April 2024

We restarted the newzine 6 years ago – with the April 2018 post. Whaddya think? Like it?

mulct (v.): early 15th C., “to punish by a fine or forfeiture,” from Latin mulctare, altered (Barnhart calls it “false archaism”) from multare “punish, to sentence to pay a fine,” from multa “penalty, fine,” which is perhaps from Oscan or Samnite [Klein], or perhaps connected to multus “numerous, many,” as “a fine is a ‘quantity’ one has to pay” [de Vaan]. Sense of “defraud” is first recorded 1748. Related: Mulcted; mulcting; mulctation (early 15th C.). From Cambridge Dictionary: (v.): to make someone pay money, as a fine (= a punishment) or in tax

The secrets hidden in Anne Boleyn’s Book of Hours

The crime-fighting botanist who uses plants to solve murders

From Family Game to Cult Film to ‘Thirst Trap,’ Clue Has Been Through It

Your new literary dream job: reader-in-residence.

From Dylan to Ishiguro: can song lyrics ever be literature?

Taylor Swift is related to Emily Dickinson!

Scandal in Oz: Was “Over the Rainbow” Plagiarized?

A report and a letter signed by Oppenheimer are attracting interest at auction ahead of the Oscars

Why a 1-Cent Postage Stamp Could Sell for $5 Million

Goodwill Listed This Rare Gold Lego Piece for $14.95. It Sold for $18,101

Words like podcast and token booth outlive their origins. If you’re still using these dated words, you’re not alone

Paper houses: The Somerset artists turning books into model country homes

To learn Klingon or Esperanto: What invented languages can teach us

Mexican Government Acquires Rare Centuries-Old Aztec Manuscripts

‘Nothing has really changed’: letters from 1719 reveal familiar worries of London life

calumny (n.): mid-15th C., “false accusation, slander,” from Old French calomnie (15th C.), from Latin calumnia “trickery, subterfuge, misrepresentation, malicious charge,” from calvi “to trick, deceive.”

According to de Vaan, PIE cognates include Greek kēlein “to bewitch, cast a spell,” Gothic holon “to slander,” Old Norse hol “praise, flattery,” Old English hol “slander,” holian “to betray,” Old High German huolen “to deceive.” The whole group is perhaps from the same root as call (v.). A doublet of challenge.

The Many Real Life Deaths Surrounding The “Star Wars” Defense Initiative

UK and US accused of obstructing inquiry into 1961 death of UN chief

Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born Americans, studies find

Study finds that we could lose science if publishers go bankrupt

Walter Mosley Thinks America Is Getting Dumber

How to teach the thrill of reading

The Artful Spy who Stopped Hitler from Emptying the Louvre

From Russia, Elaborate Tales of Fake Journalists

Dozens of library services and 26 museums to receive £33m government funding

‘You can see it as a revenge fantasy’: The new book arguing that enslaved people co-authored the Bible

The Oxford English Dictionary’s latest update adds 23 Japanese words

Does “And” Really Mean “And”? Not Always, the Supreme Court Rules.

After Landlord Complains, Seattle Boots Downtown’s Oldest Sidewalk Newsstand

The Story of the Boeing Whistleblower Found Dead Just Keeps Getting Weirder

Seattle Times: A PNW-set cop crime fiction and 3 more new thrillers

The secret history of underground comics in Seattle, told by artists who were there

The Story of the Boeing Whistleblower Found Dead Just Keeps Getting Weirder

15-year-old car thief suspect used his underwear for a mask. Pasco police still found him

Idaho police are investigating racist harassment of Utah women’s basketball team

jape (v.): late 14th C., “to trick, beguile, jilt; to mock,” also “to act foolishly; to speak jokingly, jest pleasantly,” perhaps from Old French japer “to howl, bawl, scream” (Modern French japper), of echoic origin, or from Old French gaber “to mock, deride.” Phonetics suits the former, but sense the latter explanation. Chaucer has it in the full range of senses. Around mid-15th C. the Middle English word took on a slang sense of “have sex with” and subsequently vanished from polite usage. It was revived in the benign sense of “say or do something in jest” by Scott, etc., and has limped along since in stilted prose. Related: Japed; japing.

jape (n.): mid-14th C., “a trick, a cheat;” late 14th C. “a joke, a jest; a frivolous pastime, something of little importance” (late 14th C.). By 1400 also “depraved or immoral act; undignified behavior; bawdiness.” Related: Japery “jesting, joking, raillery, mockery” (mid-14th C.).

The Strange Case of Mark Twain’s Mystery Novel

Antarctic Explorers Wrote Cute, Funny Stories to Hide Dangerous Stunts

Titanic ‘door’ prop that kept Rose alive sells for $718,750

An offer he couldn’t refuse: Sopranos diner booth sells for $82,600

One Way to Preserve Alcatraz? Capture Everything in 3-D.

If you kill someone in your sleep, are you a murderer?

Edgar Allan Poe’s Bid to Become a Real-Life Crime Solver

Why Scientists Are Mixing Wasabi and Ancient Papyrus

Harvard University removes human skin binding from book

“A Sleuth of Bears“? Bears take a ride on swan pedalo at Woburn Safari Park

cavil (v.): “to raise frivolous objections, find fault without good reason,” 1540s, from French caviller “to mock, jest,” from Latin cavillari “to jeer, mock; satirize, argue scoffingly” (also source of Italian cavillare, Spanish cavilar), from cavilla “jest, jeering,” which is related to calumnia “slander, false accusation”

How three students wrote history by winning the Vesuvius Challenge

AI Helped Produce Five of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Journalism Finalists

Kathryn Scanlan: Gordon Burn prize winner on pushing the boundaries of fiction

The Women’s prize for fiction is a success – now it has a nonfiction sister

Naomi Klein and Laura Cumming shortlisted for inaugural Women’s prize for nonfiction

Histories of the American West and Southeast Asian Wars Win Bancroft Prize

Paul Yoon Wins 20th Annual Story Prize

The 2024 National Book Critics Circle Award Winners

Mathematician Who Made Sense of the Universe’s Randomness Wins Math’s Top Prize

Martin Luther King Jr. Biographer Wins American History Prize

Walter Hill to Receive Writers Guild Lifetime Achievement Award

Lorrie Moore wins prestigious National Book Critics Circle Award, continues to gather accolades for new novel

Finalists for the Lambda Literary Awards Revealed

Peg Tyre and Peter Blauner On Three Decades of Marriage and Writing

Drinking with Agatha Christie

Big Pimpin: On Iceberg Slim and ‘Reflections’

A tour of Lisa Scottoline’s personal library

’60 Minutes’ Confronts Moms for Liberty Co-Founders on Books

Kara Swisher among authors decrying AI-generated books …

A New Publisher Promises Authors ‘the Lion’s Share of the Profit’

Tana French: A Crime Fiction Master Flips the Script

Tana French Has Broken the Detective Novel

Vince Aletti Is Best Known for His Contributions to Photography. He Also Lives Alongside 10,000 Books and Magazines in His East Village Apartment.

Kansas City can finally go down The Rabbit Hole at a new museum for children’s literature

Agatha Christie she was not, but Carolyn Wells was a mystery novel phenom

Old Soviet files showed up at his door in Ukraine. Then the mystery began.

Meet the woman who helped libraries across the U.S. ‘surf the internet’

Family returns nearly 100-year overdue books to Kentucky library

Authors push back on the growing number of AI ‘scam’ books on Amazon

What’s your favorite Stephen King book?

Percival Everett gives Mark Twain’s classic story about Huck a new voice in ‘James’

Fifth-grader publishes book, sequel to come

The 30 Top Mystery Books Of All Time

Rediscovered: the long-lost script that helped The Great Gatsby become a classic

The Russian Detective by Carol Adlam review – exquisitely illustrated celebration of early crime fiction

A conservative publisher actually had ties to Soros. Litigation ensued.

April 6: Patric Gagne signs her memoir, Sociopath, Elliot Bay at Town Hall, 7:30pm

April 9: Robert Dugoni signs A Killing on the Hill, Island Books, 6:30pm

April 11: Cara Black signs Murder at la Villette, Third Place/LFP, 7pm

quip (n.): “smart, sarcastic remark,” 1530s, a variant of quippy in the same sense (1510s), perhaps from Latin quippe “indeed, of course, as you see, naturally, obviously” (used sarcastically), from quid “what” (neuter of pronoun quis “who,” from PIE root *kwo-, stem of relative and interrogative pronouns) + emphatic particle -pe. Compare quibble (n.).

American Library Association report says book challenges soared in 2023

Montgomery County directs citizen board to review, and potentially remove, library books

Teen social network launched by Austin Public Library to save banned books

Denver book store helps open up access to LGBTQ+ books in Texas

Suburban school district removes book program for being ‘left-leaning’

Book Banning Attempts Are at Record Highs

Bomb threats target library, its director over Drag Queen Story Hour

North Korea TV censors Alan Titchmarsh’s trousers [“Jeans are seen as a symbol of western imperialism in the secretive state and as such are banned.” !?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!??!?]

She Had Razors Hidden in Her Hair – On the glory of blaxploitation icon Pam Grier’s two greatest onscreen catfights.

‘The Octopus Murders’ creators set record straight on “frustrating” ending

The Hunt for John Wilkes Booth Goes On

The Real History Behind Apple TV+’s ‘Manhunt’ and the Search for Abraham Lincoln’s Killer

The TV shows that don’t solve their mysteries

Confessions of a continuity cop

FX’s Shogun Takes A New Approach To An Old Story

Princess Peach transforms from supporting player to leading lady in ‘Showtime!’

Mark Wahlberg Reflects on Filming ‘The Departed’: “I Was a Little Pissed About a Couple Things”

Beau Bridges On His New ‘Matlock’ Series And Dad Lloyd’s Famed Comedic Turns In ‘Airplane!’ And ‘Seinfeld’: “He Had The Look Of A Startled Fawn”

The film fans who refuse to surrender to streaming: ‘One day you’ll barter bread for our DVDs’

The Designer Who Makes Movie Posters Worthy of Museums

‘Dalí’s were unfilmable’: the astonishing story of Hitchcock’s lost storyboards – found in a bric-a-brac sale

‘Diarra From Detroit’ Is a Murder Mystery, a Romance, a Comedy — and a Star-Making Showcase

69 Years Later, a Beloved Noir Thriller is Getting Remade by a Contentious Marvel Director

007=’ [we swear we don’t go out of our way to find Bond stuff, it just surfaces on it’s own…]

Mystery of James Bond note found buried in concrete inside historic castle

James Bond’s Most Tricked Out Vehicles Go on Display at D.C.’s Spy Museum

MI5 seeking Q-style explosives expert to help real-life James Bond spies for £66k-a-year

Las Vegas resort featured in James Bond film set to close after nearly 70 years

UK spy agency GCHQ releases puzzle for potential new recruits

Explore James Bond’s Most Iconic Destinations In New Coffee Table Book

James Bond Recasting Is Over, Aaron Taylor-Johnson Is The New 007?

James Bond Octopussy Lays A Fabergé Egg

carp (v.): early 13th C., “to talk, speak, tell,” from Old Norse karpa “to brag,” which is of unknown origin. The meaning turned toward “find fault with, complain,” particularly without reason or petulantly (late 14th C.) probably by influence of Latin carpere “to slander, revile,” literally “to pluck” (which is from PIE root *kerp- “to gather, pluck, harvest”). Related: Carped; carping.

March 8: Why ‘Dragon Ball’ creator Akira Toriyama was so important to the world of anime

It’s with great, great sadness that we report the death on Feb. 12th of our dear friend Steve Ellis. Steve was not only a long-time supporter of the shop, he was often the person whose Friday afternoon stop-bys allowed us to continue another week. Once he got the quarterly newzine, he’d send us his “list”, by which we mean a long request of titles coming out that quarter. He’d call to ask how if he had any books ready and we’d report by inches – 6 in., 18in, – and off he’d go with one or two bags overloaded with mostly hardcovers, most signed, and ARCs we’d toss in for his massive collection. While in, we’d chat about this or that, he’d tell us of the latest finds he’d made, or British editions he’d ordered. The library he had build to house them was something to see! He was a sweet guy, always funny and smiling, always concerned about the shop, and one of those regulars we all missed mixing with when the shop closed. A heart-felt farewell. Steve, we’ll call you when your books are ready!

March 20: M. Emmet Walsh, character actor from ‘Blood Simple’ and ‘Blade Runner,’ dies at 88

March 23: Laurent de Brunhoff, author of Babar children’s books, dies at 98

March 29: Louis Gossett Jr., Star of ‘An Officer and a Gentleman’ and ‘Roots,’ Dies at 87

Feb. 28: The Mystery of Monsieur de New York, Celebrity Hangman

Feb. 29: Murder, Mayhem, Warhol: Art Crime Underworld Odyssey Turns L.A. Gallerist Into FBI Sleuth

Mar. 3: German Police Conduct Raid in Hunt for Red Army Fugitives

Mar. 4: Ex-Army Officer Shared Military Secrets on Dating Site: Feds

Mar. 4: A $443,500 Ferrari was stolen in Italy during a 1995 Grand Prix. 28 years later, police got it back.

Mar. 5: Suspected Iranian Assassin Targeting Former Trump Admin Officials: Report

Mar. 5: The Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping: A Grisly Theory and a Renewed Debate

Mar. 7: NYC Councilman Calls For Reopening Dorothy Kilgallen Case

Mar. 8: Colorado’s Star DNA Analyst Intentionally Manipulated Data, Investigation Finds

Mar. 11: ‘Ultra-Specialized’ Gang Pulls Off $1 Million Heist at Italian Museum

Mar. 11: Students reexamining decades-old homicide cases through University of Michigan class

Mar. 13: You’re Not Imagining It; Shrinkflation Is Real

March 16: A Florida man who refused to sell his home to a developer now lives in the shadows

Mar. 15: A funeral home worker tracked down a family — and uncovered a decades-old secret

Mar. 17: Second Man Charged in Connection With 2005 Theft of Ruby Slippers Worn in ‘The Wizard of Oz’

Mar. 20: A New York man’s pet alligator was seized after 30 years. Now, he wants Albert back

Mar. 20: FBI: ‘Little rascals’ trio, ages 11, 12 and 16, arrested for robbing a Houston bank

Mar. 20: Crime stories drove readers to GoFundMe campaigns, only the victims didn’t exist

Mar. 21: We want to keep our Christmas tree up all year

Mar. 21: A Math Genius Created the Decimal Point and Became a Legend. Turns Out He Stole It.

Mar. 21: US man pleads guilty to ‘killing spree’ of eagles

Mar. 21: Pastor paid hit men $40,000 to shoot his daughter’s boyfriend, police say

Mar. 22: Was my dad a killer? The diary that left writer Saul Wordsworth wondering

Mar. 24: The most dangerous woman in the world

Mar. 24: A woman lost $789K in a gold bar scam, police say. Then she turned the tables.

Mar. 27: The women behind a fugitive rapist’s downfall

Mar. 27: Largest cocaine shipment of the year seized after high-speed boat chase

Mar. 29: For years, a mysterious figure preyed on gay men in Atlanta. People on the streets called him the Handcuff Man—but the police knew his real name.

quibble (n.): 1610s, “a pun, a play on words,” probably a diminutive of obsolete quib “evasion of a point at issue” (1540s), which is based on Latin quibus? “by what (things)?” Its extensive use in legal writing supposedly gave it the association with trivial argument: “a word of frequent occurrence in legal documents … hence associated with the ‘quirks and quillets’ of the law.” [OED].

Latin quibus is dative or ablative plural of quid “in what respect? to what extent?; how? why?,” neuter of relative pronoun quis (from PIE root *kwo-, stem of relative and interrogative pronouns).

also from 1610s : quibble (v.) – “equivocate, evade the point, trifle in an argument or discourse, turn from the point in question or the plain truth,” 1650s, from quibble (n.). Earlier “to pun” (1620s). Related: Quibbled; quibbler; quibbling.

Golden Age Gals: The Little Sisters:

Constance B: September 18, 1899 Australia  D: 1980 

Gwenyth   B: May 19, 1903 Australia           D: 1985

Iris M.       B: November 18, 1910 England    D: 2003

Okay, so here’s the dealio: Whilst doing research for this piece, I fell into a deep genealogical rabbit hole which, in a peculiar way, fired up my competitive streak…Since I, apparently, took the lack of information on the sisters Little as a personal challenge, which I had a very, very difficult time letting go of once I started! Moreover, I still feel a vague sense of frustration at my inability to locate their graves, obituaries, or, in fact, much of any info beyond 1950.

Be that as it may, here’s what I’ve been able to piece together.

One line I kept reading over and over again when researching the sisters Little was: “How little is known about their lives.” Two huge factors contributed to this informational vacuum: A. All three sisters wrote under pseudo-pseudonyms. & B. Their father’s (and later their own) predilection for globe-trotting.

