan 9 From Outer Space’

PaperBack



Clarence E. Mulford, Hopalong Cassidy Takes Cards, Popular Library, 1948

I Miss the Old Days

50 Vintage Fashion Photos That Reveal Just How Awesome People Used To Dress

On the Heartbreaking Difficulty of Getting Rid of Books

On the Heartbreaking Difficulty of Getting Rid of Books  

Hat tip to Reed Andrus.

First It Was the Thin Mint Melee . . .

. . . and now it's the spat over cat!

Paris Hilton Update

Paris Hilton puts a brave face on as she steps out in London following 'split'  

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

Forgotten Music: The Story of Gary Lewis & the Playboys

Jerry's Kid: the Story of Gary Lewis & the Playboys

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Soon We'll Have No Personal Freedoms Left at All

Man was carrying machete, chicken when shot by police 

Written in Dead Wax (The Vinyl Detective #1) -- Andrew Cartmel

The vinyl detective isn't made of vinyl.  He's a picker, going to thrift stores and boot sales (the setting is England) and anywhere else that he might get lucky enough to find an LP that he can resell for big bucks.  One day a lovely young woman shows up at his door and asks him to help her find an American jazz LP that just might be the rarest in the world.  She's working for a mysterious employer who's offering an amazing sum for the finder.

If this sounds straightforward enough, rest assured that it's not.  Other people are looking for the LP, too, and they aren't nice.  People start to die.

So who wants this LP?  And why?  It's complicated, and it gets even more complicated as we go along.  Our narrator gets involved with not one but two lovely women, faces death, and . . . there are cats.

There are bits of this you may not buy completely, and you're probably going to be a little frustrated at the inability of the characters to figure out a really simple word puzzle, but Cartmel has a breezy style and plenty of humor, not to mention many details about recordings that I find fascinating.   I enjoyed this one, and I'm looking forward to the promised sequel.

The Unexpected Individuals Featured on American Currency

The Unexpected Individuals Featured on American Currency

Song of the Day

The Yellow Rose of Texas - YouTube:

I'm Sure You'll All Agree

Top Ten Essential Western Novels you have to read 

Today's Vintage Ad


“Love Your Characters Before You Kill Them

“Love Your Characters Before You Kill Them, and Other Strategies for Fledgling Crime Writers” (by Katia Lief) | SOMETHING IS GOING TO HAPPEN: Katia Lief’s most recent story for EQMM, “The Orchid Grower” (November 2015), was a finalist for the Short Mystery Fiction Society’s Derringer Award for best long story. The Brooklyn author has also been recognized for her novel-length fiction, with nominations for the Mary Higgins Clark Award and the RT Reviewers Choice Award. Her latest novel is The Money Kill (HarperCollins 2013). She shares her experience writing both short and long fiction with students at classes she teaches at The New School—online in the fall and in the classroom in the spring. In this post she provides a few important tips for aspiring writers.—Janet Hutchings

I Found a Penny in the Walmart Parking Lot

Oldest Viking Crucifix Uncovered in Denmark: The gorgeous pendant was unearthed in March by a hobbyist with a metal detector. Found in a field on the island of Funen, Denmark, the Viking jewelry piece may have been worn by a Viking woman, according to the Viking Museum at Ladby, where the pendant was on display.

PaperBack



J. Edward Leithead, Bronc Buckaroo, Avon, 1948

Nine Great Unconventional True Crime Books

Nine Great Unconventional True Crime Books

I Miss the Old Days

Street Style of the Great American Road Trip 

Soon We'll Have No Personal Freedoms Left at All

PEACHTREE CITY, Ga. (AP) — Fearing Snapchat could take an ugly turn toward "snap chomp," police are warning people not to take selfies with an alligator in suburban Atlanta.  

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

19th-Century Shakespearean Actors

Gloriously Melodramatic Portraits of 19th-Century Shakespearean Actors

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

First It Was the Thin Mint Melee . . .

. . . and keep off her lawn!
Staten Island woman accused of hitting boy with hockey stick  

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

FINALISTS: 2016 Hugo Award

FINALISTS: 2016 Hugo Award

Perfectly Understandable

Man Sucker-Punched On LES "Because You Look Like Shia LaBeouf"

Song of the Day

HANK THOMPSON - A Six Pack to Go (1960) - YouTube:

I'm Sure You'll All Agree

15 Best Movie Entrances Of All Time  

Link via SF Signal.

