Saturday, January 28, 2017

Blood and Lemonade -- Joe R. Lansdale

In his afterword to Blood and Lemonade, Joe Lansdale calls his latest book about Hap and Leonard a "mosaic novel."  You can read his definition for yourself.  My idea is that it's a book of short pieces connected by an introduction to each piece that ties the whole thing together.  In this case the short pieces (some reprints, many original to this volume) are mostly the backstory of Hap Collins, telling about his growing-up years in East Texas.

You might notice that I said "short pieces" instead of short stories.  Some of the pieces are stories, and all of them have a story to tell, but not all of them are stories.  One of them is even called "The Parable of the Stick," so you know what that one is.  And while they're mostly about Hap (and occasionally Leonard) all of them have something to impart beyond the simple history of a character.  They're about a time and a place and people and attitudes and growing up in an era different from the one we live in now.  I suspect that some of them are drawn from Lansdale's own life, but that's just, like, my opinion, man. 

Everything here is written in Lansdale's inimitable style of down-home East Texas storytelling, and everything is eminently readable and enjoyable.  There's humor, there's sadness, there's blood, and there's lemonade.  And some cussing, too.  Great stuff, irresistible reading.

Forgotten Hits: January 28th

Forgotten Hits: January 28th: The Saturday Evening Post publishes an in-depth expose on The Monkees.

Song of the Day

Pat Benatar - We Belong - YouTube:

Or Maybe Not

10 Mysterious Books You Will Want To Own

Today's Vintage Ad


Whatever the Genre, Elizabeth Hand is Brilliant

Whatever the Genre, Elizabeth Hand is Brilliant

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Edward Ronns (Edward S. Aarons), Murder Money, Phantom Books (Australia), 1955

This week’s tabloids shoot for an entire alternate universe

This week’s tabloids shoot for an entire alternate universe

7 True Crimes Solved By Twists Too Ridiculous For Network TV

7 True Crimes Solved By Twists Too Ridiculous For Network TV 

The 5 Best Bookstores in Mexico City

The 5 Best Bookstores in Mexico City 

Friday, January 27, 2017

John Hurt, R. I. P.

Hollywood Reporter: John Hurt, the esteemed British actor known for his burry voice and weathered visage — one that was kept hidden for his most acclaimed role, that of the deformed John Merrick in David Lynch’s The Elephant Man — has died, according to reports from several British newspapers. He was 77.

Barbara Hale, R. I. P.

The Washington Post: Barbara Hale, a wavy-haired model and Hollywood leading lady of the 1940s and 1950s who warbled with Frank Sinatra in his first big film role and had a long television career as the devoted secretary Della Street to Raymond Burr’s tireless defense lawyer Perry Mason, died Jan. 26 at her home in Sherman Oaks, Calif. She was 94.  

Hat tip to Toby O'Brien.

PimPage: An Occasional Feature in which I Mention Books that Might be of Interest

Lionel White was one of the great Gold Medal writers that many people don't remember today in spite of his great importance in the field.  Stark House is helping to remedy that situation by reprinting two of his fine novels, The Snatchers and Clean Break.  The introduction to the volume is by Rick Ollerman, and it's great, almost like a master's thesis on White's work.  Years ago I wrote the article on White for 20th Century Crime and Mystery Writers.  I thought I did a pretty good job, but it's not a patch on what Ollerman does here.  Plus you get two excellent examples of White's work in the same volume.  Highly recommended!

Ian Rankin: There’s Nothing Crime Fiction Can’t Do

Ian Rankin: There’s Nothing Crime Fiction Can’t Do

Song of the Day

sHeart - Alone - YouTube:

Not That Any of this Applies to Me

Bibliomania: the strange history of compulsive book buying 

Today's Vintage Ad


Uh-Oh

Another classic Bill Murray movie is getting an all-female reboot: Returning as a TV show rather than a movie, NBC has commissioned a pilot for What About Barb?, a series based on the 1991 Frank Oz movie What About Bob?, Deadline reports.

PaperBack



Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera, Dell, 1943

I Want to Believe!

Daily Mail Online: You won't believe it - we get less grumpy with age! 

Happy Birthday, Angela Crider Neary!

Another repeat post, but it's still a good story and it's the right day for it.