First of all, researching any female around the turn of the century is challenging because when women married back then, they lost their names. In this case, Gwenyth Little became Mrs. Bernard Hemming-Jones after her marriage in August 1930, and Constance Little became Mrs. Lawrence Baker sometime after August 1938. (We know this because, in her father’s obituary published in the same month and year, Constance is referred to as Miss Constance Little whilst her sisters were listed by their ‘Mrs.’ names. A fine yet important distinction.) 

Taking the name game to another level…Not only did the duo publish their mysteries under their “maiden” name — they swapped their given names for their middle ones! Legally, they were Jessie Constance and Norma Gwenyth. Now, in all likelihood, Constance probably went by her middle name for the majority of her life since she and her mother share the same first name (Jessie). As for Gwenythe, your guess is as good as mine as to which name she favored outside her role as author.

(BTW: For the sake of clarity in this post, I’m going to stick to the names printed on their books — Constance & Gwenyth.)

We’ll get to Iris in a bit.

Armed with this info, I started verifying the facts in Carol Hetherington’s 2007 paper (Little Australians? Some Questions about national identity and the national literature) and the info included in the Rue Morgue Press’s reprints of the Constance & Gwenythe’s books. Scouring several vintage newspaper sites and genealogical sites, I started building a picture. 

Their claim to have circumnavigated the globe three times does not appear to be an idle boast. 

Born in Sydney, Australia, to James F. Little and Jessie Gilchrist. Constance and Gwenyth also had two brothers, James A. and Robert. Sometime between 1906 and 1909, their James F. Little announced he’d “…grown tired of Australia…” packed up his family and sailed for London, where he found work as a consulting actuary, and his last child, Iris M., was born in 1910.

From London, James F. took a job with the Mexican government and moved everyone to Mexico City. By the time 1911 rolled around, he’d accepted a position with Prudential in New York City and set sail once again.

Finally, in 1915, the Little family settled in Maplewood, New Jersey. 

(You can practically hear me inhaling for the “but” at the end of that last sentence, can’t you…)

Sometime prior to 1926 (as that’s when they returned home), both Constance and Gwenyth were sent to England for an education. This is where Gwenyth undoubtedly met her husband, Captain Bernard Hemming-Jones — and in 1930, both sisters would again hop onto a steamer and set sail for London, with one returning as a Mrs. Bernard Hemming-Jones.

In January 1930, Constance petitioned for her naturalization papers (which is where I get her photo from) and became a US citizen in 1932. Norma would petition for her papers in 1938 (though there’s no photo with her application). 

At this point, I lost track of Constance and Gwenyth in the genealogical records. However, it’s at this point that they started writing their ‘Black’ series….And it’s about this time Iris comes into view.

Books: 

Published under the Pseudonyms: Constance & Gwenyth Little and Conyth Little (in some UK versions)

1^st Books: Grey Mist Murders &The Black-Head Pins (1938)   Last: The Black Iris (1953)

No. of Books In Series: 21 novels & at least 1 short story   Setting: U.S. & Australia

Iris Published Under the Pseudonym:  Robert James (An amalgamation of her two brothers’ first names.)

Board Stiff (1951) & Death Wears Pink Shoes (1952)

My 52 Weeks With Christie: A.Miner©2024

Overwhelmed

Here’s the deal. There are so many great authors who will be at Left Coast Crime with wonderful new books that I’ve been spinning like a madwoman trying to figure out what to read.

Megan Abbott is the Guest of Honor, and she can write in ways that will haunt you, so I thought about reading her latest, Beware the Woman, which sounds absolutely compelling.

But then there’s Robert Dugoni, who has yet to write a bad book, and his are often set in Seattle. I remember reading one and looking around where I was sitting, realizing I was right where the protagonist was at that moment. It was magic. And I haven’t read his latest, A Killing on the Hill, so I figured I should jump right into that one.

But then, I found out that Laurie R. King is having a special event celebrating the 30th anniversary of her great hit, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, on April 10th, so I figured I ought to re-read that one. I’ve been re-reading a lot lately – I find it comforting – so this would make perfect sense.

I saw that Lisa Lutz is going to be there, and she’s an author whose books I’ll buy sight unseen because I trust her, and I realized that I hadn’t read her latest, The Accomplice, and I knew I’d have to fix that.

And I know there’s going to be a discussion about banned books, as there should be, and I just found my copy of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, so I figured I could re-read it, since it’s short and I’m running out of time.

And now that the conference is just around the corner, I’m stuck not reading anything because I’m spinning like a dervish. I picked up Peter Maas‘s book, The Terrible Hours, but I can’t seem to focus enough to keep all the people straight, which is a massive disservice to both Maas and the people on the Squalus, so I set it aside until I can make my mind behave.

I may be a bit nervous about Left Coast Crime and my place in it. Just a tiny bit.

So anyway, I don’t have a review for you this month, and I’m sorry, but I know you can’t go wrong with any of the above books. I’ll try to post something mid-month, perhaps with pictures from the conference, but in the meantime, welcome to April – no foolin’!

Clearing the pile continues. As usual, I’m sorry I waited so long to get to David Rosenfelt’s Hounded, his 12th with the droll defense attorney Andy Carpenter. I have lots to catch up on: he’s now up to book #30! I assure you that I’ll caught up. All of his Carpenters have been gems.

As usual, Andy is not looking for work. He doesn’t need money, and he’s lazy. But when close friend Pete Stanton is arrested for murder, Andy jumps to his defense. Pete’s a straight-arrow homicide cop who, Andy knows, has been framed. Dogs are involved, of course, in an ingenious way: a pill that could help old dogs ease over to The Big Park in the Sky has been turned against the two-legged animals and, somehow, the frame on Pete fits into the puzzle. The usual crew will ensure Pete’s found not guilty.

Quick! Leashes! To the Park!!

If you’re looking for some visual mysteries, I recommend “Tokyo Vice” (but watch the first season to begin), and I must advise against “Manhunt” – why go through the expense of making the assassination of Lincoln look accurate and then not have Stanton in his beard?? Done after the first episode. [Real Stanton at left, wrong Stanton at right.]

There’s a new private eye series coming in April with Colin Farrrell as the PI sleuth “Sugar”. I have big hopes for that. Also staring Amy Ryan, Anna Gunn, and – James Cromwell(!!)

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RIP ~ a World-Class Bookman

John Dunning, author, rare bookseller, force of nature dead at 81

Though he’d published other novels before Booked to Die, it cemented his fame and reputation in the world of mysteries, biblio-mysteries, and publishing. When it was published in 1992, if the term
“hyper-modern collectable” had been used or not, it applied to this book. Shop founder Bill Farley ordered just two copies from the publisher – not strange as it was a hardcover from an unfamiliar author – and he took two probably and simply because it was a mystery book about books, and biblio-mysteries have a special niche in our world. But before Bill could order more copies the book had vanished from all sources. And as an instant collectable, the race was on to find a copy of this immediately rare book with it’s escalating price.

Each book in the Janeway series dealt with a different aspect of the world of book collecting.

Booked to Die concerned libraries of collectable books. It provided a good view of why books became collectable and the rampant insanity inherent in collecting – and collectors. (we know whereof we speak…)

The Bookman’s Wake (1995) dealt with fine, small presses, the sort that survive by subscription. In this instance, it focused on a 1969 Poe book from a fine press in Northbend, WA. Lucky for us, the setting for most of the action guaranteed he’d come to town for a signing!

The Bookman’s Promise (2004) centered on the provenance of a specific book – who really owned it and how to prove it.

The Sign of the Book (2005) saw Janeway looking into the murder of a book collector and the question of the authenticity of an author’s signature.

The Bookwoman’s Last Fling (2006) is, alas, the final Janeway novel. He’s asked to value a collection of juvenilia – collectable children’s books. He notices that some highly valuable books have been replaced by cheap editions while others haven’t. The story combines John’s love of books with his love of horseracing. He was a man of great interests and great knowledge.

If memory serves, he was working on another Janeway when he was operated on for a brain tumor. The results were that he never recovered the ability to write and never finished the book. Janeway travels the streets, alone now, searching for the next adventure, the next great find.

Vaya con dios to both of them. Our best to Helen the bookwoman he left to dust the shelves.

February 2023

X marks the spot: newly released treasure map sparks hunt for £15m Nazi hoard

Town Forced to Tell Treasure Hunters to Please Stop Looking for Nazi Gold

Florence Pugh called John le Carré an “old f*cking fart,” which… inspired him?

~Something is afoot with copyright this Public Domain Day

~Here are the books that just entered the public domain.

A New Member Of Congress Explained Why He’ll Swear His Oath Of Office On The US Constitution With A First-Edition Superman Comic (borrowed from the Library of Congress!)

Amateur archaeologist helps crack Ice Age cave art code

World’s oldest runestone found in Norway, archaeologists say

Archaeologists discovered a new papyrus of Egyptian Book of the Dead

LeVar Burton to Host Children’s Podcast ‘Sound Detectives’

A collector was ‘bitten by the postcard bug’ 80 years ago; see some of his favorites

Somebody made an exact LEGO replica of this classic movie bookstore.

He tossed a message in a bottle. A family sent it back 37 years later.

They’re getting rid of ‘red tape’ in Washington. Literally

Font furore as State Department retires Times New Roman for retired Calibri

Edgar Allan Poe had a promising military career. Then he blew it up.

Once a Floating Speakeasy, This Shipwreck Tells a Tale of Bullets and Booze

Meet the New Words Added to the Official Scrabble Dictionary

CNET’s AI-Generated Articles Riddled With Errors and Plagiarism

Before Folding 30 Years Ago, the Sears Catalog Sold Some Surprising Products

Katie Porter reading a book during the GOP’s House speaker fight is all of us.

Words of the Month

disgruntled: It started from the English barnyard, where gruntle was used to describe the noise made by a piglet (adults made a grunt). From there it became a term for a complaint. Dis got added as an intensifier sometime in the 17th or 18th C. (Says You, episode 1512)

Serious Stuff

Floods, fires and humidity: How climate change affects book preservation.

>Exclusive: Russian hackers targeted U.S. nuclear scientists

>Russia backs banning of maps disputing official ‘territorial integrity’

>Twitter Hacked, 200M User Email Addresses Leaked, Researcher Says

>Norton LifeLock says thousands of customer accounts breached

>PayPal: 35,000 Users Had Social Security, Tax Info Exposed to Hackers

>ChatGPT Is Pretty Good at Writing Malware, It Turns Out

>Hackers penetrated LAUSD computers much earlier than previously known, district probe finds

>Hacker Found FBI No Fly List on Unsecured Server

>Australia’s Health System Prime Target for Hacks, Minister Says

>The Unrelenting Menace of the LockBit Ransomware Gang

>US infiltrates big ransomware gang: ‘We hacked the hackers’

^Hiding History: Everyone talks about the need for transparency in public affairs, but what the government means by transparency turns out to be… not all that clear. 

^JFK Murder: Evolving Strategies for Damage Control 

They Called 911 For Help. Police And Prosecutors Used A New Junk Science To Decide They Were Liars

These Documents Reveal Abuses and Breakdowns in Rogue System of Global Diplomacy

LAPD Finally Decides Cops Shouldn’t Be Driving Around Totally Wasted

Paul Auster: ‘The gun that killed my grandfather was the same gun that ruined my father’s life’

2nd Colorado library closes due to meth contamination

Met Police missed NINE chances to stop sadistic serial rapist cop who attacked 12 women

Mexico’s former top cop on trial in New York, accused of working for Sinaloa cartel

Journalists Reveal the Horrors of Murdered, Lifeless Children in Ukraine

US to designate Russia’s Wagner Group as ‘transnational criminal organization’

=Neo-Nazis Are Hosting MMA and Boxing Tournaments to Recruit New Members

=Nazi Homeschool Network Under Investigation by Ohio’s Department of Education

Former FBI agent charged with violating sanctions against Russia, aiding oligarch

$5.4 billion in COVID aid may have gone to businesses using questionable Social Security numbers: report

Censorship & Terrorism

Ex-New Mexico state GOP candidate arrested in shootings at Democrats’ homes

Failed GOP Candidate Allegedly Hired Hitmen To Target Dem. Lawmakers

Michigan is Banning Inmates From Reading Totally Normal Books

Florida High School Cancels ‘Indecent,’ a Play About Censorship on Broadway in 1923

Secret Video Reveals Twitter Team Warned of ‘Shooting in the Streets’ Ahead of Jan. 6

Students want new books. Thanks to restrictions, librarians can’t buy them.

I Helped Thousands of Teens Impacted By Book Bans. Here’s What They Had To Say

Florida teachers forced to remove or cover up books to avoid felony charges

The Long Shadow of ‘American Dirt’

M&M’s accept Tucker Carlson’s invite to the culture wars

Words of the Month

comeuppance: Of British origin, you have come up before a judge to face the legal music. (Says You, episode 1512)

Local Stuff ~ From the Greater Pacific Northwest

Here are Seattle Public Library’s most-checked-out books in 2022

Fleeing driver calls 911, says chase violates her ‘rights,’ Washington cops say

A Former Portland Lawyer Stole Millions In Insurance Payouts From Her Clients And Used The Money To Go On Safari

I’m a Criminology Professor. I’ve Seen Students Like the Idaho Suspect Before. [a freaky, scary, and thoughtful article – JB]

Thousands lose power after shooting in South Seattle

Iris Yamashita on Writing a Murder Mystery About an Isolated Alaskan Town

Oregon-born Holly Madison hosts ‘The Playboy Murders,’ about crimes connected to the Playboy world

After a half-century, Elliott Bay Book Company is surviving and thriving

Seattle Morgue Struggling to Accommodate Glut of Fentanyl Deaths: Official

Ghost Herd: a KUOW Postcast – A true story of family, fraud, land and power
in the American West.

What if you gave a book signing and nobody came? Local authors and booksellers reflect on book signings – poorly attended or not

Words of the Month

furphy: A false report, a rumor. (Says You, episode 1512)

Odd Stuff

What Were TSA’s Most Unusual Finds in 2022?

An inflection point for GOATs: Please quiet quit these ‘banished words’ moving forward

This Rare Robert Burns Book Was Discovered in a Barber Shop, Where It Was Used to Clean Razors

‘Sopranos’ Actor Discovered a Famous Baroque Painting Hiding in Plain Sight

$Novelist Appears to Announce She’s Alive 2 Years After Faking Suicide: ‘Let the Fun Begin’

$Fan outrage at Susan Meachen, the romance novelist accused of faking her death

A college student created an app that can tell whether AI wrote an essay

“We Are Fake America”: Why So Many Christmas Movies Are Filmed in Canada

This Italian accountant holds the world record for most books typed backwards

Egypt foils plot to steal 10-tonne statue of Ramses II

An AI Lawyer Is About to Defend a Human in a U.S. Courtroom

Mike Pence’s PAC Spent $91,000 On His Book. It Became A Bestseller

The Underground Cooks of Singapore’s Prisons

Wyoming GOP Considers Declaring War on Electric Vehicles to Protect Fossil Fuels

Man arrested after uranium found at UK’s Heathrow Airport

Replika, the ‘AI Companion Who Cares,’ Appears to Be Sexually Harassing Its Users

Prince Harry’s Spare is fastest-selling nonfiction book since UK records began

Oyster mushrooms release nerve gas to kill worms before eviscerating them

‘The Label Misleads Consumers’: Fireball Cinnamon Producer Sued in Class Action Lawsuit

Ghislaine Maxwell Refuses to Apologize to Victims in Jailhouse Interview, Complains About Prison Tofu

Flying saucers to mind control: 24 declassified military & CIA secrets

Donald Trump is suing Bob Woodward and Simon & Schuster over his audio interviews.

El Chapo’s Son Had an Anti-Aircraft Gun in His Bedroom

SPECTRE

Amazon Will Shut Down AmazonSmile Charity Donation Program

Amazon launches $5 a month subscription drug service

Words of the Month

trave (n): an inescapable structure in which to hold an unruly animal. In the world of espionage, a counterintelligence term to nullify a mole in your organization

Awards

Here are the winners of the 2023 Pacific Northwest Book Awards

The Griffin Poetry Prize Shakeup: New Rules, New Controversy

Here are the winners of the second annual Silvers-Dudley Prizes for literary and arts journalism.

Here are this year’s finalists for The Story Prize

MWA Announces 2023 Special Edgar Awards – Grand Master, Raven & Ellery Queen Recipients

Fuck the Poetry Police: On the Index of Major Literary Prizes in the United States

‘Hot Dog’ wins Caldecott, Newbery is awarded to ‘Freewater’

Here are the winners of the first Albertine Translation Prize

Julie Otsuka won a (much-deserved) Carnegie Medal!

