Saturday, July 09, 2016
Cynthia Ozick: By the Book
Cynthia Ozick: By the Book: The author, most recently, of “Critics, Monsters, Fanatics, and Other Literary Essays” leans to “Nabokov rather than Hemingway. If less is more, it is nevertheless also loss.”
Friday, July 08, 2016
First It Was the Thin Mint Melee
WDRB 41 Louisville News: Police say Louisville woman assaulted man with burrito, stabbed him with knife
FFB: Target Practice -- Rex Stout
Many years ago when I read John McAleer's biography of Stout, I was excited to learn that there were quite a few unpublished stories and novels that Stout had written prior to his Nero Wolfe series, and I wanted to read them. Eventually some of the novels were published, and I read Under the Andes. After that, I didn't much care whether I read any of the rest of the early work. Quite a bit of it was published, and I bought some of the volumes, but I wasn't interested enough to read them. The other day, however, I decided to give some of the stories a try, and I pulled Target Practice off the shelf. According to the back cover, this collection "brings together for the first time the complete short works of fiction that Rex Stout wrote for All-Story Magazine." The book has no editorial material, doesn't say who the editor is, and doesn't give dates of publication. The stories I read aren't great, but they're competent. Crime fiction fans might find something of interest in two of them.
"Secrets" is about a young lawyer who's asked by a young woman to defend her against a charge of theft. She's quite lovely, and he's smitten. He becomes convinced of her innocence. You can probably guess the rest. I did. There's also the matter of a picture in the lawyer's office. I was curious about it, but my curiosity was never satisfied. I just had to make a guess.
And then there's "Justice Ends at Home," a novella that might be thought of as prefiguring the Wolfe series. It's a mystery, but unfortunately the killer is obvious from the very beginning. Simon Leg, an indolent attorney, is assigned to defend an accused killer. He's reluctant to do any work and has to be pushed by his "office boy," Dan Culp. It's Dan who does all the detective work, and the procedural part of the story works well. These two characters aren't much like Wolfe and Archie, and the story is told in the third person, but there's at least a superficial resemblance. There's also a sappy romance in the story, and the language is nothing like that which Stout would use in the Wolfe stories. Here's the description of Dan Culp: "There was a light in his eyes and a form to his brow that spoke of intelligence, and he was genuinely, not superficially, neat in appearance."
The complete table of contents is below.
Target Practice
The Pay Yeoman
Secrets
Rose Orchid
The inevitable Third
The Lie
If He Be Married
Baba
Warner and Wife
Jonathan Stannard's Secret Vice
Sanetomo
Justice Ends at Home
It's Science that Counts
The Rope Dance
An Officer and a Lady
Heels of Fate
Thursday, July 07, 2016
You Will Know Me -- Megan Abbott
You Will Know Me is being described by some reviewers as a mystery novel or a crime novel, but to me it's not really a genre novel. It's a novel that does have a crime in it, and it's about the effects of that crime on a number of people, but it's more (to me) a novel about how far people will go to nurture a child with a special talent, someone who has the ability to be a champion, in this case a gymnastics champ. What do we do to those people? What do we do to ourselves when we give up nearly everything to see that they go all the way to the top? How far will we go? And who are we really doing things for, anyway, ourselves or the child?Katie and Chuck Knox have that special child, Devon, who has the ability and the will to go all the way. The will matters almost as much as the ability, and Devon is known as "Ice Eyes" to others in her gym group, all of whom know they'll never be as good as she is. When a young man named Ryan, who works in the gym, is killed in a hit-and-run accident, things start to fall apart, and Katie's only interest is in holding them together for her daughter (and for herself). She'll do anything to protect her family, she tells herself and others. We discover that she's not the only one. Even Drew, Devon's younger brother, is powerfully affected by the aspirations of his sister.
The suspense here derives more from the tension among the characters than from the mystery itself, and things do get very tense. It's powerful stuff, and you might never watch videos of Simone Biles with quite the same joy in performance again.