On the evening of January 26, 1969, Judy and I went to a party for some of the graduate students in the English Department of The University of Texas at Austin.  Judy was pregnant, but the baby (we had no idea whether the baby was male or female; these were the old days) wasn't due for six weeks or so, according to Judy's doctor, and we didn't give a thought to whether or not the party was a good idea.  We went home a little earlier than most of the revelers because I had to go to work the next morning.  We went to bed as usual, neither of us noticing anything unusual.


About 2:30, Judy woke me up.  She was in the bathroom, yelling "Kill it! Kill it!"  I ran to the bathroom, where Judy pointed to an enormous roach that was skittering around on the ceiling.  I killed it.  After Judy calmed down, she told me that she was having lower back pains.  Not bad, but noticeable.  It couldn't be labor pains because it was way too soon for those.  So we went back to bed.

The pains got worse.  And worse.  About 4:30 or 5:00 we called Judy's doctor.  These were the old days, as I said.  The doctor was very kind and told us that there was nothing to worry about.  "Just put a heating pad on your back," he told Judy.  "The pains will stop."

That would've been great if we'd had a heating pad, which we didn't.  The doctor asked if we had an iron.  We did, and he told us to wrap the iron in a towel and hold it on Judy's back.  We did that, and Judy said the pain was a little better.  The next morning, she told me that she was fine and to go on to work.  So I did.

The spring semester hadn't begun, but I worked in registration.  I sat in the balcony of Gregory Gymnasium, which is where registration was held.  Did I mention that these were the old days?  Everybody had to register in person, and the process was lengthy and debilitating, especially in the fall, when temperatures in the gym were quite warm.  How bad was it?  When I was a freshman, one of the guys on my floor of the dorm came back from his first registration experience, walked into the bathroom, got in the shower fully clothed, turned on the water, and sat down in the floor of the shower.  But I digress.

My job was to give students their score on the English placement test and tell them if they'd qualified to skip the first semester of English and go right into the second semester.  So that's what I was doing when the guy who'd thrown the party showed up.  There was no phone in the gym, or not one where I could be reached, so Judy had phoned the English Department.  The secretary had found the guy in his office and sent him over.  He had a message for me.  Judy's pains had gotten much worse, and she'd called the doctor again.  He'd told her to get to the hospital immediately.  The guy said he'd take my place in registration, so I left.

I drove home quite calmly, got Judy, and took her to the hospital.  In a few hours, Angela Antoinette Crider was born, surprising all of us, including Judy's doctor, with her early appearance.  At five pounds, twelve ounces, she wasn't premature, at least not by six weeks.  The doctor had been a bit off in his estimates.

Nobody has ever been less prepared for parenthood than Judy and I were, but we muddled through, doing the best we could.  Angela's always been afraid of roaches, though.


Forgotten Books: File on a Missing Redhead Lou Cameron


I've run this twice before, but since it's Angela's birthday today, it's worth repeating!

Everybody remembers where he was and what he was doing at some significant moment in his life. For example, everybody my age remembers where he was and what he was doing when he heard about the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.

As for me, I also remember another day with startling clarity. It was January 27, 1969, when my daughter, Angela Antoinette Crider, was born in St. David's Hospital in Austin, Texas. In those days, in what I now think of as a more genteel and civilized time, fathers weren't allowed into the delivery room. Now, of course, they are, and they later invite friends and family over to the house for the showing of the full-color sound video they made of their children emerging from the womb. While I'm sure that's very enlightening for all concerned, I was quite happy to be shunted off to the waiting room to sit with other nervous fathers-to-be and wait until Angela was born.

So what did I do in the waiting room? I read a book, naturally, and I remember exactly which book it was: File on a Missing Redhead by Lou Cameron. A Gold Medal Book, as you might have guessed.

The other day on Angela's 36th birthday, in a fit of nostalgia, I pulled the book (sure, I still have it) off the shelf and read it again.

It was pretty much as I remembered it. Short, fast, and twisty. The narrator is Frank Talbot, a state trooper, which is kind of unusual when you think about it. He's investigating the murder of a redheaded woman found crammed into the forward trunk of a VW Beetle, and in the course of things he gets involved with the skip-tracing agency for which his former girlfriend (Hazel Collier) works. Hazel, as it turns out, dumped Talbot because he sent her current sweetie to the state pen. There are lots of entertaining details about skip-tracing in the novel (probably all outdated now, what with the Internet), and lots of nice CSI type stuff (also probably outdated). Plenty of procedural details, too. The violence is gruesomely described.