Book Stuff

Filippo Bernardini: Italian admits stealing unpublished books

*After 44 years, London’s first Arabic bookshop closes down

A new indie bookstore named for Octavia Butler is opening in the author’s hometown.

This super cool, futuristic library is opening in the Bronx by 2025

My First Thriller: Diana Gabaldon

Here’s How Author James Patterson Writes 31 Books at the Same Time 

When Fictionalizing True Crime, How Do You Avoid Exploitation?

9 Literary Classics for the Contemporary Crime Reader

These are the bestselling books of 2022 [from Publisher’s Weekly]

Mike Pompeo lands a coveted Mike Pompeo blurb for his forthcoming book.

The New L.A. Crime Canon

UK’s independent bookshops survive Christmas but fear for the future

Mayor’s proposed library cuts will hurt New Yorkers, leaders say

Collector discovered Isaac Newton’s lost personal copy of Opticks

Stroll Through the World’s 11 Most Unusual Libraries

35 of the Best Bookstores in the USA

Bookstore goes viral for post about customer’s $800 return: ‘don’t do this to a small business’

How an Unorthodox Scholar Uses Technology to Expose Biblical Forgeries

This Library Design in Heyuan, China Features a Celestial Display

70k Books Found In Hidden Library In This Germany Home!

Rare illustrations from French classic ‘Les Fables de La Fontaines’ sold for €2 million

New York Public Library Acquires Joan Didion Papers

Writing wrongs: how true crime authors can fall victim to tragedy

*Bookseller ‘fundraising for a dream’ to open Arabic bookshop in London

For a Mystery Novel, How Much Sex Is Too Much Sex?

Wait, Channing Tatum is writing a romance novel with Roxane Gay?

Madeline McIntosh to Step Down as CEO of PenguinRandomHouse US

Author Events

Feb. 8: Jeff Guinn signs Waco: David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and a Legacy of Rage, Powell’s, 7pm

Feb. 11: Mike Lawson signs Alligator Alley, his new DeMarco, Magnolia Books, 11am

Feb. 22: Matt Ruff signs The Destroyer of Worlds, Powell’s, 7pm

Feb. 23: Matt Ruff signs The Destroyer of Worlds, Elliott Bay Books, 7pm

Feb. 28: Matt Ruff signs The Destroyer of Worlds, Third Place /LFP, 7pm

Other Forms of Entertainment

French Cesar Film Awards ban nominees suspected of sex crimes and violence

“Kaleidoscope”: Netflix’s Mind-Bending Heist Is 2023’s First Great Series

Documentary examines lie detectors’ checkered history

Ridley Scott’s “Boston Strangler” Starring Keira Knightley, Carrie Coon, and Chris Cooper to Premiere in March

Looks to die for: as Diane Kruger stars in Marlowe, who is the most memorable femme fatale of all time?

That’s right! A new Philip Marlowe movie: ‘Marlowe’ Review: Liam Neeson Is The Old-School Gumshoe In Neil Jordan’s Frisky Noir Pastiche

Bernie Madoff Gets the Serial-Killer Treatment in Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street [JB says the contents of the show is great but the fakey re-enactments are a distraction]

7 Crime Movies That Should Have Been the First in a Series

Lone Woman and Cub: The Divergent Paths of Two Neo-Noirs

Dr. No’s Felix May Secretly Be The Reason For James Bond’s Coolness

Here’s Your 2023 Literary Film and TV Preview

Le Doulos: the violent French film that changed crime cinema

Stephen Colbert to Adapt One of George R.R. Martin’s Favorite Books Into TV Series

Alec Baldwin to be charged with involuntary manslaughter over Rust shooting

How Doug Liman Directed a Brett Kavanaugh FBI Investigation Doc in Secret

‘Riotsville, USA’ Shows the Birth of Police Militarization

Why cop show ‘Homicide: Life on the Street’ was revolutionary

The Most Popular Film Noir Festival in the World Makes Its Full Return to the Bay Area 

New graphic novel explores the life of ‘Queenie,’ Harlem Renaissance mob boss

Tom Selleck Was Never Concerned About ‘Blue Bloods’ Airing On Friday Nights

‘Poker Face’: Natasha Lyonne Doing Columbo Is Weirdly Exactly What We Need

Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down: On the 1975 Thomas Harris Novel, Black Sunday, and Its Underrated Adaptation [For you Super Bowl fans!]

Chinatown Is Still a Thrilling, Clear-eyed Portrayal of the Arrogance of Power

Hollywood Flashback: The Corvette Debuted in 1955’s ‘Kiss Me Deadly’

Words of the Month

impend (v.): To hang or hover menacingly; to be about to take place; archaic use to overhang

RIP

We recently learned that one of our long-time supporters died last Sept. John Cashin stopped in a couple of times a week on his way to the Bainbridge ferry or a Mariners’ game. Couldn’t say when he first found us but it was probably on one of those trips home. He’d worked at a local printer for decades and he’d hand off a couple of notepads of a certain size that we’d use for daily bookkeeping. We called them ‘cashin pads’. John helped us out a few times as an auxiliary staff member during big events or if one of us had a health issue. Always cheerful, he slowly amassed a sizable collection. Adele stumbled on the news of his passing when dropping into Arundels Books. “Phil has not gotten through all the mysteries but said most he kept with the SMB signing band.” We got those belly bands through John. We also got our GM Ford limited edition pieces through John. John died five days short of his 74th birthday. As he said each time he departed, “Say goodbye, John!“

Jan. 6: Earl Boen, Actor in the ‘Terminator’ Films, Dies at 81

Jan. 7: Joyce Meskis, Tattered Cover Bookseller Who Defended Readers’ Rights, Dies at 80

Jan. 15: Al Brown, ‘The Wire’, Star Dies After Battle With Alzheimer’s Disease at 83

Jan. 16: Gina Lollobrigida, Legendary Italian Screen Siren, Dies at 95

Jan. 19: Jonathan Raban, adventurous literary traveler and Seattle resident, dies at 80

Jan. 29: Lisa Loring, Original Wednesday Actress on ‘The Addams Family,’ Dies at 64

Jan. 29: Annie Wersching, Actress in ‘Bosch,’ ‘24,’ ‘Runaways,’ and Borg Queen, Dies at 45

Jan. 29: Barrett Strong, “Money” Singer Who Wrote Motown Hits Including “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” Dies at 81 [how could we NOT include this??]

Jan. 30: Cindy Williams, Star of ‘Laverne & Shirley,’ The Conversation, Dies at 75

Links of Interest

Jan.1: Inside the Life of a Career Con Man Who Couldn’t Stop

Jan. 3: The Most Glamorous Gang in London History

Jan. 4: Former Colorado funeral home owner sentenced to 20 yrs for selling body parts

Jan. 4: Gloria Trevi Sex Cult Claims Revived in New Lawsuit

Jan. 4: ‘Varsity Blues’ mastermind Rick Singer sentenced to 3.5 years in prison

Jan. 4: Judge dismisses sexual assault suit against Marilyn Manson

Jan. 8: They Hunt Cartel Killers

Jan. 9: Vatican reopens investigation into teenager who went missing in 1983

Jan. 9: Real-Life ‘Training Day’: Inside the Corruption Scandal That Brought Down the Oakland PD

Jan. 9: South Africa’s Eskom says police investigating alleged poisoning of CEO

Jan. 12: New York Firefighter Accuses Chief of Raping Her as a ‘Birthday Present’

Jan. 12: 11 Gang Members Arrested for Failed Motorcycle Hit on Famous Mexican TV Anchor

Jan. 14: Security News This Week: A Russian Ransomware Gang Attack Destabilizes UK Royal Mail

Jan 14: Unemployed Lawyer Settles Years-Long Grudge by Stabbing Rival Attorney

Jan. 16: Sicilian Mafia’s ‘Boss of Bosses’ Arrested After 30 Years on the Run

Jan. 18: ‘Godfather’ mafia boss’ secret hideout had condoms, Viagra and ‘well-stocked fridge’

Jan. 18: Websites Selling Abortion Pills Are Sharing Sensitive Data With Google

Jan. 18: How Fine Art Has Become a Tool for the Bad Guys

Jan. 18: The Montreal Mafia Murders: Blood, Gore, Cannolis, and Hockey Bags

Jan. 19: Two men killed during cockfighting event after armed-roosters attacked them

Jan. 19: Frederick McCubbin painting defaced with Woodside logo in protest at Art Gallery of Western Australia

Jan. 19: Umbrella Guns and Fake Poop? Cold War Spies Thought of Everything

Jan. 20: Plastic Surgery Clinic Ran a Vaccine Scam Where They Poured Shots Down the Drain, Injected Kids With Saline, Feds Allege

Jan. 22: Paintings in Colorado Art Theft Recovered After Hotel Room Search

Jan. 22: People are using crafty “In Case I Go Missing” binders to organize and store their DNA, fingerprints, and dental records in case they disappear. Is this … healthy?

Jan. 22: He wanted a hit man, feds say. One stole his money; another was an FBI agent.

Jan. 25: U.S. Authorities Return Dozens of Looted Artifacts to Italy, Including 27 Objects from the Met

Jan. 27: Scientology Leader David Miscavige Appears to Be Missing

Jan. 28: Murdaugh Trial Upstages Bride’s Dream Wedding

Jan. 28: ‘The killer could still be among us’: two elderly siblings and a brutal crime that mystifies locals, nearly 50 years on

Words of the Month

clothes horse (n): Mid-1800s in England, the wooded racks were sold so that one could lay out clothes to air or dry. (Says You, episode 1512)

What We’ve Been Up To

Amber

A Christie Bookshop Mystery: Dead and Gondola — Ann Claire

Okay, so the pull of this mystery title is obvious. Whilst not about Dame Agatha directly, the tangential tie intrigued me, so I settled down for a read…. and found myself enjoying the book rather a lot.

Ann Claire, our author, does a great job of keeping the mystery focused on the mystery. Knitting tidbits about the famous authoress in seamlessly and as needed — by using a Mary Westmacott book as a critical clue, naming the bookshop cat Agatha, and occasionally invoking our sleuth’s inner Miss Marple to help push the story forward.

The characters are well-rounded and interesting, as is the town of Last Word itself. The mystery, a variant of a Patricia Moyes plot I once read, works well.

I’d recommend this book to anyone who enjoys mysteries set in a bookshop, around a ski town, or with a strong family vibe. Seriously, I cannot wait until the next book in the series, Last Word To The Wise, comes out in October!

Fran

January in February

For any number of reasons, I’ve been in a funk this month, and it’s been a bad one for me. Therefore, I don’t have a book recommendation this month because I pick them up and set them down again. Yeah, I can’t even read.

Although I can write, so that’s something, and one of these days I’ll tell you what I’m writing, but for now the fact that I am seems encouraging. And, of all weird places, I find inspiration while I’m doing physical therapy for my knee, especially during my pool time.

So I decided to do a Best Of 2022 review, but then realized that it’s a recap of authors I’ve recommended through the years. Apparently I spent last year reading authors I know and love, and honestly, I’m really good with that.

Louise Penny

John Connolly

Thomas Perry

Walter Satterthwaite

Craig Johnson

Well, you get the drift. Tried and true authors who never let me down. Or if they do, it’s a minor drop because none of these folks can write a bad story if they had to.

So instead, I’m going to resurrect a recommendation from years ago, with a slight twist. I’m going to tell you to read anything and everything by Jenny Lawson, a/k/a The Bloggess. Why? Because I’m in a funk, and Jenny Lawson is perfect for those times when our mental health is iffy. She isn’t afraid to tackle mental health issues, which I admire endlessly, but she’s funny as hell too, which I also need.

This is one of her books, and starting here is a good place. It’s funny, and decidedly weird, and uplifting in an unusual sort of way, and for January and February doldrums, well, you just can’t ask for better than that.

JB

Entertainment recommendations:

“Slow Horses” – Apple TV adaptation of Nick Herron’s books – is fabulous – both seasons.

“The Pale Blue Eye” – adaptation of Louis Bayard’s 1830 murder mystery with West Point cadet A.E Poe – is a a good evening’s entertainment. On Netflix.

Also on Netflix, “Kaleidoscope” is astonishing. Episodes are by color and you can/are supposed watch them in any order. They direct you to save White for last. I would recommend that you save Pink to watch just before White. It was created, and some of the episodes were written, by Eric Garcia (remember Anonymous Rex?).

After sitting on my “to be read” pile for FAR TOO LONG, I picked up the new hardcover by Michael Mann and Meg Gardner, Heat 2. When I first heard they were releasing the novel, I was curious about what was left to tell. Well, there was LOTS. It goes both into the past, the period right after the end of the movie, and into the future. We get Vincent Hanna’s (Pacino) past in Chicago, Chris’ (Kilmer) escape from LA and his future, and then how their lives collide in the future.

The writing fits the characters very well and mirrors the stylings of the movie. And just like the movie, the plot and characters are full and rich and the result is terrific. Hard to put it down to eat or sleep!

Loren D. Estleman has been one of my favorite authors since Bill recommended when I first started working with him. His Detroit PI series with Amos Walker is the closest we’ve been able to get to Chandler since he started the series. It’s as reliable, durable, and hardboiled as the private eye himself. Looking on my overloaded shelves for something to read next, I spied The Sundown Speech, from 2015. I hadn’t gotten to it when it was released as that was the time of true stress at the shop. It appears to be out of print but it you can find a used copy, get it. Amos is hired by an Ann Arbor couple to recover an investment they made in an independent film and the director has gone missing. Great fun, especially Walker’s by-play with the homicide detective on the eventual case. I’ll be gathering the Walkers that I’ve missed over the last five years, no doubt about that!

Max Allan Collins has another Nate Heller book just out, The Big Bundle. As usual, Collins puts his fictional Chicago private eye, Nate Heller, into actual, historical true crime events. It starts out with Heller called into assist with a famous kidnapping case in 1953 Kansas City. I was astounded by this because I grew up maybe 7 minutes from the family’s house and drove by it maybe 10,000 times over the decades. Never heard anything about the case at any time, anywhere from anyone. The issue of missing ransom money continues into second half of the book and becomes entangled in the Bobby Kennedy/Jimmy Hoffa war, which will lead into the next book and RFK’s assassination.

I did find a few geographical things in the book that I thought were mistakes but the author insists they’re correct. If you know the streets of Mission Hills, KS, and the geography of eastern Kansas, you may run into things that clank when read. They are as the author insists they should be. Except for them, it was a great read.

and, finally, one last word for the Month of Romance

shotten: exhausted from a recent, romantic encounter (Says You!, episode 1402)

BUY SMALL ~ SUPPORT SMALL

September 2022

Following the attack on Salman Rushdie, his books are leading the bestseller lists.

Kentucky’s flood-affected bookstores need your help.

Attention book lovers: your dream job is hiring again.

How Does the FBI Break Into a Safe?

How Spider-Man Led to the Invention of the Prisoner Ankle Monitor

Take a Look Inside Dr. Seuss’ La Jolla Home Before it Sells For The 1st Time in 70 Years

Missing Pages: the podcast revisiting jaw-dropping literary scandals

The 15 Most Instagrammed Bookstores in the World

The Orient Express Is Resuming Its Legendary Journeys From Paris—and It’s More Glamorous Than Ever

Here’s another incredibly strange dream-like Chinese bookstore.

Newly published Charles Dickens letters reveal he was ‘a bit of a diva’

Spice Up Your Life: Swag for Unabashed Smut Readers

Words of the Month

school (n.): [place of instruction] Middle English scole, from Old English scol, “institution for instruction,” from Latin schola “meeting place for teachers and students, place of instruction;” also “learned conversation, debate; lecture; disciples of a teacher, body of followers, sect,” also in the older Greek sense of “intermission of work, leisure for learning.”

This is from Greek skholē “spare time, leisure, rest, ease; idleness; that in which leisure is employed; learned discussion;” also “a place for lectures, school;” originally “a holding back, a keeping clear,” from skhein “to get” (from PIE root *segh- “to hold”) + -olē by analogy with bolē “a throw,” stolē “outfit,” etc.

The basic sense of the Greek word is “leisure,” which passed to “otiose discussion” (in Athens or Rome, the favorite or proper use of free time), then it came to be used for the place for such discussion.

The Latin word was widely borrowed (in addition to Old French escole, French école, Spanish escuela, Italian scuola; Old High German scuola, German Schule, Swedish skola, Gaelic sgiol, Welsh ysgol, Russian shkola).

The meaning “students attending a school” in English is attested from c. 1300; the sense of “school building” is by 1590s. Sense of “people united by a general similarity of principles and methods” is from 1610s; hence school of thought (by 1848). As an adjective by mid-18th C., “pertaining to or relating to a school or to education.”