Novelist Matthew Pearl - Fine Books and Collections
Novelist Matthew Pearl - Fine Books and Collections: Matthew Pearl, author of five bestselling biblio-mysteries with another on the way, leaped into the Inferno and never looked back By Nicholas A. Basbanes
Wednesday, July 06, 2016
New York Nocturne: The Return of Miss Lizzie -- Walter Satterthwait
In 1924 16-year-old Amanda Burton's parents go off on a tour around the world and send her to spend the summer with her uncle, the charming John Burton. They have a magical week, at the end of which Burton is brutally murdered in his apartment with Amanda sleeping not far away. The cops arrest Amanda and toss her in the jug, where she's treated brutally until she's rescued by ace attorney Morrie Lipkind, sent by . . . Lizbeth Borden, with whom Amanda earlier had a fine adventure in Satterthwait's Miss Lizzie. Naturally it's necessary for Lizbeth and Amanda to solve the crime before the cops come after Amada again, and so they do, assisted by Dorothy Parker, a P.I. named Carl Leibowitz, and a mysterious (and very dangerous) man named Cutter.Before the mystery is solved, we're treated to a wonderful tour of New York City in 1924, from fine restaurants to the Cotton Club to dens of iniquity, and we meet some wonderful characters, including Arnold Rothstein, who sits down for a poker game with Miss Lizzie.
If you've read Satterthwait's work before, you know you're in for a treat. Excellent writing, beautiful descriptions, superb characterizations, and fine plotting. It's all here. If you've never read Satterthwait before, do yourself a favor and grab this book. You can thank me later.
IT’S ALL HAPPENING
IT’S ALL HAPPENING | SOMETHING IS GOING TO HAPPEN: Back in December of last year (how long ago the busy months intervening have already made that seem!), my post for this site gave a preview of the special issues and events coming up in celebration of EQMM’s 75th anniversary. We’re now more than halfway through release of the year’s special issues, and all of the remaining issues are in some stage of production. July 2016, composed entirely of stories by authors who got their start in EQMM’s Department of First Stories, is on sale now, and on the nineteenth of this month, our August issue, a tribute to EQMM’s former editors, brings back from our archives Eleanor Sullivan’s Edgar-nominated story “Ted Bundy’s Father” and a new story by Edgar-winning playwright Joseph Goodrich in which Frederic Dannay and Dashiell Hammett take center stage.
First It Was the Thin Mint Melee
4 arrested after 30-person brawl at Gates Walmart: The incident escalated quickly and erupted into "a big melee," VanBrederode said. He said both the victim and the suspects had big families there. The groups grabbed items off the shelves to use in the brawl.
Tuesday, July 05, 2016
People Who Sit Behind Me
Yesterday evening we went to see the Sonoma Stompers play baseball. We sat in front of a some young people, including a woman who talked almost nonstop. She also used the word "like" a lot. At one point she was telling one of her friends about the movie version of The Bird Cage, which starred like Nathan Lane and Robin Williams, who were like these two gay guys who pretended to be like straight because one of them had like a son who was getting married . . . and you get the idea. I found this annoying, but it wasn't intended to annoy me. It was just a private conversation that I couldn't help overhearing.
After the game there was a spectacular fireworks show, and the people who'd been at the game were allowed to watch from center field, the best seats in town. This time there was a guy behind us with his family. Like the young woman, he talked nonstop, but the difference was that he wanted everyone to hear him. He was certain that he was entertaining the entire crowd with his cleverness and charm. One of his more brilliant witticisms was to yell "Boom!" when the fireworks exploded, just in case we couldn't hear the fireworks themselves. He did this about 100 times. He also liked to yell, "Make it happen!" as the rockets shot upward. He encouraged his kids to join in, and sometimes they did. Good training, so they could grow up to be obnoxious cretins just like their old man.
Overlooked Movies -- Superman Returns
Summertime is rerun time, USA. This review is from 2006.
Superman as a chick flick? That's about the size of it.
Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane? She was fine as Sandra Dee in Beyond the Sea, but she looks way too young to be Lois.
Brandon Routh as Supe? Bland, mostly monosyllabic.
Kevin Spacey (great as Bobby Darin in Beyond the Sea) as Lex Luthor? Okay, but he doesn't really breaks loose the way Gene Hackman did. He comes close a couple of times, but the attempt at comedy in his last scene falls flat. The scene where Lois discovers the wigs seems stolen directly from one of my favorite episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show. It made me long for Carl Reiner as Alan Brady. He'd have made this into a great scene.
The plot? Doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
A couple of nice action set-pieces. That's about it. I was disappointed in this one.
Monday, July 04, 2016
Noel Neill, R. I. P.
Noel Neill, Superman's First Live-Action Lois Lane, Has Passed Away: The first live-action Lois Lane, The Adventures of Superman's Noel Neill, has passed away, according to reports. She was 95.
Forgotten Hits: May The 4th Be With You
Forgotten Hits: May The 4th Be With You: A look back at The Top Ten Hits on The 4th of July, spanning the past sixty years ... thanks to Joel Whitburn's brand new "America's Greatest Hits" collection of Top Ten Charts, 1940 - 2015!
Sunday, July 03, 2016
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)