Today's Vintage Ad


10 Unexpected Benefits To Being A Psychopath

10 Unexpected Benefits To Being A Psychopath 

PaperBack



Hallam Whitney (Harry Whittington), Backwoods Hussy, Original Novels, 1952

I Miss the Old Days

30 Years Ago: A Look Back at 1986

John D and Me: Sterling Watson

John D and Me: Sterling Watson

Harper Lee Update

Harper Lee’s article for FBI magazine on infamous ‘In Cold Blood’ killings found: Biographer of To Kill a Mockingbird author finds unsigned piece on quadruple murder at centre of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood

Paris Hilton Update

Paris Hilton 'splits from millionaire boyfriend Thomas Gross after one year of dating'  

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

New Poem at the Five-Two

The Five-Two: David Spicer: ANY SECOND NOW

Overlooked Movies: You Never Can Tell

The other day I ran a post on the best ghosts in movies, and Art Scott mentioned You Never Can Tell, which is a movie I love.  So I thought I'd rerun this (slightly revised) review from 2011 today in case you missed it back then.  Art also e-mailed to tell me that there is now a DVD available on Amazon, but with this statement attached: "When sold by Amazon.com, this product will be manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply."  

There's no trailer or clip available on YouTube for the movie.

This is another one I saw when I was ten years old and thought was purely wonderful. Obviously my taste for fantasy was already well developed.

King, a German shepherd, is heir to a fortune, and Ellen (Peggy Dow) administers his inheritance. Then King is murdered (poison). Ellen is judged to be responsible.

That's when things get fantastic. The scene is Beastatory, an animal heaven, where King asks an animal jury to allow him to return to earth, investigate the crime, and expose the real killer. He gets what he asks for, and he's reincarnated as Rex Shepard, private-eye (Dick Powell). Rex is accompanied by Goldie (Joyce Holden), formerly a palomino and now Rex's secretary. If you think Rex solves the mystery, you're right, but that's all I have to say. The rest you should discover for yourself, assuming you buy a copy or catch it on TV.

Well, I can't resist a remark about the costuming. It's just great, particularly Goldie's hat and shoes. 

One more thing. That last scene. Gets me every time, even thinking about it.

Monday, April 25, 2016

Free App, Free Book

The Brash Books App is Here!: Get Dallas Murphy’s Edgar-Award nominated LOVER MAN absolutely free when you download the FREE Brash App…the best way to buy and read our ebook editions! 

Download the FREE Brash Books App on any Android or iOs device and read our books ​anywhere, anytime… across all of your electronic devices, from iPhones to tablets, laptops to PCs.

Brooklyn Leads the Way

New York Post: Room with a…screw! 

The Brooklyn housing market is so hot, a slick realtor is asking half a million dollars for a glorified tool shed in Gravesend.

Madeleine Sherwood, R. I. P.

Madeleine Sherwood Dies at 93 -- Vulture: Madeleine Sherwood, who was best known for playing the serious Reverend Mother Superior Lydia Placido, opposite Sally Field, on the 1967–1970 sitcom The Flying Nun, has died at 93. Sherwood made a name for herself on Broadway, solidifying her career with performances in Tennesse Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (as Mae Pollitt/Sister Woman) and Sweet Bird of Youth (as Miss Lucy), both onstage and in their subsequent film adaptations. Born in Quebec, Sherwood first appeared on Broadway in 1952's The Chase, before taking the role of Abigail in Arthur Miller's The Crucible the year later. Onstage, Sherwood also appeared in Camelot (1961), The Night of the Iguana (1962), Do I Hear a Waltz? (1965) and All Over (1967). Her film credits include Baby Doll (1956), Hurry, Sundown (1967), The Changeling (1980), and Teachers (1984). An active participant in the political movements of her time, Sherwood was blacklisted during the McCarthy era, and later arrested in a civil rights protest in Alabama in the 1960s. In 1989, she retired from acting and returned to her home in Canada.  

Hat tip to Deb.
And I have to add here that Sherwood's delivery of the "little no-neck monsters" line in the movie version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof cracked Judy up and she referred to it for years.

Comic Strip of the Day


Adam@Home Comic Strip, April 25, 2016 on GoComics.com

In an Age of Privilege

In an Age of Privilege, Not Everyone Is in the Same Boat: “We needed to fill the Haven by getting the right people on the ship,” said Mr. Sheehan, who stepped down as chief executive last year. “When the masses overwhelmed the group in the Haven, they didn’t have the experience they were looking for.”