It turns out that the suspected killer of the redhead is being helped out by one of the agency's former workers, who knows all the tricks of the trade. And someone's trying to assassinate Talbot.

All this is wrapped up (maybe at a little too much length) in a surprising way. It even surprised me this time, on my second reading. And the final couple of pages were just great. I remember how much I liked them 36 years ago, and they're still satisfying today. Definitely not what you'd expect.

Cameron went on to create (and write a lot of books for) the Longarm series of adult westerns. I hope it made him rich.



Thursday, January 26, 2017

Mike Connors, R. I. P.

Variety: Mike Connors, best known for playing detective Joe Mannix on 1960s and ’70s show “Mannix,” died Thursday in Tarzana, Calif. He was 91. 

He had been diagnosed a week ago with leukemia, according to his son-in-law Mike Condon. 

“Mannix” ran for eight seasons from 1968 to 1975 and was the last series from Desilu Productions. Connors won a Golden Globe for his performance as a tough, athletic investigator, who in quintessential detective show style, insisted on doing things his own way and often got beat up in the process. He drove an impressive series of muscle cars including a Dodge Dart and Chevrolet Camaro.  

Hat tip to Fred Zackel.

Agatha Nominated Short Stories: Links to read them!

Mystery Fanfare: Agatha Nominated Short Stories: Links to read them!

30 Powerful Pictures That Defined American History

30 Powerful Pictures That Defined American History: This year marks the 80th anniversary of Life magazine’s inaugural issue in 1936. Over the course of its 36 years in print as a weekly publication, Life captured the sights and stories the helped defined the 20th century. Their images are seared into America’s collective memory and chronicled our nation’s progress and struggles during an era of rapid change.

Song of the Day

Eric Clapton - After Midnight - YouTube:

My New Look


Today's Vintage Ad


Ronald 'Bingo' Mundy, R. I. P.

hastingstribune.com: PITTSBURGH (AP) — Ronald "Bingo" Mundy, best known for his work with the doo-wop group The Marcels and their hit "Blue Moon," has died. He was 76.

The Era of the Body Snatchers

The Era of the Body Snatchers

PaperBack



Ross Laurence, The Fast Buck, Phantom Books (Australia), 1955 

Butch Trucks, R. I. P.

The New York Times: Butch Trucks, a drummer who was one of the founding members of the seminal Southern rock group the Allman Brothers Band, died on Tuesday at his home in West Palm Beach, Fla. He was 69.  

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

On Reading as a Substitute for Experience

'A Walk in the Woods' vs. A Walk in the Woods: On Reading as a Substitute for Experience

“I Know Words, the Best Words” (by Harley Mazuk)

“I Know Words, the Best Words” (by Harley Mazuk) | SOMETHING IS GOING TO HAPPEN: Harley Mazuk has contributed four stories in the classical private-eye tradition to EQMM, beginning with his very first professional fiction publication, which appeared in the January 2011 issue of EQMM. Three of the stories, including the first, belong to a series starring P.I. Frank Swiver. Now, the Ohio-born author has completed his first novel, also featuring Swiver. Entitled White with Fish, Red with Murder, it will be released on February 18 by Driven Press, a new imprint based in Brisbane, Australia. In this post, Harley reflects further on a topic we reintroduced on this site a couple of weeks ago.—Janet Hutchings

First It Was the Thin Mints Melee

Man attacks family and sets Fresno home ablaze in fracas over 'inadequate' cigarette

First It Was the Thin Mints Melee

Fight over chili dog escalated into shooting

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

First It Was the Thin Mints Melee

WJAX-TV: A St. Johns County man is in jail after allegedly stabbing another man in the face during a fight over a Minute Maid fruit punch box, authorities said.

15 Memorable Quotes from Mary Tyler Moore

15 Memorable Quotes from Mary Tyler Moore 

Agatha Award Nominees

Mystery Fanfare: Agatha Award Nominees

Mary Tyler Moore, R. I. P.

Hollywood icon Mary Tyler Moore dies at 80: Legendary actress Mary Tyler Moore has died, according to her longtime representative. She was 80.