School of hard knocks “rough experience in life” is by 1870; to tell tales out of school “betray damaging secrets” is from 1540s. School-bus is from 1908. School days is from 1590s. School board “local committee of education” is by 1836; school district “division of a town or city for the management of schools” is by 1809. (etymonline)

Serious Stuff

+Stephen King in Books Merger Trial: “Consolidation Is Bad for Competition”

‘Assassin with loaded AK47’ faces federal charges for surveilling home of Iranian-American journalist

Grand jury declines to indict woman in Emmett Till killing

Howard Carter stole Tutankhamun’s treasure, new evidence suggests

‘Hackers against conspiracies’: Cyber sleuths take aim at election disinformation

Mexico calls disappearance of 43 students a ‘state crime’

Mexico arrests former top prosecutor over 2014 missing students case

The big idea: should revenge ever be a part of justice?

Over 90% of Medieval Manuscripts Have Been Lost, Study Says 

30 years ago tonight [Aug. 25], Sarajevo’s National Library was burned to the ground

How Two Mexican Drug Cartels Came to Dominate America’s Fentanyl Supply

Joyce Carol Oates and Margaret Atwood on All Things Evil

Books and bomb shelters: Ukraine returns to school

CENSORSHIP OR THE AMERICAN TALIBAN

After Anti-LGBTQ Attacks, Suburban Chicago Bakery Threatened With Fines

Books by Toni Morrison and others now feature a warning label in a Florida school district.

New York will censor a book about the Attica uprising in its state prisons

US library defunded after refusing to censor LGBTQ authors: ‘We will not ban the books’

Virginia Republicans are testing a new way to ban books and restrict their sales. In the long run, it might just work.

Tennessee District Attorney Now Denies That She Would Prosecute Librarians for Keeping Queer Books

universities scrap ‘challenging’ books to protect students

School librarians in Missouri pull books as new law allows charges for ‘explicit’ material

Librarian sues over accusations that kids’ section contains “erotic” books

A school librarian is suing the right-wing “activists” who defamed and harassed her.

Book banning goes full ouroboros as a Texas school district removes the Bible from its shelves.

Students lose access to books amid ‘state-sponsored purging of ideas’.

A Florida district declines dictionary donations as it navigates a new book law

A Texas woman went to the cops about an actual library book.

Afghan women open library to counter growing isolation

The book-banning lawsuit against Barnes & Noble is moving forward in Virginia.

Judge thwarts Va. Republicans’ effort to limit book sales at Barnes & Noble

They’re shooting books now: censorship-loving, book-banning vigilantes stoop to a new low.\

Local Stuff

True Crime Byline: Surprise verdict in Robert Pickton trial upset family, supporters

I’ve been battling Indigenous art fraud for 30 years. It’s only getting worse.

Mercer Street Books has become a world-famous neighborhood bookstore

Odd Stuff

Last Convicted Salem ‘Witch’ Is Finally Cleared

An Update on a Previously Posted Story: Man Who Lost $180 Million Bitcoin Hard Drive 9 Years Ago Still Trying to Dig Through Trash – He’s not ready to give up.

Texas man who shot a woman in the neck is killed after bullet also hits him

Man trying to burn spider with lighter sparked Utah wildfire, police say

John Lennon’s Scathing Post-Beatles Breakup Letter to Paul McCartney Goes to Auction

Tarek Abi Samra on Stealing Kant From a Bookstore

“It has absolutely nothing going for it, except Satan.” Read James Baldwin on The Exorcist.

+These are the best lines from all the PRH-S&S antitrust trial erotic fiction on the internet.

Jigsaw Puzzles for Crime Fans

Amina Akhtar and Erin Mayer Talk Fashion and Murder

Artwork of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang invention has sold for £3500

French justice ministry under pressure to explain jail go-karting

‘Mutilated by rats,’ burned, trashed: 200 years of presidential papers lost

The Monkees’ Micky Dolenz Would Like a Word With the FBI

Great Moon Hoax of 1835 convinced the world of extraterrestrial life

A 1835 illustration in the New York Sun claimed to show animals on the moon, discovered by Sir John Herschel in his observatory at the Cape of Good Hope, and copied from sketches in the Edinburgh Journal of Science. New York Times

Words of the Month

learn (v.): Old English leornian “to get knowledge, be cultivated; study, read, think about,” from Proto-Germanic *lisnojanan (cognates: Old Frisian lernia, Middle Dutch leeren, Dutch leren, Old High German lernen, German lernen “to learn,” Gothic lais “I know”), with a base sense of “to follow or find the track,” from PIE root *lois– “furrow, track.” It is related to German Gleis “track,” and to Old English læst “sole of the foot” (see last (n.1)).

From c. 1200 as “to hear of, ascertain.” Transitive use (He learned me (how) to read), now considered vulgar (except in reflexive expressions, I learn English), was acceptable from c. 1200 until early 19th C. It is preserved in past-participle adjective learned “having knowledge gained by study.” Old English also had læran “to teach” (see lere). (etymonline)

SPECTRE

Dum Dums hustle on Amazon costs family candy business millions

Amazon is diving deeper into health care. That’s raising eyebrows

+The books merger that’s all about Amazon | Commentary

Amazon Wants to Make TV Out of Your Front Yard

Uh Oh, Amazon Bought Your Favorite Robot Company

Amazon keeps growing, and so does its cache of data on you

007=’

Desmond Llewelyn’s James Bond archive sells for 15k

Watch the Lego store in London build a life size James Bond Aston Martin DB5

James Bond’s Tastes: ‘Goldfinger’

Why David Bowie Turned Down A Chance To Be A Bond Villain

Daniel Craig Learned A Painful Lesson On His First Day As James Bond

James Bond’s Dr No is getting Steelbook boxset for 60th anniversary

Bond films’ future secured after MGM and WB agree deal

Was Goldfinger’s Famous Gold Paint Scene Based on a Real-Life Incident?

Christopher Nolan Is Still The Best Director Choice For James Bond 26

Words of the Month

study (v.): Early 12th C., “to strive toward, devote oneself to, cultivate” (translating Latin occupatur), from Old French estudiier “to study, apply oneself, show zeal for; examine” (13th C., Modern French étudier), from Medieval Latin studiare, from Latin studium “study, application,” originally “eagerness,” from studere “to be diligent,” from PIE *(s)teu- (1) “to push, stick, knock, beat” (see steep (adj.)). The notion appears to be “pressing forward, thrusting toward,” hence “strive after.

From c. 1300 as “apply oneself to the acquisition of learning, pursue a formal course of study,” also “read a book or writings intently or meditatively.” From mid-14th C. as “reflect, muse, think, ponder.” Meaning “regard attentively” is from 1660s. (etymonline)

Awards

Tess Gunty has won the inaugural Waterstones debut fiction prize.

Book Stuff

The True Story Of The World’s Most Obsessive Book Collector

‘Heat 2’: Why Michael Mann’s Sequel to His Classic Crime-Movie Had to Be a Novel

Charity shop’s ‘donation of a lifetime’ with first edition Charles Dickens classic

Meet-Cute: Susan Coll on Falling In Love with (and at) a Bookstore

People of color driving rise of independent bookstores

What We Gain from a Good Bookstore

Ex-cop charged after fatally shooting another officer during training exercise at a DC library

Eight Courtroom Dramas That Leave Readers Reeling 

Uh-oh! Scientists have invented… augmented reality books.

Dollars, Cents, and Being Left With the Bill: Jillian Medoff on Breaking Up With Her Literary Agent

If You Want to Ruin Bookstores for Yourself, Become a Writer

Shelf Talkers: What They’re Reading at Brazos Bookstore in Houston, Texas

Hold the Backstory: Or, How To Open Your Novel with a Bang

Sara Paretsky: ‘The story of Joan of Arc made me long for a vision’

Pages Upon Pages: 5 Favorite Books-Within-Books

The Independent Bookstore, as Imagined by a Corporate Lobbyist

The Creative Life and Death of Bruce Montgomery, aka Edmund Crispin

Color Her Orange: Talking with Grace Ellis About Her New Graphic Novel Featuring Patricia Highsmith

A Reading List of Psychopathic Women

The World of Philo Vance, Spectator of Life (this is the introduction to the new edition of Van Dine’s The Benson Murder Case)

What Is Going On With Barnes & Noble?

Book Publishers Go to War With the Internet Archive 

A Reading List of Psychopathic Women

Darwin’s Lost Treasure, Found

Andrew Cuomo wins lawsuit over his $5 million book deal

Bad Blood: A poet is suing Taylor Swift for more than $1 million for copyright infringement.

On Crosswords and Crime Fiction

Hungry Like a Dog: James Ellroy Will Not Stop Being James Ellroy

The Dangers of the Open Road: 5 Key Works of Motorcycle Noir

On Maggie Bradbury, the woman who “changed literature forever.”

Good news for books: The Washington Post’s book section is back!

In “The Life of Crime,” Martin Edwards takes on the colorful history of the detective novel, and its enduring fascination.

Author Events (in person)

Sept.6: Craig Johnson signs his new Longmire, Third Place/LFP, 7pm

Other Forms of Entertainment

‘Irredeemable’ Batgirl movie unexpectedly cancelled despite being in final stages

The Truth Finally Comes Out About Why David Fincher’s Mission Impossible 3 Never Happened

Terrence Malick Is One Of The Unsung Heroes Behind Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry Role

10 Underappreciated American Neo-Noirs of the Early 1970s 

We’re getting a Keanu Reeves prestige TV series: Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City

How Quinn Martin and His Crime Shows Came to Dominate 1970s TV

French Connection‘s “Picking Your Feet In Poughkeepsie” Line Explained

Robert De Niro, Barry Levinson Team for Warner Bros. Gangster Drama ‘Wise Guys’

The Bourne Identity at 20: the surprise hit that changed action film-making

Rediscovering a Vanished Species: Half-Hour TV Mysteries

Remembering Harry O, The Seventies’ Second Best, Mostly Forgotten Private Eye Series (remembered fondly by JB!)

Enough James Bond. Give These Spy Books a Movie.

Steve Carell’s Understated Performance Kills in Serial-Murder Drama ‘The Patient’

Ryan Gosling in Talks to Join Margot Robbie in New ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ Movie

Confess, Fletch Trailer: Jon Hamm Takes Over The Troublesome Reporter Role From Chevy Chase

‘After Dark: Neo Noir Cinema’ Collects Memorable Noirs from the 90s

Matt Reeves and Robert Pattinson’s Batman Sequel Is Officially
Moving Forward

The Big Sleep Was Smart To Cut A Major Humphrey Bogart Scene

Review: ‘Out Of The Blue’ Is A Film Noir With Ample Self-Awareness

Clue Drops Bodies in a New Animated Series

Steve Carell Led Series ‘The Patient’ is a Surprisingly Profound High Concept Thriller

Apple show halts production in Baltimore after shooting threat

10-hour marathon of rarities highlights Music Box film festival

Eddie Murphy’s ‘Beverly Hills Cop: Axel Foley’ Sets Cast

The Best Crime Shows Coming Out in September

Words of the Month

class (n.): c. 1600, “group of students,” in U.S. especially “number of pupils in a school or college of the same grade,” from French classe (14th C.), from Latin classis “a class, a division; army, fleet,” especially “any one of the six orders into which Servius Tullius divided the Roman people for the purpose of taxation;” traditionally originally “the people of Rome under arms” (a sense attested in English from 1650s), and thus akin to calare “to call (to arms),” from PIE root *kele- (2) “to shout.” In early use in English also in Latin form classis.

Meaning “an order or rank of persons, a number of persons having certain characteristics in common” is from 1660s. School and university sense of “course, lecture” (1650s) is from the notion of a form or lecture reserved to scholars who had attained a certain level. Natural history sense “group of related plants or animals” is from 1753. Meaning “high quality” is from 1874. Meaning “a division of society according to status” (with upper, lower, etc.) is from 1763. Class-consciousness (1903) is from German Klassenbewusst. (etymonline)

RIP

Sad note: we just learned that Seattle mystery writer Frederick D. Huebner died on December 31, 2019. He was a great writer, a great friend of the shop, and one of the very few people who ever bought one of JB’s paintings. Sorry we didn’t know it at the time to pay tribute then.

Aug. 1: Vadim Bakatin, last head of Soviet KGB, dies at 84

Aug. 6: Clu Gulager, Actor in ‘The Virginian,’ ‘The Last Picture Show’ and ‘Return of the Living Dead,’ Dies at 93 (he was also one of The Killers, the last movie of Ronald Reagan’s)

Aug. 7: Roger E. Mosley, Actor on ‘Magnum, P.I.,’ Dies at 83

Aug 8: David McCullough, award-winning author, has died at 89 (he was also the narrator of Ken Burns’ epic series “The Civil War”)

Aug. 10: Raymond Briggs, Beloved Author and Illustrator of ‘The Snowman,’ Dies at 88

Aug. 16: Wolfgang Petersen, German Commander of ‘Das Boot,’ ‘Air Force One,’ ‘In the Line of Fire,’ ‘Outbreak’, Dies at 81

Aug. 18: Andrew J. Maloney, Prosecutor Who Took Down John Gotti, Dies at 90

Aug. 23: Writer Michael Malone, 80, Dies of Pancreatic Cancer (great books – Uncivil Seasons, Handling Sin, Time’s Witness)

Aug. 29: Robert LuPone, “Sopranos” and Broadway Actor, Dead at 76

Links of Interest

July 31: Meet the Exotic Dancer Who Went Undercover to Take Down Domestic Terrorists

Aug. 1: Why Armstrong, Sinatra and Crosby all had mob connections: ‘Get yourself the biggest gangster’

Aug. 1: Have Scholars Finally Deciphered a Mysterious Ancient Script?

Aug. 1: Exclusive: 83-Year-Old Paroled for Starved Rock Murders Claims New DNA Results Prove His Innocence

Aug. 2: The Greatest True Spy Stories

Aug. 4: The Crime of My Life – A crime reporter turned his investigative skills toward an old family crime with deep contemporary relevance and finds himself implicated

Aug. 5: Crypto Company Offers Massive Bounty to “White Hat Hackers” After Giant Heist

Aug. 5: ‘Soon I Will Own You’: Inside the Wild Life of a Fake CIA Bro

Aug. 7: Learjets, Mistresses, and Bales of Weed: My Dad’s Life as a Drug Kingpin

Aug. 7: Ex-Scientologists Came Forward with Shocking Child Trafficking Claims. Now They Say They’re Being Stalked

Aug. 9: Drug Lord Mass-Killer ‘El Chueco’ Strikes Fear in Mexico’s Sierra Madre Mountains

Aug. 10: Realtor Accused of Trying to Put a Hit on Former Mother-in-Law Is in Hot Water Again

Aug. 10: After a career of cracking cold cases, investigator Paul Holes opens up

Aug. 10: Lake Mead’s bodies may be identified using genetic genealogy, a science redefining ‘unsolvable’

Aug. 11: Stolen €250,000 Gagliano violin, sold by thief for just €200, recovered by police 3 years later

Aug. 12: At What Point Do You Become a Money Launderer?

Aug. 15: Human remains reportedly found in suitcases bought at New Zealand auction

Aug. 15: Julian Assange lawyers sue CIA over alleged spying

Aug. 15: Stolen Picasso painting ‘worth millions of dollars’ found during drug raid, Iraqi authorities claim

Aug. 16: Two of New York’s Oldest Mafia Clans Charged in Money Laundering Scheme

Aug. 16: Using Fake Psychics, Brazilian Woman Allegedly Stole $142 Million Worth of Art

Aug. 18: Justice Department announces 3 men charged in Whitey Bulger’s killing

Aug. 18: Photographer Theo Wenner Spent Two Years Following Homicide Detectives in Brooklyn’s Most Dangerous District. Here’s What He Saw

Aug. 19: On the 1981 Wonderland Murders and the 2003 film that reconstructs its events

Aug. 22: France remembers De Gaulle’s close escape depicted in The Day of the Jackal

Aug. 24: Crowd-sourced detective work narrows window for disappearance of Winston Churchill portrait (it was replaced by a fake…)

Aug. 30: A Salem Witch Trials exhibit is coming to the New-York Historical Society

Aug. 31: Ruth Dickins was convicted of murder in 1948. A new book re-examines the case.

Aug. 31: New Exhibition Explores Three Generations Of Family Of Pulitzer Prize-Winning Writer John Hersey

Aug. 31: Utica Sculpture Residency Vandals Are Under the Age of 11, Police Say

Words of the Month

recess (n.): 1530s, “act of receding or going back or away” (a sense now obsolete), from Latin recessus “a going back, retreat,” from recessum, past participle of recedere “to go back, fall back; withdraw, depart, retire,” from re– “back” (see re-) + cedere “to go” (from PIE root *ked– “to go, yield”).