Song of the Day

Memphis - Lonnie Mack - 1963 - YouTube:

I Miss the Old Days

See early football players go airborne during kicking practice: 1924-1942 

Today's Vintage Ad


100 Years Of Movies / 100 Shots

100 Years Of Movies / 100 Shots: A journey through the past 100 years of cinema - the most memorable shot from each year. While many of these shots are the most recognizable in film history, others are equally iconic in their own right.

PaperBack



Hallam Whitney (Harry Whittington), Lisa (Backwoods Hussy), Paperback Library, 1966

British Library posts 1m copyright-free images online

Boing Boing: The British Library has posted over a million copyright free images taken from books prior to 1900 on Flickr. That means if you need decorations of virtually any type for a website or book, you’ll find more than you can imagine among these visual riches.

Your stuff is surveilling you

Your stuff is surveilling you: New devices’ latest features can spy on your every move: Your laptop has a video camera built into it. When it’s recording, a little green light blinks on so you’re aware you’re being recorded. But it can be instructed to videotape your activities without the green camera light being on.  

I'm not bothered that my stuff is watching my every move.  I'm bothered that a professor of electrical engineering and computer science thinks a computer has videotape in it.  Good grief.

America’s First Supermodel

The Glamorous Life And Tragic Fall of America’s First Supermodel: She’s the face of every famous statue from America’s Gilded Age and the first actress to appear nude in a Hollywood film—but Audrey Munson’s charmed life ended in tragedy.
....
Her “most perfect form” still reigns over New York City and across the United States. You probably already know her, without even knowing you know her. You may have passed her on the street many times, unbeknownst.

This is an amazing story, and I didn't know any of it.
Warning: Nudity

Michael Bracken honored for lifetime of mysteries

Waco writer Michael Bracken honored for lifetime of mysteries

Once Again Texas Leads the Way

Bananas Gone Wild's Davonte Wilson set to make $100k a year from personalised bananas  

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson, who says that Personalized Bananas WBAGNFARB.

I Miss the Old Days

The '60s at 50: Monday, April 25, 1966: 'Pop!'

Sunday, April 24, 2016

Billy Paul, R. I. P.

NBC 10 Philadelphia: Paul gained his greatest success when he released his 1972 single “Me and Mrs. Jones,” which was written and produced by Gamble and Huff. The song was the number one single on the Billboard Hot 100 and R&B singles chart and received a Grammy Award. The song also received newfound attention decades later when singer Michael Buble released a cover version in 2007.  

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

Multiple Choice Question

You've picked up a brand-new book and started to read the first page, where you encounter this sentence:

"She watched her host for a moment longer, then cast her eyes around the other people in the room."

What do you do?

A. Keep right on reading without a second thought.
B. Say, "Tsk, tsk, whatever happened to editing?"
C. Set the book aside without comment and pick up another one.
D. Hurl the book against the wall.
E. None of the above.

I Miss the Old Days

Never Published Photos Of Jazz Legends In Portland  

Hat tip to Rick Robinson.

No

In view of my earlier post about libraries, I'm amazed to hear this.

Do You Suffer from Library Anxiety?: “Seventy-five to 85 percent of students in each class described their initial response to the library in terms of fear or anxiety.”

Song of the Day

Will the circle be unbroken - Jerry Lee Lewis - YouTube:

This Is Depressing

Biomedicine facing a worse replication crisis than the one plaguing psychology.: These cancer studies don’t merely fail to find a cure; they might not offer any useful data whatsoever. Given current U.S. spending habits, the resulting waste amounts to more than $28 billion. That’s two dozen Cancer Moonshots misfired in every single year.

Today's Vintage Ad


I Miss the Old Days

Vintage photos of high school proms in NJ

PaperBack



MacKinlay Kantor, Gentle Annie, Popular Library, 1949

Once Again Texas Leads the Way

Texas Lawyer Threatens To Sue Restaurant Over Cup of Soup

You All Know Who #1 Is

8 Crime Fiction Characters From Florida

Paris Hilton Update

Newly single Paris Hilton and Ariel Winter kick off second weekend of Coachella   

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

World's oldest tree turns 4,847

World's oldest tree turns 4,847 this year and is in a top-secret location: Even if people have laid eyes on the world's oldest tree, there's a good chance they didn't realize it. That's because the United States Forest Service keeps all information about the 4,847-year-old Great Basin bristlecone pine — including its exact location — completely under wraps to protect it from any potential vandals, loggers, and researchers who may be interested in chopping it down.