10 Fascinating Ivory Artifacts Shrouded In Mystery

10 Fascinating Ivory Artifacts Shrouded In Mystery

Song of the Day

Amazing Rhythm Aces - Third Rate Romance.wmv - YouTube:

Confessions of a man who walked the dark streets

Confessions of a man who walked the dark streets

Today's Vintage Ad


10 Mysterious Jade Relics

10 Mysterious Jade Relics 

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Bernard Mara (Brian Moore), French for Murder, Phantom Books (Australia), 1955

Victorians' Strange Cat Fears And Fascinations

This 19th-Century Book Chronicles Victorians' Strange Cat Fears And Fascinations

I Miss the Old Days

15 Awkward Men’s Fashion Ads From The 70’s

Secrets of the Louvre Museum in Paris

Secrets of the Louvre Museum in Paris 

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

I Want to Believe!

Bigfoot hunters say claw marks likely evidence of 'Alabama Booger Monster'  

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

First It Was the Thin Mints Melee

Man accused of assault after striking woman with sausage

9 Hardened Facts About Charles Bronson

9 Hardened Facts About Charles Bronson

Song of the Day

Bruce Springsteen - Glory Days (LP Rip) - YouTube:

Forgotten Hits: January 24th

Forgotten Hits: January 24th

Today's Vintage Ad


How Siri, Alexa and Cortana got their names

How Siri, Alexa and Cortana got their names

PaperBack



Charles Jackson, The Sunnier Side, Dell, 1951

Oscar nominees: Here's the full list

Oscar nominees: Here's the full list

10 People Who Survived Being Shot in the Head

10 People Who Survived Being Shot in the Head 

Why a Duck?

Millau Viaduct – Creissels, France: The world's tallest bridge is possibly also the most elegant.

Overlooked Movies: Night Moves

"It was a wandering daughter job."

For most of the way, Night Moves is an entertaining private-eye movie.  Gene Hackman is very good as Harry Moseby, who's looking for the wandering daughter (Melanie Griffith) of a former movie actress.  He's also investigating his own wife and discovers that she's having an affair.  Harry's too devoted to his work, it seems, and he's like many  of the private-eyes you read about in books.  He has to follow his investigations to the end.  He wants to know the answers, all of them.  It's an obsession with him.

He finds the wandering daughter in Florida, with her father, but there are other things going on, too.  Harry wants to know about them.  The deeper he delves into the case, the more it appears that everything he thinks he knows is wrong.  He does return the daughter to California, but she's killed in an apparent accident.  Harry goes back to Florida, and . . . I'll be darned if I know.  I've seen this movie twice now, and I still can't figure out the ending.  I'm pretty sure Harry doesn't have everything figured out, either.  I know what happens, and so does Harry, but a lot of it doesn't make any sense, at least to me.  I've never even figured out if Griffith's death is an accident or not.

That doesn't mean this isn't a very good movie.  The acting is topnotch all the way, and the story's a good one right up until the end.  If you have it figured out, let me know.

Night Moves

Night Moves (1975) Official Trailer - Gene Hackman, Jennifer Warren Movie HD - YouTube:

Monday, January 23, 2017

Special Guest Post by Michael Keyton

I came across Peter Cheyney when I was somewhere between twelve and thirteen. A church bazaar or second hand bookshop, the memory is blurred.  I forgot all about him for almost forty years. And this ‘forgetting’ is key to the whole story. Peter Cheyney was the most popular and prolific British author of his day. He was also the most highly paid. His curse perhaps is that he undoubtedly influenced Ian Fleming, for Bond is nothing more than a glamorous composite of the Cheyney ‘hero’. Cheyney created the template that Fleming developed, and the rest is history. Bond got Chubby Broccoli and celluloid fame, Peter Cheyney obscurity and critical censure.

 John le Carre, when asked about spy books that might have influenced him as a child, gave the following response. He duly bowed his head to Kipling, Conrad, Buchan and Greene, and then referred to the: ‘…awful, mercifully-forgotten chauvinistic writers like Peter Cheyney and Co.’
   
John Sutherland made a similar point, referring to Cheyney’s Dark Series as the ‘high point of a resolutely low flying career.’ These two, wonderfully pithy, assessments are true to a point. They are also skewed by the cultural background and literary talent of both men.
In the mid 1930’s Cheyney was finding his feet, his first three novels introducing Lemmy Caution, with its bizarre cockney interpretation of American ‘gangster-speak’. 