Meaning “hidden or remote part” is recorded from 1610s; that of “period of stopping from usual work” is from 1620s, probably from parliamentary notion of “recessing” into private chambers. Meaning “place of retirement or seclusion” is from 1630s; that of “niche, receding space or inward indentation in a line of continuity” is from 1690s.(etymonline)

What We’ve Been Up To

Amber

Nonna Maria and the Case of The Missing Bride — Lorenzo Carcaterra

I finished this book in a day. 

I tried so hard to take it slow, I swear! 

I gardened, did laundry, baked cookies, made the bed betwixt chapters…and yet, I still devoured the pages in less than twelve hours!

The thing is, Nonna Maria occupies the space between Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple. Driven by neither cold logic nor the belief in the baseness of people’s motivations — Nonna Maria serves at the pleasure of her fellow islanders. Intervening when asked, she combines island gossip, a decade’s worth of past experiences, and her own leg work to solve whatever problem presented to her — relying on a plethora of friends, a legion of family members, and occasionally the Carabinieri to catch the culprit (and have her back during perilous situations).

I know Barnes & Noble placed Nonna Maria in their cozy section. Probably because there’s not much in the way of on-stage bloodletting…However, there’s still plenty of death, thugs, threats, and mystery to satisfy any reader without relying on a shoehorned in themes like cats, gourds, cookies, Santa, quilting, dumplings, or crafting to generate interest in the story.

I cannot recommend Nonna Maria and the Case of The Missing Bride highly enough. Set in sun drenched Southern Italy, this mystery is everything I didn’t know I wanted to read over and over again this August!

Fran

Louise Penny isn’t afraid of tackling difficult subjects. She never has been, even before her collaboration with Hilary Rodham Clinton, about which I’ll write in another post.

But in The Madness of Crowds, she delves much deeper into a dark place that most of us would really rather avoid. I don’t want to get into specifics because of spoilers, but she taps into a collective awareness that no one wants to look at, but of which we have all glanced at.

All the regulars are back, and this is really not a stand alone. To get the full impact, you need to have read all the books that have come before, beginning with Still Life. There are new, compelling characters here, ones who will remain with you forever, and there are the ongoing delights. Rosa has expanded her vocabulary, and is teaching it to the children, much to their parents’ dismay. There is laughter and humor, compassion and passionate humanity, and all of it stems from people being people, in the best and worst possible ways.

I really cannot recommend Louise Penny’s writing strongly enough. They do need to be read in order, and once you have experienced the world of Three Pines, even if you’re not a fan of police procedurals, you’ll want to visit this village time and again, I promise.

JB

Finally, finally, after toooo many decades, I read Fredric Brown’s The Fabulous Clipjoint. Published in 1947 – and winning the very first Best Novel Edgar – it’s a lively and raucous story of a young man and his uncle who undertake an investigation into a murder – the young guy’s father and his uncle’s brother.

This is the first in a series to feature Ed and his uncle Am (short for Ambrose). Am is a carny and the pages are jammed with the hardboiled jargon of the late 40s AND carnival lingo. Am also makes for a good investigator. His years sizing up “marks” at the carny give him an edge when talking to those involved.

Here’s one line that I found particularly sharp. Uncle Am says to his nephew, “I’m not worried about going to hell, Ed, but I begrudge the money the ticket costs.”

A bonus is the introduction by Lawrence Block who takes you on a tour of his reading as a young man.

??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

A year or so before the shop closed, a man came in one afternoon and introduced himself: James Grady. Now, maybe you have to be a “certain age” to have reacted as Fran and I did. Six Days of the Condor was published in 1974, which means I probably read the paperback in 1975 when it came out. The movie version, Three Days of the Condor was released around the same time. I’d read a number of his books over the years, Old Dogs was one that stands out.

We chatted awhile and he explained that he had an idea for a thriller that took place on a train going from Seattle to Chicago and was in town to start his research. We talked about the long history of train mysteries and showed him our list in the Yellow Notebook that we refereed to when people came in asking for one. I kept my eyes alert for his book, and it’s out now.

James Grady’s This Train features an odd cast of characters who first see one another in the Seattle train station. At first, they’re “named” by their visual shorthand. As the trip progresses, you learn names and details. You can tell that some are a bit shady but, if you’ve been reading thrillers as long as I have, you know that anything is possible from any one character.

The fun, of course, is finding out who is who and if you’re suspicions were correct. You find that the short-hand descriptors from the start – the guy in the camel-colored cashmere coat or the young woman with the intense red hair – are also accurate descriptors of their personalities.

And then, or course, why are all of these people on this one train and what about the SWAT team, and the guy who always lugs around the beat-up satchel? Well, find out yourself. It’s a great ride!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This debut by Dwyer Murphy got great reviews. The New Yorker promoted it, and the cover carries a one-word rave by Walter Mosely. As a bonus, An Honest Living is billed as a bibliomystery and who isn’t looking for the next John Dunning? So I got a copy right away.

This is very much a New York Novel. The lawyer who narrates the story is certain to tell you what street he’s on, where he turns, where he eats or drinks, details about the neighborhoods, and so on. In that, it reminded me very much of the Scudder books by Lawrence Block. The City itself is a character.

The time frame was a bit puzzling. At one point, he looks someone up on-line and mentions Gawker – stopped publishing in 2016 but recently re-started- so I was unclear about when the book was set. Of course, that shouldn’t really matter, but when I first read that name it popped me out of the story. And that’s not a good thing.

And I can’t point to any good things. He writes well, the characters were interesting…

Overall, it was a very easy book to put down. I have no particular fascination for the minutia of NYC when it is a major component of the story. It read as if it was filler, in place of a plot – because the mystery, and the bibliomystery element, aren’t there. I don’t even think it is fair to call it a mystery for a number of reasons but I can’t tell you those and not ruin the story. Go ahead, give it a try.

Especially if you live in NYC…

BUY SMALL ~ SUPPORT SMALL

June 2022

The deadliest school massacre in US history took place 95 years ago

Odd Stuff

Baroness Mone: first lady of lingerie embroiled in criminal investigation over £200m PPE contract

Russia Pretends It Didn’t Accidentally Show Bonnie and Clyde During Victory Day Parade

Ben Franklin Put an Abortion Recipe in His Math Textbook

Nikola Tesla told him: “Bury your Findings until Humanity is Ready”

Trolling’s Surprising Origins in Fishing

‘Grandfather of Goth’: fans campaign for US stamp honoring Edward Gorey

When Julia Child worked for a spy agency fighting sharks

Bringing order to the chaos of reality… Jarvis Cocker interviews six collectors

‘Lost’ Picasso spotted in Imelda Marcos’s home after son’s election win

Letters from the Loneliest Post Office in the World

Bird-watcher wrongfully accused in Central Park video gets a bird-watching TV show

Utah Hunting Guide Facing Felony for Rigging Don Jr.’s Bear Hunt

A ‘Jaws‘ actor is named police chief in the town where the iconic movie was filmed

Burn-proof edition of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ up for auction

Evil twinks and gay gangsters: why we need to remember history’s horrid homosexuals

In Pictures: See Gilded Manuscripts That Span 1,500 Years in a New London Exhibition About Gold and the Written Word

For shame: Bram Stoker was a serial defiler of library books.

A 17th-century book about the existence of aliens has been found in England.

Words of the Month

Bug (n): An “insect, beetle,” 1620s (earliest reference is to bedbugs), of unknown origin, probably (but not certainly) from or influenced by Middle English bugge “something frightening, scarecrow” (late 14th C.), a meaning obsolete since the “insect” sense arose except in bugbear (1570s) and bugaboo (q.v.).

Serious Stuff

*In the battle over books, Nashville library’s response? ‘I read banned books’ cards

*Upset by book bans, teen starts forbidden book club in small Pa. town

*How a Debut Graphic Memoir Became the Most Banned Book in the Country

*An Idaho school district has permanently banned 24 books, including The Handmaid’s Tale.

*Courageous Afghan teenagers help start an underground book club in defiance of Taliban

*Miami Herald Editorial Board: Florida’s book rejection frenzy has right-wing kookiness written all over it

By Carl Hiaasen: Want to understand Miami? Read these 10 books, says Mitchell Kaplan of Books & Books

*Florida’s shopping for social studies textbooks. No social justice content allowed

*Subscribe to this banned books club—and help provide families with free books!

*Va. Republicans seek to limit sale of 2 books in Barnes & Noble for ‘obscenity’

*Video captures vandal removing $1,000 in LGBTQ books from roadside library

*Belarus has banned the sale of 1984.

*Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ Shows Why Book Bans Are So Futile

A bloodstain expert’s testimony helped put him in prison. But can forensic science be trusted?

>Ukrainian Officials Accuse Russian Forces of Looting Thousands of Priceless Gold Artifacts and Works of Art

>Russian internet users downloading VPNs by the millions in challenge to Putin

>Russian sentenced to life in Ukraine’s 1st war crimes trial

Paraguay drugs prosecutor killed on honeymoon on Colombian beach

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library to give books to refugee children

On the Way the Criminal Justice System Fails Our Poor Communities

Startup raises $17 million to develop smart gun

A 17-year-old boy died by suicide hours after being scammed. The FBI says it’s part of a troubling increase in ‘sextortion’ cases.

FBI says it foiled Islamic State sympathizer’s plot to kill George W Bush

Local Stuff

New red dress artwork inspired by Sarah de Vries, one of serial killer Pickton’s victims

WA woman, serving 90 years for planting poisoned pills, seeks release from prison

This summer, Blue Kettle Books will drive Seattle’s newest and smallest bookstore to you

Whistler Writers Festival spring series set to inspire and entertain

Joshua Freed, former Bothell mayor and GOP gubernatorial candidate, accused of misleading real estate investors

After 10 years on the run, couple pleads guilty in Federal Way scuba diver’s death

Words of the Month

bug (v.1) “to bulge, protrude,” 1872, originally of eyes, perhaps from a humorous or dialect mispronunciation of bulge (v.). Related: Bugged; bugging. As an adjective, bug-eyed recorded from 1872; so commonly used of space creatures in mid-20th C. science fiction that the initialism (acronym) BEM for bug-eyed monster was current by 1953. (etymonline)

Awards

2022 Pulitzer Prize winners

Patricia Lockwood has won the £20,000 Dylan Thomas Prize

PEN America honors activists, artists and dissidents

Stephen Colbert Presents Peabody Institutional Award to ‘Fresh Air’’s Terry Gross

Here are the finalists for CLMP’s Firecracker Awards (or, a perfect indie reading list).

French author Alice Zeniter has won the eye-popping €100,000 Dublin Literary Award.

Book Stuff

Independent book stores aren’t just points of purchase but points of contact for communities

When You Learn Your Mother Was a Serious Writer Only After She’s Gone

Author’s essay about why she plagiarized chunks of her debut novel about a young, black pregnant woman is pulled after it’s found she copied that AS WELL

Five Writers Weigh in on the Weird Shame of Publishing a Book

5 Non-Fiction Titles That Are So Vibrant They Read Like Fiction

10 Reasons Why Victorian England Is the Perfect Setting for Murder

John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee Novels, Ranked

Phoebe Atwood Taylor: Prolific Mystery Novelist and Creator of “The Codfish Sherlock”

A Brutal—and True—Piece of Writing Advice from Toni Morrison

Revisiting Gary Indiana’s Bewildering, Haunting True Crime Trilogy

Tracing the Romance Genre’s Radical Roots, from Derided “Sex Novels” to Bridgerton

On My Love of Libraries: Lessons From My Father

Bestselling novelist Don Winslow pivots from writing to politics

John Grisham: ‘Non-lawyers who write legal thrillers often get things so wrong’

How Do You Decolonize the Golden Age Mystery? Read More Historical Fiction!

Get Lit(erary) at Burning Man Publishing’s Launch Party

The Obscure London Library Where Famous Writers Go for Books

In-Person Author Events

June 6: David Duchovny signs The Reservoir, Powell’s, 6pm

June 9: David Duchovny signs The Reservoir, Seattle Town Hall, 7:30pm

June 29: Jess Walter signs The Angel of Rome and Other Stories, FolioSeattle, 6pm

Other Forms of Entertainment

Michael Keaton to direct and star in hitman-with-dementia movie

Two friends facing off resulted in the greatest Columbo episode eve

How ‘Under the Banner of Heaven’ Took On Murder and the Mormon ChurchWords of the Month

Black and White and Noir All Over: A Brief History of Vintage Newspaper Crime Comic Strips

What are these serial killer subplots doing in Nora Ephron movies?

The Staircase Uncovers New Questions Within Tired True-Crime Theories

For ‘The Lincoln Lawyer,’ Manuel Garcia-Rulfo Climbs in the Front Seat

Armie Hammer Special Among New True Crime Slate at ID and Discovery+

A New Biography of Michael Cimino Is as Fascinating and Melancholy as the Filmmaker Himself [Don’t forget Thunderbolt and Lightfoot!]

Words of the Month

bug (v.2): “to annoy, irritate,” 1949, perhaps first in swing music slang, probably from bug (n.) and a reference to insect pests. Related: Bugged; bugging. (etymonline)

RIP

May 1: Kathy Boudin, Radical Imprisoned in a Fatal Robbery, Dies at 78

May 5: Alfred Baldwin, chief Watergate eavesdropper and lookout, is dead at 83

May 9: Jack Kehler, Actor in ‘The Big Lebowski,’ ‘The Man in the High Castle,’ Dies at 75

May 10: James R. Olson, ‘Andromeda Strain,’ ‘Rachel, Rachel’ Star, Dies at 91

May 12: Randy Weaver, white separatist involved in Ruby Ridge standoff with FBI, dies at 74

May 13: Robert C. McFarlane, Top Reagan Aide in Iran-Contra Affair, Dies at 84

May 13: Fred Ward Dies – ‘The Right Stuff’, ‘Tremors’ & ‘Remo Williams’ Actor Was 79

May 20: John Aylward, prominent Seattle theater, ‘ER’and ‘West Wing’ actor, dies at 75

May 20: Remembering Roger Angell, New Yorker editor and Hall of Fame baseball writer

May 26: Ray Liotta, Actor in ‘GoodFellas,’ Dies at 67

Words of the Month

bug (v.3) “to scram, skedaddle,” 1953, of uncertain origin, perhaps related to bug (v.2), and compare bug off. Bug out (n.) “precipitous retreat” (1951) is from the Korean War. (etymonline)

Links of Interest

April 29: The Prosecutor Who Put John Gotti Away Explains How He Did It

May 1: The Gonzo Brothel Owner Who Stole $550 Million from the US Government

May 2: CIA Spook Who Admitted Raping Unconscious Women Does a U-Turn: I’m Impotent!

May 4: The Long Island Cops Who Schemed To Take Over the District Attorney’s Office

May 3: Drought reveals human remains in barrel at Lake Mead

May 5: AI Identifies 160 Possible ‘Crews’ of Criminal Cops in Chicago

May 7: A Crime Beyond Belief : A Harvard-trained lawyer was convicted of committing bizarre home invasions. Psychosis may have compelled him to do it. But in a case that became a public sensation, he wasn’t the only one who seemed to lose touch with reality.

May 7: Fugitive Hitman Dies in Mysterious Canadian Plane Crash

May 7: How 5 Convicted Murderers Banded Together to Get Out of Prison

May 7: Mystery of phone in North Sea could hold key to ‘Wagatha Christie’ case

May 7: Meet the YouTube Scuba Divers Solving Cold Cases – – and Racking Up Views

May 9: MI5 asked police to spy on political activities of children in 1975, inquiry hears

May 10: Guilty! Two-Timing Hubby Is Undone by Murdered Wife’s Fitbit

May 11: Man dies from heart attack after strangling his girlfriend to death and burying her in the backyard

May 12: How ‘Leonardo DiCaprio’ Scammed a Houston Widow Out of $800K

May 12: Former NFL quarterback Brett Favre sued by state of Mississippi

May 12: On the Trail of the Shenandoah Murders at the American Investigative Society of Cold Cases

May 12: Daughter’s Hair May Help Reveal Who Poisoned Her Dad—Twice

May 17: Writing History When the Crime Is Stranger Than Fiction

May 17: When You’re This Hated, Everyone’s a Suspect

May 18: True crime tourism: The good, the bad and the Bundy

May 19: “Criminal profiling has been fooling us all.”

May 20: ‘Casanova Scammer’ Pleads Guilty to Defrauding More Than 30 Women

May 23: The most audacious Confederate spies — and how they got away with it

May 24: Pediatrician Accused of Trying to Whack Ex-Hubby Asked Her Staff for Hitman Contacts

May 25: The Most Famous NFT Artist Got Hacked, Ripping Off His Followers

May 25: See video of jewelry store employees fight off robbers

May 25: On the Radical, Popular Creator of the First Female Superhero

May 26: Former head of Louvre charged in Egyptian artefacts trafficking case

May 30: A Dead Hamster Just Helped a Man Get Off Death Row

Words of the Month

bug (v.4) “equip with a concealed microphone,” 1949, earlier “equip with an alarm system,” 1919, underworld slang, probably a reference to bug (n.1). Bug (n.) “concealed microphone” is from 1946. Related: Bugged; bugging. (etymonline)

What We’ve Been Up To

Amber

Are you looking for a good book? Do you enjoy reading about poison? If you do, I’ve got an entertaining title for you: A Taste For Poison by Neil Bradbury, Ph.D.