So why write a book about him, other than the fact that the only biography of Cheyney was one written by a fairly uncritical friend in 1954? The reason is the same reason I’m drawn to the works of Edgar Wallace and Sapper, Spillane, and Richard S Prather. They may not be great literature, though they offer some wonderful vignettes, but they open windows into cultures and mores now largely unknown. Edgar Wallace and Sax Rohmer illustrate wonderfully the underlying unease and hysteria in great swathes of the population after the Great War; they offer insights into the fantasies and prejudices of ordinary readers. Peter Cheyney, coming a little later, does the same, his greatest achievement catching the zeitgeist of the Second World War in his justly acclaimed ‘Dark Series.’ 

The Dark series was immensely popular because it tapped in to what people wanted to believe. There is little subtlety in the books. Women are lovingly described for men far from home; and in his lavish and detailed accounts of what his female characters are wearing, Cheyney appeals to women suffering from rationing and austerity. To both he offers wish fulfilment when wishes are all that’s un-rationed. He also offered hope.

During the dark years of World War II and the austerity that followed, Cheyney’s novels were taken into battlefields, were exchanged for ten cigarettes in POW camps, and at a time when fabric was rationed, women fantasised about the glamorous Cheyney femme fatales in their satin and silks, sheer stockings, ruffles and bows. Read Cheyney and you’re reading violence and brutality set in a fashion catalogue. 

The Dark Series tapped into a zeitgeist, when hope and belief trumped sophistication. Britain was fighting a war, its very existence at stake. This central fact perhaps best explains why so many Peter Cheyney books were found in the battlefields of Europe. The books were propaganda gold, offering what every Briton wanted to believe. 
They also held a mirror up to a truth the authorities denied —a startling loosening of sexual mores.

Five years of total war brought unimaginable violence to ‘ordinary people’ and when faced with disruption and imminent death moral restraint appears quaint rather than admirable. War coarsened in its need for immediacy and the pleasures of ‘now.’ The poet, Philip Larkin, once famously said ‘Sex was invented in 1963…between the end of the “Chatterley” ban… And the Beatles’ first LP.’ A snappy sound bite but essentially false. 

The truth was far different. Sexual permissiveness was kick-started by World War II and was not the preserve of the young. German propaganda, like Cheyney was aware of this, many of their leaflets playing on the fears of soldiers far from home and distant wives.

In ‘Virtu

e Under Fire,’ John Costello’s central premise was that the drama and excitement of the war eroded moral restraints, the totality of war bringing the urgent licentiousness of the front line closer to home.  In the words of one American soldier: “We were young and could die tomorrow.”

Costello’s analysis, an eye-opener in 1985, was predated by Peter Cheyney and brought to life in his ‘Dark’ series forty years before. What makes Cheyney so significant and explains his popularity is that his books reflected what officialdom wouldn’t, and reflected without judgment.

In the world Cheyney, Behave examines, you will find misogyny, homophobia, racism, sexism and chauvinism and, at its core, idealism and profound vulnerability. Cheyney’s success as the most highly paid writer of his time does not necessarily qualify him as a literary giant, but it does show that his work reflected the attitudes and mood of a huge swathe of the population, amplified it and played it back to them. Cheyney talked to the popular mood rather than the concerns of an educated elite. It was ‘everyman’ who bought his work in droves. In terms of market forces his books reflect a world long past, one far different from ours but fascinating and worth understanding. Read Cheyney, Behave and judge for yourself. Alternatively if it’s a wet and windy day and you have nothing better to do, feel free to visit my author page and/or blog.
https://www.amazon.com/Cheyney-Behave-Peter-Darker-World/dp/1532801580/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

https://www.amazon.com/Michael-Keyton/e/B016S5RBI4/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

http://baffledspirit.blogspot.co.uk/

Razzie Nominations: Full List

Razzies 2017: Zoolander 2 leads losers with nine nominations

The Hidden Room Behind Mount Rushmore

The Hidden Room Behind Mount Rushmore

Song of the Day

1958 HITS ARCHIVE: Somebody Touched Me - Buddy Knox - YouTube:

Top 10 Longest Novels

Top 10 Longest Novels

Today's Vintage Ad


20 Short Novels To Stay Up All Night Reading

20 Short Novels To Stay Up All Night Reading

PaperBack



Stuart Palmer, The Puzzle of the Silver Persian, Dell, 1943

2017 Newbery and Caldecott Winners

2017 Newbery and Caldecott Winners: Kelly Barnhill, author of The Girl Who Drank the Moon, is the winner of this year’s Newbery Medal for “most outstanding contribution to children’s literature,” and Javaka Steptoe, author of Radiant Child: The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, won this year’s Caldecott Medal.