The premise of the book is this: “….a chemical is not intrinsically good or bad, it’s just a chemical. What differs is the intent with which the chemical is used: either to preserve life — or to take it.” (pg.7)

Bradbury forwards this Shakespearean inspired theme (from Hamlet‘s line: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”) by detailing the beneficial and lethal qualities of each of the eleven chemicals included in A Taste For Poison. By describing the underlying science of how said chemical kills on a cellular level, he conversely covers the knowledge we’ve reaped from sussing out their methods.

Now, don’t let the science scare you off. Bradbury’s explanations are clear, concise, and easily understood. (Even with fuzzy recollections of high school biology classes.)

Augmenting the science are true crime cases featuring said substances. While a number of the crimes covered are quite famous, due to A Taste For Poison‘s firm focus on the chemical itself, these well canvassed cases find new life (so to speak). Thereby making the book a pleasure to read.

Balancing out this chilling subject matter is Bradbury’s sly sense of humor. Which not only generates wry observations, it keeps the book moving smoothly onward and from sinking into its own morbidness.

Seriously, A Taste For Poison is a fascinating read. One I would recommend to any mystery reader with a curious mind as it celebrates neither crime nor criminal. Rather, it demonstrates how these substances have been misused by a few and have helped the many.

JB

First off, I highly recommend the new Netflix series “The Lincoln Lawyer”. Yes, there was a 2011 Matthew McConaughey movie by that name, but while it is about the same character, this series is a whole, new deal. Mickey Haller is an LA defense attorney who works mostly out of his car (hence his nickname). But this new 10-episode series comes from The Brass Verdict, the second book in the series by Michael Connelly. And, no – Bosch is not in the series due to SPECTRE having those rights. [Come to think of it, is the reason McConaughey does Lincoln car commercials because he was in The Lincoln Lawyer? Just occurred to me…]

Second off (I know that isn’t what you say but why not??”), I highly recommend “The Offer”, a series about the making of The Godfather. Great cast with a story told by mixing in famous lines from the movie, reminiscent of how Shakespeare in Love used motifs from the theatre. The series is on Paramount+.

Third off, if you want to get a true history of what Ukraine has been through in its past, and if you have a strong soul, read Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands. It is NOT an easy read. Be warned that there will be times you have to put it down. It covers the years 1930 – 45 and what happened in the territory that now encompasses Poland, Ukraine, and the Baltic states, and the 14 MILLION humans murdered by Stalin and Hitler. Strong stuff and important stuff to know.

Last off, everyone should read Michael Lewis’s The Premonition. All of his books are gems. I started with Moneyball. The Premonition deals with the disparate people who were pulled together by events to fight pandemics in the US and what happened when The Big One (covid) hit. It’s a fascinating story of smart people trying to do the best thing constantly thwarted by people in power who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, understand. And while I’m at it, I’d recommend his podcast ” Against the Rules”. Like his books, he focuses on the “referees” (ie people with power) in the world who don’t know what they’re doing. A particularly stand-out episode is “The Overconfidence Game”, about idiot men explaining things they don’t understand to women who do. Sad and funny...

One of the shop’s great old (length of time, not chronological age) customers was a Pat, a gentleman collector with a vast, VAST collection of books, mostly paperbacks. He kept track of them all with a notebook that had grid paper marked up to note what he had, what he needed to upgrade in quality, and where the holes in the collection were. Here are some photos he sent me of just four of the groups. If you think you have too many books, rest easy…

These are his Ace paperbacks

These are the Ballentines

These are the Gold Medals

And these are the digests from different publishers – middle left of the shot you can see Avon’s “Murder Mystery Monthly” in numerical order, of course!

Many Thanks to Pat for sharing some views of his impressive collection.

BUY SMALL ~ SUPPORT SMALL

APRIL 2022

~For the record, we miss doing our annual April Fool’s message ~

Words for the Month

pseudepigrapha (n.) “books or writings of false authorship,” 1620s (implied in pseudepigraphical), especially of spurious writing professing to be Biblical in character and inspired in authorship, from Modern Latin use of Greek neuter plural of pseudepigraphos “with false title,” from pseudos “a lie” (see pseudo-) + epigraphē “a writing” (see epigraph).

Interesting Stuff:

How Defamatory Is “Goblin Mode” to Real Goblins?

She found lost love letters in her attic. Then the hunt began for their owner.

Did you know Bram Stoker wrote Walt Whitman a very intense, 2,000-word fan letter?

The More Personal the Joke, the Bigger the Laugh (and More Lessons from a Career in Cartoons)

Sex Traps Might Finally Help Us Eradicate Murder Hornets [this is why the world of espionage calls them Honey Traps]

Super-valued: Special copy of Marvel Comics #1 fetches $2.4M

Anais Nin’s Los Angeles Hideaway in photos

The 12 Most Unforgettable Descriptions of Food in Literature

Sherlock Holmes, Hercules Poirot, Jorge Luis Borges and the Mathematical Art of the Great Detective Novel

Looking Back on 50 Years of Making Beautiful Books

Seven Colorful Cover Themes from Crime Fiction’s Past

These unread books have a long shelf life — as décor

A Rare ‘Star Wars’ Poster Is Being Auctioned Off to Benefit Ukraine

This is why Bill Farley named it the Seattle Mystery Bookshop: Why Good Bookstores Might Not Actually Be “Stores”

Words for the Month

fable (n.) c. 1300, “falsehood, fictitious narrative; a lie, pretense,” from Old French fable “story, fable, tale; drama, play, fiction; lie, falsehood” (12th C.), from Latin fabula “story, story with a lesson, tale, narrative, account; the common talk, news,” literally “that which is told,” from fari “speak, tell,” from PIE root *bha- (2) “to speak, tell, say.”

Restricted sense of “animal story” (early 14th C.) comes from the popularity of Aesop’s tales. In modern folklore terms, defined as “a short, comic tale making a moral point about human nature, usually through animal characters behaving in human ways” [“Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore”]. (etymonline)

Serious Stuff

*Conti Ransomware Gang Sees Thousands of Internal Chats Leaked After Posting Pro-Russia Message

*A ransomware gang’s internal drama leaked after it backed Russia

*Russia Looks at Legalizing Software Piracy to Offset Sanctions

*Ukrainian libraries, serving as bomb shelters, continue to prove that libraries are our best hope.

*Inside the ‘Bookkeeper Army’ Secretly Working to Track Down Vladimir Putin’s Hidden Money

*Ukraine intelligence publishes names of 620 alleged Russian agents

*Russia’s Novaya Gazeta newspaper, whose editor was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year, announced on Monday that it will temporarily cease all its operations until the end of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

>Zoë Kravitz wanted to audition for a 2012 Batman film. She was told she was too ‘urban,’ she says.

>Her Comics were Everything Jim Crow America Never Wanted Black Women to Be

>Biden signs into law first anti-lynching bill in U.S. history

>Emmett Till’s relatives push for renewed probe into 1955 lynching

>A Century later, The Death of an Indiana Man is Ruled a Lynching Instead of a Suicide

Justice Department reports more than $8 billion in alleged fraud tied to federal coronavirus aid programs

His reporting on the Kennedy assassination made him a legend. Then a press group looked into his past.

The Canadian Spy Novelist Ordered To Reveal His Sources

Secret Service Says More Needs to Be Done to Stop ‘Incel’ Attacks

Gretchen Whitmer: FBI agent ‘bomb-maker’ in kidnap plot

Mexico armed forces knew fate of 43 disappeared students from day one

Sandy Hook Families Reject ‘Desperate’ Settlement Offer from Alex Jones

After Kansas City sues, ATF issues notice revoking gun manufacturer’s license

Hackers pretending to be cops tricked Apple and Meta into handing over user data

The Censorship Battle

Brad Meltzer on how a community fought a school book ban in Pennsylvania and won.

The smallest library in Maine is stocking its shelves with banned books.

An educator was fired for reading I Need A New Butt! aloud. Now PEN America’s involved.

Schools nationwide are quietly removing books from their libraries

Progressives are resisting rightwing book banning campaigns – and are winning

‘It’s a culture war that’s totally out of control’: the authors whose books are being banned in US schools

Artist Shubigi Rao’s Pulp III Explores the Book as a Vehicle for Resistance and Redemption

An Oklahoma lawmaker just compared librarians to cockroaches. It’s as bad as it sounds.

Author Lauren Hough Loses Lambda Prize Nomination After Suggesting People Read a Forthcoming Book Before They Condemn It

Ted Cruz’s ‘Antiracist Baby’ Smear Campaign Backfires and Boosts Sales

Tyrants and Propaganda, Or The Totalitarian Need for Total Information Control

Words of the Month

pseudo-: Often before vowels pseud-, word-forming element meaning “false; feigned; erroneous; in appearance only; resembling,” from Greek pseudo-, combining form of pseudēs “false, lying; falsely; deceived,” or pseudos “falsehood, untruth, a lie,” both from pseudein “to tell a lie; be wrong, break (an oath),” also, in Attic, “to deceive, cheat, be false,” but often regardless of intention, a word of uncertain origin. Words in Slavic and Armenian have been compared; by some scholars the Greek word is connected with *psu- “wind” (= “nonsense, idle talk”); Beekes suggests Pre-Greek origin.

Productive in compound formation in ancient Greek (such as pseudodidaskalos “false teacher,” pseudokyon “a sham cynic,” pseudologia “a false speech,” pseudoparthenos “pretended virgin”), it began to be used with native words in later Middle English with a sense of “false, hypocritical” (pseudoclerk “deceitful clerk;” pseudocrist “false apostle;” pseudoprest “heretical priest;” pseudoprophete; pseudofrere) and has been productive since then; the list of words in it in the OED print edition runs to 13 pages. In science, indicating something deceptive in appearance or function. (etymonline)

Local Stuff

Portland thieves steal 70 signed guitars worth $130K; instruments used by Oregon Music Hall of Fame to fund music education, scholarships

Amazon Closes a Seattle Office Over Deadly Shooting Surge

FBI looking into claims that Spokane Public Schools staff members have failed to report violence, crimes to police

Revised suit alleges Portland church, former pastor and lawyer engaged in racketeering, unemployment fraud

Feds pursue dozens of suspected Oregon fraud cases tied to pandemic business aid

Odd Stuff

Jailbird Harvey Weinstein Caught Red-Handed With Illegal Milk Duds

James Bond Gets His Grossest Gadget Ever in Mark Millar’s 007 Pastiche

Exploring the Enduring Mystery of Crete’s Phaistos Disc

‘The Batman’ Star Paul Dano Says Saran Wrap Doesn’t Want to Be Associated With Riddler’s Costume

Georgia Man Gets 3 Years Prison for Using COVID Funds to Buy a Pokémon Card

Scotland Apologizes for History of Witchcraft Persecution

The Unique Pleasures of a Mystery Novel with a High Death Count

For the Love of Murderous Women

This artist creates sculptures of mundane objects using the pages of vintage books.

$1.7M in NFTs Stolen From Crypto VC by Hackers

At 73, He Adds New Jersey Hit Man to His Criminal Résumé

How Does Language During Sex Translate Across Cultures?

New Orleans rescinds little-known century-old ban on jazz in schools

A pickleball player, 71, drew marks on a public court. He faces a felony.

Buddhist Monks Keep Getting Arrested for Corruption, Murder and Drug Trafficking

Hackers Who Stole $50 Million in Crypto Say They Will Refund Some Victims

American released after being held in Russia for similarity to James Bond

Words of the Month

fib (n.) “a lie,” especially a little one, “a white lie,” 1610s, of uncertain origin, perhaps from fibble-fable “nonsense” (1580s), a reduplication of fable (n.).

fib (v.) “tell trifling lies,” 1680s, from fib (n.). Seldom, if ever, transitive. Related: Fibbed; fibbing; fibbery. (etymonline)

SPECTRE

Amazon closing its bookstores, 4-Star shops

Red Rocks Abandons Amazon Palm-Scanning Tech After Artist-Led Protest

House panel flags Amazon and senior executives to Justice Department over potentially criminal conduct

Seattle Pride cuts Amazon as a sponsor

Mandatory meetings reveal Amazon’s approach to resisting unions

Awards

Here are the finalists for this year’s $50,000 Joyce Carol Oates Prize.

Lambda Literary Award Finalists

2022 National Book Critics Award winners

Meet the six designers shortlisted (including the winner) for the Oxford Bookstore Book Cover Prize

A winner of this year’s Windham-Campbell Prizes dropped out of the literary scene for 40 years.

Words of the Month

warlock (n.) Old English wærloga “traitor, liar, enemy, devil,” from wær “faith, fidelity; a compact, agreement, covenant,” from Proto-Germanic *wera- (source also of Old High German wara “truth,” Old Norse varar “solemn promise, vow”), from PIE root *were-o- “true, trustworthy.” Second element is an agent noun related to leogan “to lie” (see lie (v.1); and compare Old English wordloga “deceiver, liar”).

Original primary sense seems to have been “oath-breaker;” given special application to the devil (c. 1000), but also used of giants and cannibals. Meaning “one in league with the devil” is recorded from c. 1300. Ending in -ck (1680s) and meaning “male equivalent of a witch” (1560s) are from Scottish. (etymonline)

Book Stuff

Philip K Dick: the writer who witnessed the future

Waterstones acquires Blackwell’s, the UK’s biggest independent bookseller

Houston Museum to Restore Rare Hebrew Prayer Book

Fantasy Author Raises $15.4 Million in 24 Hours to Self-Publish (Brandon Sanderson)

The Books Will Keep You Warm: A celebration of small-town libraries and retro mysteries

The Unique Power of Nuanced Spy Novels

* The Secret Life of Beatrix Potter

*In Pictures: See Beloved Author Beatrix Potter’s Magical Drawings From Nature as They Go on View in London

The Many Faces of Parker, Donald E. Westlake’s Most Enduring, Confounding Creation

My First Thriller: David Corbett

What’s the Greatest Newspaper Crime Movie Ever Made?

Qiu Xiaolong and the Return of the Venerable Judge Dee

How It Felt to Have My Novel Stolen

Rare 17th-century collection of lute music – valued at £214k – is put under export ban in bid to keep the anthology in the UK

John Dickson Carr: The Master of the Locked Room-Mystery

Vintage goes full bleed for its new literary heroines series

The Pleasures That Lurk in the Back of the Book

Viking will publish a book of John le Carré’s letters in November.

Gagosian Opens Its First London Boutique In The Burlington Arcade

Terese Marie Mailhot on What Book Royalties Can’t Buy

The Dutch publisher of a controversial new book on Anne Frank is dropping it.

Arrest finally made in 29-year-old Bay Area cold case involving murder of San Carlos store owner

Condé Nast workers form a companywide union.

A Bookstore Revival Channels Nostalgia for Big Box Chains [???]

April 30, 2022 – INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE DAY

Author Events [In Person]

April 6, 7pm: Phillip Margolin signs The Darkest Place, Powell’s/Cedar Hills

April 16, 2-4pm: Mike Lawson signs his new stand-alone thrill, Magnolia Books

April 27, 7pm: Nicola Griffith signs her sequel to Hild, Seattle Central Library

Bellingham’s Village Books is holding their annual Dirty Dan Murder Mystery Weekend, April 23 and 24

OK – we have to note two things about author our author events listing:

1 – it’s been so long since we last listed any that we don’t remember our format!

2 – it’s been so long since the shop closed that we might be missing some authors because we don’t recognize their names. we urge you to do your own searching to catch what we miss!

Words of the Month

latebrous (adj.) “full of hiding places,” 1650s, from Latin latebrosus, from latebra “a hiding place,” from latere “to lie hidden” (see latent). Hence latebricole “living or lurking in holes” (of spiders, etc.), from Latin latebricola “one who dwells in lurking places.” (etymonline)

Other Forms of Entertainment

*This thing of ours: why does The Godfather still ring true 50 years on?

*Al Pacino on ‘The Godfather’: ‘It’s Taken Me a Lifetime to Accept It and Move On’

*50 years ago ‘Godfather’ sold out a Kansas City theater. So why was it totally empty?

*John Cazale Was the Broken Heart of The Godfather

*It’s time to imagine The Godfather with Ernest Borgnine as Vito Corleone [it sounds odd but maybe it would have worked?]

*How Paramount Home Video gave The Godfather a restoration fans shouldn’t refuse

*Paramount Plus releases first teaser for The Offer, its series about the making of The Godfather

*For 50 Years ‘The Godfather’ Has Sold Us a Beautiful Lie

*A Guide to ‘The Godfather’ Filming Locations in New York City

‘The Batman’ Star Jeffrey Wright on Gordon Influences and His Farewell to Bond

14 Book-to-Movie Adaptations We Can’t Wait to See in 2022

The Most Anticipated Movies Based on True Stories of 2022

Overlooked No More: Barbara Shermund, Flapper-Era Cartoonist

The Story Behind a New Book Pushing the Conversation About The Wire Into New Territory

Samuel L. Jackson and Walter Mosley Team Up for a Sci-Fi Fable

14 ‘Bond Girls’ Who Overshadowed 007

The Couple Who Hung a Stolen de Kooning in Their Bedroom: New Documentary Explores One of Art History’s Stranger Heists

Network Got It Right: The Legacy of a Scorching Satire

HBO reportedly developing fourth season of ‘True Detective’ dubbed ‘Night Country’

*In “The Staircase”, Colin Firth and Toni Collette Find Life in Death

*The Real Story Behind ‘The Staircase’

Anatomy of a Shootout: ‘Heat’ vs. ‘The Matrix’

This Month in True-Crime Podcasts: Drug Kingpins, Amityville, and a Return to the Green River Killer

Chris Pine on How Directorial Debut ‘Poolman’ Came Together

Bruce Willis “Stepping Away” From Acting Career After Aphasia Diagnosis

Words of the Month

lie (v.1) “speak falsely, tell an untruth for the purpose of misleading,” late 12th C., from Old English legan, ligan, earlier leogan “deceive, belie, betray” (class II strong verb; past tense leag, past participle logen), from Proto-Germanic *leuganan (source also of Old Norse ljuga, Danish lyve, Old Frisian liaga, Old Saxon and Old High German liogan, German lügen, Gothic liugan), a word of uncertain etymology, with possible cognates in Old Church Slavonic lugati, Russian luigatĭ; not found in Latin, Greek, or Sanskrit. Emphatic lie through (one’s) teeth is from 1940s.

lie (n.1) “an untruth; conscious and intentional falsehood, false statement made with intent to deceive,” Old English lyge, lige “lie, falsehood,” from Proto-Germanic *lugiz (source also of Old Norse lygi, Danish løgn, Old Frisian leyne (fem.), Dutch leugen (fem.), Old High German lugi, German Lüge, Gothic liugn “a lie”), from the root of lie (v.1). To give the lie to “accuse directly of lying” is attested from 1590s. Lie-detector is recorded by 1909. ‘In mod. use, the word is normally a violent expression of moral reprobation, which in polite conversation tends to be avoided, the synonyms falsehood and untruth being often substituted as relatively euphemistic.‘ [OED] (etyomonline)

RIP

Mar. 2: Alan Ladd Jr., ‘Star Wars’ Savior and Oscar Winner for ‘Braveheart,’ Dies at 84

Mar. 4: Mitchell Ryan, Actor in ‘Lethal Weapon’ and ‘Grosse Pointe Blank,’ Dies at 88

Mar. 13: William Hurt obituary – Body Heat, Gorky Park actor was 71

Links of Interest

Mar. 1: Trumpy Impresario Who Boasted of His Self-Made Success Is Indicted for Crypto Scam

Mar. 4: Mom Who Vanished for Weeks in 2016 Made Up Entire Kidnapping Story, Says Prosecutor

Mar. 7: This Serial-Killing Family Terrorized the American Frontier [Scott Phillips wrote a book about this in 2004 – Cottonwood]

Mar. 7: Pro-Trump PAC Exec Rants About Hillary After Feds Charge Him for Ponzi Scheme

Mar. 9: The ‘timber detectives’ on the front lines of illegal wood trade

Mar. 10: Timbuktu manuscripts: Mali’s ancient documents captured online

Mar. 10: Sex and the City: The Spectacular Love Life of Mafia Boss Sonny Franzese

Mar. 11: Edgar Allan Poe Museum marks 100 years celebrating master of the macabre

Mar. 14: King of crowns: Wisconsin dentist convicted of breaking patients’ teeth to submit $4.2 million in bogus insurance claims

Mar. 14: Two convicted in first murder plot case involving EncroChat messaging system

Mar. 14: Woman banned from Bay Area steakhouse after stealing $4,000 Cognac bottle

Mar. 15: A Brief History of Fugitives In America

March 15: How Sleuths Blew the Lid on Accused Purple Heart Fraudster

March 16: ‘Little Miss Nobody’ Identified as 1960 Kidnap Victim

Mar. 16: Honey Traps, Child Porn and Violence: Feds Bust Chinese Plot to Destroy NY Candidate

Mar. 17: Can “Witching” Find Bodies? Police Training Alarms Experts.

Mar. 18: ‘Lupin’ Robbers Charged With Pulling Off Elaborate Heist of Show About Elaborate Heist Puller

Mar. 19: Ex-Apple Employee Robbed Company of $10M in Kickbacks: Feds

Mar. 21: Private investigator says drug kingpin targeted David Ortiz

Mar. 23: Disgraced Billionaire Michael Steinhardt Has Surrendered 39 Stolen Artifacts To Israel

Mar. 23: Meet Eric Turquin, the Art Historian-Detective Who Keeps Finding Multimillion-Dollar Old Masters Hiding in Plain Sight

Mar. 23: Marilyn Monroe’s Final Hours: Nuke Fears, Mob Spies, and a Secret Kennedy Visitor

Mar. 23: How Nellie Jackson went from sex worker to madam to highly connected civil rights advocate.

Mar. 24: Strangulation Victim Found in Georgia in 1988 Now Has a Name

Mar. 24: “I’ll Let the Chips Fall Where They May”: The Life and Confessions of Mob Chef David Ruggerio

Mar. 25: Billy the Kid’s Fictional Afterlife: From the Ridiculous to the Sublime

Mar. 25: Families want ‘Monster of Florence’ serial killer case reopened

Mar. 26: Monuments Men Group Bets on Playing Cards to Find Lost Art

Mar. 27: The Ghost Story Murder That Inspired ‘Twin Peaks’

Mar. 27: The True Crime-Obsessed Philanthropists Paying to Catch Killers

Mar. 28: The Vietnamese Secret Agent Who Spied for Three Different Countries

Mar. 28: The Supreme Court to Hear Lawsuit over Whether Warhol Committed Copyright Infringement

Mar. 29: Chowchilla School Bus Kidnapper Recommended for Parole by Panel

Mar. 29: Second Biggest Crypto Hack Ever: $600 Million In Ether Stolen From NFT Gaming Blockchain

Mar. 30: Teacher Stabbed to Death in Blasphemy Witch Hunt Started by a Child’s Dream

Mar. 30: How ‘The Russians’ Took Hold of Ireland’s Heroin Trade

Words of the Month

false (adj.): Late Old English, “intentionally untrue, lying,” of religion, “not of the true faith, not in accord with Christian doctrines,” from Old French fals, faus “false, fake; incorrect, mistaken; treacherous, deceitful” (12th C., Modern French faux), from Latin falsus “deceptive, feigned, deceitful, pretend,” also “deceived, erroneous, mistaken,” past participle of fallere “deceive, disappoint,” which is of uncertain origin (see fail (v.)).

Adopted into other Germanic languages (cognates: German falsch, Dutch valsch, Old Frisian falsk, Danish falsk), though English is the only one in which the active sense of “deceitful” (a secondary sense in Latin) has predominated. From c. 1200 as “deceitful, disloyal, treacherous; not genuine;” from early 14th C. as “contrary to fact or reason, erroneous, wrong.” False alarm recorded from 1570s. False step (1700) translates French faux pas. To bear false witness is attested from mid-13th C. False prophet “one who prophecies without divine commission or by evil spirits,” is attested from late 13th C. (etymonline)

What We’ve Been Up To

Amber

Mia P. Manansala – Arsenic and Adobo

By good fortune, I found a new Culinary Mystery series at my local bookstore – A Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery.

Our heroine, Lila Macapagal, has moved back to her hometown of Shady Palms, Illinois, to lick her wounds after catching her fiance in bed with a couple of her neighbors. So instead of pursuing her dream of opening her own cafe in Chicago, she’s working on saving her Tita’s (Auntie’s) restaurant….an endeavor which becomes even more challenging when a notoriously finicky food critic and Lila’s ex-high school sweetheart drops dead face first in a bowl of ginataang bilo-bilo. Even worse? Someone poisoned the dead man’s food! And Lila’s No. 1 on the detective’s suspect list!

There are several reasons I love this book. Chief amongst them is the hook of Tita Rosie’s Kitchen series – the food. Now, I’m not very knowledgeable about Filipino cuisine. So reading a mystery, where it’s front and center, helps me learn something about it from Mia’s descriptions. Plus, the well-written recipes in the back of the book helped me cook some of the dishes myself. (Even more exciting, Lila’s a baker, and there’s an ube crinkle cookie recipe I’m dying to make!)

Another aspect of this book I enjoyed was Lila herself. She’s a complicated woman trying her best to balance her familial obligations with her own dreams and totally understands the chances of making her family happy while following said dreams are slim. Yet, this knowledge doesn’t make her bitter or the book dour – it adds layers.

Now I won’t say this is a flawless first book. However, it’s a very good one and well worth the reading time. If you need a further endorsement, directly after finishing the last page of Arsenic and Adobo, I not only ordered Mia’s second book (Homicide and Halo-Halo) – I pre-ordered her third (Blackmail and Bibingka)!

But seriously, if you enjoy culinary mysteries and want to read one set in a small family-owned restaurant filled with delectable scents and colorful characters, this is the series for you!

Fran

The Real Deal

Okay, I was absent last month, but in my defense, I was moving. Again.

“But Fran,” I hear your frowned concern as you ask, “didn’t you just move? From Washington to New Mexico? Like eighteen months ago?”

Yes, yes, I did. And now we’ve moved again. If I never see another moving box, it’ll be too soon. And I’ll go into detail with pictures later on. Right now I’m hiding from moving by talking books with you.

Specifically one book. It’s no secret I’m a fan of Glen Erik Hamilton. His debut, Past Crimes, swept award nominations and justifiably. If you ever want to get a solid feel for Seattle, Glen captures it there, and is protagonist, Van Shaw, is simply fabulous, flawed and funny and filled with resolve. I love him.

In Mercy River, Van leaves Seattle for a small town in Oregon where his buddy, Leo Pak, is arrested for murder. Van ends up in the small town of Mercy River just as a three-day event celebrating Army Rangers is beginning. With his background, Van fits in just fine, but because he’s there on Leo’s behalf, he rubs townfolk the wrong way right off the bat.

Of course Van doesn’t care. Why would he? But he is curious as to why Leo’s been accused, and something is decidedly off. With his typical resourcefulness and attention to detail, Van discovers there’s more going on than anyone really suspects.

As always, it’s the people who get to me. I fell for Van from the beginning, and wondered how he was going to change and grow as the series progressed. Let me tell you, Glen Erik Hamilton is stellar. Things in Van’s life change, and that affects him. The guy we met coming in on the bus at the beginning of Past Crimes is still the guy pulling into Mercy River, but now you can see the scars, and I don’t mean the ones on his face.

I also love the dynamics. Van’s relationship with Leo, with the General, with the townspeople, with Luce (remember her? She’s back), all change and grow. Not everything works out happily, because of course it doesn’t, and that’s as it should be.

If you haven’t read Past Crimes, you can pick up Mercy River and be just fine. But you won’t want to. Glen Erik Hamilton is a crazy good writer, and you’ll want to spend quality time in the world he’s created for Van. Trust me

JB

“An irony of Watergate is that the once secret plot to subvert American democracy now stands as one of the most documented and covered stories in American history; anyone seeking to understand the story of Richard Nixon’s secrecy and subterfuge drowns in information.” So why need another one? Because new stuff is always coming out.

Garrett M. Graff’s Watergate: A New History was full of facts and figures – the facts often interesting and funny, some bizarre, and figures who almost never come off looking good.

~ The Watergate complex was built by an Italian outfit to be DC’s answer to NYC’s Lincoln Center; culturally active and a swanky place for the swells to live. Things didn’t work and the furnishings were, well – “Martha Mitchell lamented how ‘this place was built like low-income housing'”. It was supposed to be very safe with state-of-the-art security systems. Yet in 1969, while overseas with the presidential party, Rose Mary Woods “returned to find her condo burglarized and a suitcase of jewelry stolen.”

~ Tony Ulasewicz, the private eye tasked with making calls and delivering payoffs to the Watergate burglars, carried so much change for the pay phones that his pants’ pockets wore out. He got the kind of change maker that bus drivers used to use.

~ “Nixon spent nearly 200 days in San Clemente during his first term, another 150 in Key Biscayne – a full year away from the confines and structures of the White House.”

~ An early investigation of the various crimes was by the House Banking committee headed by Wright Patman. “Patman had come into Congress six months before the Crash of 1929: by the time the Watergate investigation rolled around, the seventy-nine-year-old has served in the US House of Representatives for a fifth of the entire history of his country.”

~ Unlike how it has normally been portrayed, Deep Throat’s true identity was accurately guessed early on, both in the press and in the Oval Office.

~ The Special Prosecutor’s office had so much paper in so many file cabinets that the flooring had to be re-enforced from the floor below.

~ Even Sam Ervin, who I had always revered from his helming of the Senate Watergate Committee, is noted for being a contradictory Dixi-crat: “A self-proclaimed ‘country lawyer,’ he held an intense interest in constitutional rights and civil liberties, as well as possessing a sharp legal intellect that he’d regularly deployed in the fifties and sixties to protect Jim Crow laws and segregation.”

It can be safely stated that few of the huge number of figures involved in the Watergate quagmire had anything good to say about one another. Case in point, J. Fred Buzhardt, brought in to be the White House legal counsel on Watergate issues. One former colleague remarked that “He’s the kind of guy who could steal your underwear without ever disturbing your pants.” Another claimed “If you need a job done with no traces< Fred Buzhardt is your man. He can bury a body six feet under without turning a shovelful of dirt.”

It is a fascinating story that Graff tells well. He’s a smooth writer and the story unfolds like the slow-motion catastrophe that we know it will become. It was not only a third-rate burglary, it was also a clown-car of crimes, often capturing the clowns without them being aware of what they were doing – and most were lawyers!

“As time would make clear, the actions around the Watergate scandal were certainly criminal, and there was without a doubt a conspiracy, but labeling it a ‘criminal conspiracy’ implies a level of forethought, planning, a precise execution that isn’t actually evident at any stage of the debacle. Instead, the key players slipped, fumbled, and stumbled their was from the White House to prison, often without ever seeming to make a conscious decision to join the cover-up.”

One odd thing about the book is Graff’s omission of the “Cuban Dossier”, the reported object of the Plumbers. The dossier detailed the CIA/Mob attempts to assassinate Castro, as well as other covert CIA activities in the Americas. Bear in mind that the burglaries were in 1972 and the world would not learn of the Agency’s “family jewels” for another three years with the revelations of the Church Committee. So Nixon, who was up to his jowls in the Cuban schemes and ties to the Mafia, desperately wanted any copies of the dossier found and destroyed and he believed the DNC’s office at the Watergate had one. Bear in mind that most of the burglars and those running the operation were CIA.

Still and all, I cruised through Graff’s book, shaking my head through most of it, laughing out loud at parts. It’s an important piece of American history and well worth your time.

Should you want to read more about Watergate, I highly recommend Lamar Waldron’s Watergate: The Hidden History. He exhaustively details Nixon’s mob ties, his involvement in the CIA/Mob schemes against Cuba, and how many figures from those plans were then involved in Watergate. It’s masterful.

BUY SMALL ~ SUPPORT SMALL

November 2021

‘My Poor Ass’: Michelangelo Wrote a Poem About How Much He Hated Painting the Sistine Chapel

Have Sumatran fishing crews found the fabled Island of Gold?

A Kansas City fashion icon was kidnapped for ransom. How the mafia helped save her

Catch These 5 Incredible Finds—From Ian Fleming’s Annotated James Bond Draft, and Chandler’s inscribed hardcover to Fleming, to a Rare Tolkien Trove—at Firsts, London’s Rare Book Fair

A super-rare first folio fragment of Shakespeare’s Henry IV is up for auction.

How to Flirt Effectively, According to Michael Mann Movies

Ten books from The Simpsons Library I would like to read.