What Paris sounded like in the 18th century

Historians imagine what Paris sounded like in the 18th century 

New Poem at The Five-Two

The Five-Two: Jennifer Lagier: NEVER SEE MORNING

The Many Bad Moms of Charles Dickens

The Many Bad Moms of Charles Dickens 

10 Lesser-Known Facts About Popular Horror Movies

10 Lesser-Known Facts About Popular Horror Movies 

Sunday, January 22, 2017

Doc Savage and the Empire of Doom -- Kenneth Robeson (Will Murray)

Doc Savage and the Shadow are together again in a rip-snorting, ocean- and continent-spanning adventure that pits them against one of the Shadow's famous foes, Shiwan Khan, and ends in caverns measureless to man.  

The story begins when Shiwan Khan, using his amazing hypnotic powers, steals a U.S. Destroyer from the Brooklyn Navy Yard and uses the guns to destroy a rundown hotel Midtown Manhattan, which houses the secret sanctum of the Shadow, along with some powerful weapons that the Shadow has captured.  And the chase is on.

Shiwan Khan has mental powers that Doc Savage can scarcely credit, including not just the power to take over minds by telepathy, but the ability to create a fog of total blackness and to reanimate a corpse.  The Shadow, having dealt with such things before, finds it easy to believe them.  And besides those things, Doc and his crew (everyone buy Johnny) and the Shadow have to deal with the killing machines that Shiwan Khan as taken.  There are plenty of battles both among men and between super science and amazing mental powers.  Doc and members of his group are declared dead more than once, as is the Shadow. We readers, of course, know better than to believe such things, but the calls are close. 

I tore through this one at a record pace, and for me the best thing about it, even better than the adventures and the battles, was the fun Robeson (Will Murray) has with the Shadow's shifting identities.  Lamont Cranston has a bit part in this one.  Even more fun was the problem that Doc has with trying to keep the Shadow from killing people.  Once the Shadow fires up that Thompson or one of his killing machings, people die by the scores.  It makes Doc a bit cranky.

Although this is a handsomely produced volume printed on heavy paper, I could almost feel the brittle, yellowing edges of pulp pages flaking off as I turned them.  If you like Doc Savage and/or the Shadow, you can't miss with this one.  Great stuff.


The Hollywood Canteen

The Hollywood Canteen where Movie Stars were at your Service

Song of the Day

Jesus Put a Yodel in My Soul - YouTube:

A Big Day for Harry Stephen Keeler Fans!

Art Scott forwards this update from Richard Polt, with some great links:

Dear Keeler Society members,

Today is the 50th anniversary of Harry Stephen Keeler’s death, and Keeler News has now been published for 20 years. To mark this occasion, I’ve put out a special issue of the News . . . . 

Meanwhile, Jon Michaud of the Center for Fiction has interviewed Ed Park and me to create two fine introductions to HSK and some of his greatest works:

http://centerforfiction.org/library/the-book-drop/the-wild-imagination-of-harry-stephen-keeler/

http://centerforfiction.org/for-readers/author-picks/getting-to-know-harry-stephen-keeler-by-ed-park-and-richard-polt/

Finally, our longtime member John Norris will be publishing a story about coincidence in HSK on his blog today:


http://prettysinister.blogspot.com

Today's Vintage Ad


Gilmore Girls/Murder She Wrote Crossover? Sort Of.

BENDIS Writes GILMORE GIRLS/MURDER, SHE WROTE Crossover, For Real... Sort Of: Gilmore Girls may have already returned on Netflix, but now Rory and Lorelei have made a different kind of comeback, this time teaming up with Murder, She Wrote's Jessica Fletcher - and in comic book form, no less.  

Hat tip to Toby O'Brien.

PaperBack



William Bogart, Murder Man (Hell on Fridays), Phantom Books (Australia), 1955

Can You Identify A Writer By Reading One Random Paragraph?

Can You Identify A Writer By Reading One Random Paragraph?

Once Again Texas Leads the Way

Border Patrol seizes 3,000 pounds of weed disguised as watermelons  

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

At Least One of These Would Have Been Great

10 Classic Films That Nearly Starred The Last Actor You'd Expect 

I'm Sure You'll All Agree

The Greatest Drinking Song in the World?