How One Unexpected Phone Call Led to the Rescue of the Last Diving Horse in America

A Scientific Explanation for Your Urge to Sniff Old Books

We Added New Words to the Dictionary for October 2021

Boy, if there’s a Word of the Month that fits us it is this:

gallimaufry (n.)“a medley, hash, hodge-podge,” 1550s, from French galimafrée “hash, ragout, dish made of odds and ends,” from Old French galimafree, calimafree “sauce made of mustard, ginger, and vinegar; a stew of carp” (14th C.), which is of unknown origin. Perhaps from Old French galer “to make merry, live well” (see gallant) + Old North French mafrer “to eat much,” from Middle Dutch maffelen [Klein]. Weekley sees in the second element the proper name Maufré. Hence, figuratively, “any inconsistent or absurd medley.” (etymonline)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

‘The beginning of the snowball:’ Supply-chain snarls delay books (with local views)

Supply chain issues are slowing the production of books ahead of the holidays (the reporter also talks about how the sale of e-books has fallen)

Serious Stuff

Pandora papers: biggest ever leak of offshore data exposes financial secrets of rich and powerful

Global hunt for looted treasures leads to offshore trusts

The United States of Dirty Money

State of Emergency Declared Over Crime Spike and Cocaine Boom in Ecuador

The Long American History of “Missing White Woman Syndrome”

What happens to crime where recreational marijuana is legal? Here’s what we know

Opinion | Journalists bungled coverage of the Attica uprising. 50 years later, the consequences remain

Drawing a line from Cold War brainwashing to the misinformation age

We Finally Know How 43 Students on a Bus Vanished Into Thin Air

50 Years Later, Looking Back at the Real-Life Crime Network That Inspired The French Connection

How The French Connection Reinvented (and Exploded) the Police Procedural

In secret tapes, palm oil execs disclose corruption, brutality

A Black family got their beach back — and inspired others to fight against land theft

A Black 10-Year-Old Drew an ‘Offensive Sketch.’ She Was Handcuffed by Cops.

A Drug Cartel Sent a Severed Head to Tijuana’s New Police Chief on His First Day

When the Family Legacy Is Murder

Secret recording reveals Texas teachers told to counter Holocaust books with ‘opposing’ views

This lady is trying to ban Toni Morrison’s books from schools for being “pornographic.”

Kenosha police accused of ‘deputizing’ militia vigilantes during Jacob Blake protests

White House Once Again Delays Release of JFK Assassination Documents

Was He Framed for Killing Black Kids to Get the Klan off the Hook?

There is a consistency to the debate over book censorship: Distress about change

A Union Scandal Landed Hundreds of NYPD Officers on a Secret Watchlist. That Hasn’t Stopped Some From Jeopardizing Cases

The Secret History of Latin America’s Female Cartel Bosses

Local Stuff

1927 Murderer’s Row program turns up in East Vancouver, BC

20 years after unsolved killing of federal prosecutor Thomas Wales in Seattle, details emerge about the FBI’s theory

Reward for info in murder of Seattle prosecutor climbs to $2.5 million decades after death

The Case of Perry Mason’s Courtroom Cousin

Seattle police arrest Pike Place Market store owner suspected of trafficking stolen Lego sets

Amanda Knox was exonerated. That doesn’t mean she’s free

Fremont’s Outsider Comics is the inclusive home base for a new generation of Seattle nerds

Ursula K. Le Guin always wanted Powell’s Books to be a proud union shop.

An ode to the glorious ’70s cover art of the books of Ursula K. Le Guin.

Cops Solve Mystery of Alaska Serial Killer Victim Known as ‘Horseshoe Harriet’

Words of the Month

absurd (n): “plainly illogical,” 1550s, from French absurde (16th C.), from Latin absurdus “out of tune, discordant;” figuratively “incongruous, foolish, silly, senseless,” from ab– “off, away from,” here perhaps an intensive prefix, + surdus “dull, deaf, mute,” which is possibly from an imitative PIE root meaning “to buzz, whisper” (see susurration). Thus the basic sense is perhaps “out of tune,” but de Vaan writes, “Since ‘deaf’ often has two semantic sides, viz. ‘who cannot hear’ and ‘who is not heard,’ ab-surdus can be explained as ‘which is unheard of’ …” The modern English sense is the Latin figurative one, perhaps “out of harmony with reason or propriety.” Related: Absurdly; absurdness. (etymonline)

Odd Stuff

On the mysterious obscenity scribbled on John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath manuscript

The Socialite Gangster Who Charmed the New York Literati

From Pen Stroke to Key Stroke: On Slander in Suspense ~ Poisoned pen letters were a staple of Golden Age crime fiction. Now, writers are using new technologies continue the tradition.

Lord of the Rings orc was modeled after Harvey Weinstein, Elijah Wood reveals

Dodgers Fan Thought to Be Most-Wanted Fugitive Just a Dodgers Fan, U.S. Marshals Determine

5 historic codes yet to be cracked

Eighty years after his death, weapons experts now say expressionist painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s suicide may have been murder

Who was Agent 355? The Mystery of America’s First Female Spy

Australian Court to Deliberate the World’s Most Expensive Apostrophe

The Reason Some Are Convinced Paul McCartney Is A Clone

Dormice favoured by Italian mafia seized in drugs raid

He’s a poet and the FBI know it: how John Giorno’s Dial-a-Poem alarmed the Feds

The Bizarre History of the Many, Many Bond Imitators of 60s and 70s Pop Culture

A recent auction of the Al Capone’s mementos testifies to his enduring appeal—and the thorny nature of collecting items owned by criminals

Missouri Man Won’t Sell Back Murder Victim’s Wedding Ring

Egypt detains artist robot Ai-Da before historic pyramid show; Sculpture and its futuristic creator held for 10 days, possibly in fear she is part of spying plot

This Former Crime Scene Cleaner Is Now a Go-To COVID Slayer

Dressed to kill: Why gangster and fashion films have a lot in common

10 Years of Rituals – Inside an exorcist’s diary

When a cobra became a murder weapon in India

Words of the Month

paradox (n): From t he 1530s, “a statement contrary to common belief or expectation,” from French paradoxe (14th C.) and directly from Latin paradoxum “paradox, statement seemingly absurd yet really true,” from Greek paradoxon “incredible statement or opinion,” noun use of neuter of adjective paradoxos “contrary to expectation, incredible,” from para- “contrary to” (see para- (1)) + doxa “opinion,” from dokein “to appear, seem, think” (from PIE root *dek- “to take, accept”).

Originally with notions of “absurd, fantastic.” Meaning “statement that is seemingly self-contradictory yet not illogical or obviously untrue” is from 1560s. Specifically in logic, “a statement or proposition from an acceptable premise and following sound reasoning that yet leads to an illogical conclusion,” by 1903. (etymonline)

Awards

Here are the 2021 National Book Award Finalists

Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah has won the Nobel Prize in Literature

Baillie Gifford prize reveals ‘outstanding storytelling’ on 2021 shortlist

A woman won a million-euro Spanish literary prize. It turned out that ‘she’ was actually three men

Here’s the shortlist for the 2021 T.S. Eliot Prize

A new literary prize in honor of Ursula K. Le Guin will recognize “realists of a larger reality.”

Here are the finalists for the 2021 Cundill History Prize

Here are the 2021 Kirkus Prize winners

Book Stuff

Publishing Is a Nightmare: 31 Horror Films about Writing, Reading, and the Book Business

How to Deal with Rejection (and Get Revenge) Like Edgar Allan Poe

Handwritten manuscript of The Grapes of Wrath to be published for the first time

The Books Briefing: The Essential Qualities of a Book

Lee Child on the Invention of Fiction

Stephen Fry on the enduring appeal of Georgette Heyer

Hanif Abdurraqib on What It Was Like to Work at a Chain Bookstore

9 very niche bookstores for your very specific interests

Steph Cha on Choosing the Best of Mystery and Suspense Stories During an Unprecedented and Harrowing Year

State of Terror by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny review – politics and patriotism

Fictional Detectives, Real Hobbies: Appreciating the Leisure Activities of Fiction’s Greatest Sleuths

John Grisham on Judges, Innocence and the Judgments He Ignores

Murder in the Stacks: Mysteries That Take Place In Bookstores

The Unheralded Women Scribes Who Brought Medieval Manuscripts to Life

On the Various, Multipurposed Manuscripts of Canterbury Tales

Interview: ‘My life in the mafia’s shadow’: Italy’s most hunted author, Roberto Saviano

Solange Launches Free Library of Rare, Out-of-print Books by Black Authors

Amelia Earhart’s long-hidden poems reveal an enigma’s inner thoughts

The Detection Club and the Mid-Century Fight over “Fair Play” in Crime Fiction

Inside the Real-Life Succession Battle at Scholastic

How Being a Firefighter Prepares You to Write Crime Fiction (nope, the author’s last name isn’t Emerson)

Why is Baseball the Most Literary of Sports?

A Murder Mystery That Refuses to be Solved

How to Have Sex in Crime Fiction

Not Everything We Watch Has to Be “Meaningful.” This Series Proves It

Redemption for Doctor Watson

Other Forms of Entertainment

True Crime Fans Are Obsessed With This Forensic Psychology YouTube Channel

‘The Many Saints of Newark’ Led Michael Imperioli to Depressing Realization About His ‘Sopranos’ Character

Netflix Orders Edgar Allen Poe Classic From ‘Midnight Mass’ Team

Sue Grafton’s alphabet series will be adapted for TV—despite her family’s “blood oath.”

One Good Thing: Only Murders in the Building plays like a Nora Ephron murder mystery

This new Broadway play doesn’t have a script — but it does have a transcript

He Read All 27,000 Marvel Comic Books and Lived to Tell the Tale

Brusque cops and femmes fatales: discovering Gilles Grangier’s forgotten noir gem

Corbin Bernsen to Reprise ‘L.A. Law’ Role in ABC Update

The Curious, Astounding Collection of the Magician Ricky Jay

‘Sopranos‘ Star Steve Schirripa Says Significant Bobby Baccalieri Moment Was an Accident

“You Don’t Understand What This Is Doing to Me:” In the age of anti-heroes Tony Soprano reigned supreme. In a new book, we take a look at the toll the character took on James Gandolfini

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is curating a series of classic works by Black playwrights.

‘North by Northwest’ is Basically a James Bond Movie as Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Netflix Tracks Korea’s Most Notorious Serial Killer Yoo Young-chul—Who Targeted the Rich, Then Prostitutes

Re-entering the Void with the Best Episode of ‘True Detective’

Who will play Norman Mailer in this new true crime series?

If you find yourself in mortal danger this weekend, remember the last words of these famous writers.

Elizabeth Banks and Margot Robbie are making a live-action The Paper Bag Princess movie.

Words of the Month

preposterous (adj.): 1540s, “contrary to nature, reason, or common sense,” from Latin praeposterus “absurd, contrary to nature, inverted, perverted, in reverse order,” literally “before-behind” (compare topsy-turvy,cart before the horse), from prae “before” (see pre-) + posterus “subsequent, coming after,” from post “after” (see post-).

The sense gradually shaded into “foolish, ridiculous, stupid, absurd.” The literal meaning “reversed in order or arrangement, having that last which ought to be first” (1550s) is now obsolete in English. In 17th C. English also had a verb preposterate “to make preposterous, pervert, invert.” (etymonline)

RIP

Oct 8: ICON LOST ~ Robert Grossman dead at 88 – Famed neurosurgeon who examined assassinated President John F Kennedy passes away

Oct 21: Julie Green, who painted plates with the last meals of death row inmates

Oct 27: The comedian and satirist Mort Sahl, who has died aged 94, was a combination of Lenny Bruce and Bob Hope – with a little Will Rogers thrown in.

Oct 29: Val Bisoglio Dies: Character Actor Who Played Father In ‘Saturday Night Fever’, Appeared On ‘Quincy, M.E.’ & ‘Sopranos’ Was 95

Links of Interest

Oct 2: The mafia killed her mother. Now she wants to take them on as mayor of Naples

Oct 2: Woodlawn Jane Doe: How scraps of DNA and a genealogy website solved a 45-year-old mystery

Oct 2: Jeffrey Wright: ‘There’s a relentless, grotesque debasement of language in the US’

Oct 2: ‘It will be found’: search for MH370 continues with experts and amateurs still sleuthing

Oct 3: How a Tip to Obituaries Breathed New Life Into a Decades-Old Mystery

Oct 6: It’s Time to Learn About the Lives of John Wayne Gacy’s Victims—And Not Just the Labels Hung on Them

Oct 7: The Boone Family, the Struggle for Kentucky, and the Kidnapping That Rocked Colonial America

Oct 7: The Birth of the CIA—And the Soviet Mole Who Had a Hand in Everything

Oct 8: Case of the Zodiac killer takes another twist – but police say it isn’t solved

Oct 9: How JFK used James Bond to fight the Cold War

Oct 9: How The Mob Controlled The Jukebox Industry

Oct 12: A new film explores the life of Odessa Madre, the ‘queen’ of D.C.’s underworld

Oct 12: Reclaiming the Legacy of Nora May French, the Pioneering Poet Made Into a Femme Fatale by Mediocre Men and California Mythology

Oct 12: You Can Now Rent the Villa Where ‘James Bond’ Was Created on Airbnb

Oct 12: An American Outrage: Journalism, Race, and the Clinton Avenue Five

Oct 13: Florida Police Arrest Woman for Allegedly Tampering With Flight School Computers

Oct 14: Robert Durst: US millionaire sentenced to life for murder

Oct 14: Lake District mysterious abandoned tea-for-two found in woodland

Oct 15: City is taking its official wizard off the payroll after over 2 decades

Oct 16: Nike Jordan boss reveals he murdered an 18-year-old in 1965

Oct 16: Australian Police Make Record $104M Heroin Seizure

Oct 17: Spies next door? The suburban US couple accused of espionage

Oct 17: As Japan’s yakuza mob weakens, former gangsters struggle to find a role outside crime

Oct 19: Romance scams cost consumers a record $304 million as more people searched for love online during the pandemic

Oct 19: Mexican Gangster Rapper ‘El Millonario’ Just Got Arrested on Murder Charges

Oct 19: Edith Carlson, a single librarian with a small income, was excited to work with Frank Lloyd Wright—at first.

Oct 22: Tragic Alec Baldwin Prop Gun Shooting Isn’t the First Movie-Set Death

Oct 22: How Gun Deaths Happen On Film Sets

Oct 22: Rocker Randy Bachman’s guitar was stolen 45 years ago. A fan tracked it down

Oct 22: Ransomware Gang Says the Real Ransomware Gang Is the Federal Government

Oct 22: The house from the movie ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ is up for sale

Oct 23: She Picked Up Her Husband From Jail and Was Never Seen Again

Oct 24: Rollercoaster fan takes 6,000th ride after pandemic delays

Oct 25: Family of Newly Identified Gacy Victim Never Knew He Was Dead

Oct 26: Feds: Embassy Staffer Who Drugged, Molested Women Was in CIA

Oct 26: MAGA, the CIA, and Silvercorp: The Bizarre Backstory of the World’s Most Disastrous Coup

Oct 26: The Forgotten Story of a Polish Spy Whose Los Angeles Trial Was a Cold War Flashpoint

Oct 27: Post photographer Matt McClain on the trail of Edgar Allan Poe

Oct 29: Instagram Model Allegedly Helped Break Mom Out of Prison by Distracting Guard

Words of the Month

canard (n.): An “absurd or fabricated story intended as an imposition,” 1851, perhaps 1843, from French canard “a hoax,” literally “a duck” (from Old French quanart, probably echoic of a duck’s quack); said by Littré to be from the phrase vendre un canard à moitié “to half-sell a duck,” thus, perhaps from some long-forgotten joke, “to cheat.” But also compare quack (n.1). (etymonline)

What We’ve Been Up To

Amber

Mango, Mambo, and Murder – Raquel V. Reyes

Until I cracked the spine of Mango, Mambo, and Murder – I hadn’t realized how very long it’s been since I’ve started a new series. Or, in fact, a series that didn’t feature a mystery writer, bookshop owner, or librarian as the sleuth. So why you ask, are these careers important? Reading about true or fictional crime does generally give bookish detectives a leg up in their investigations.

However, in Mango, Mambo, and Murder, our investigator is Dr. Miriam Quinones-Smith, a Food Anthropologist, mother of one, and the newest resident of Coral Shores, Miami. All outstanding life achievements – but not ones that prepared her for investigating a murder. However, this is precisely what Miriam needs to do when her best friend Alma is accused of murder.

And she makes mistakes. Lots of mistakes. Because she’s quite literally an amateur sleuth trying to solve her first case – the first one I’ve read in a very long time.

Even better?

She did a good job.

However, the cream of the first book in A Caribbean Kitchen Mystery series is how Reyes (our author) seamlessly works food into her mystery. The dishes Miriam cooks add layers and nuance to the book without detracting from the unfolding story because food is the cornerstone upon which Mirium’s life is built, therefore making it a cornerstone of the book.

But it’s still very much a mystery…with delicious sounding Cuban food on the side.

The one and only criticism I have for the Mango, Mambo, and Murder is that the very last chapter is just a hair overly sweet. But as it is a first novel – which gives a slightly unusual but satisfying wrap -up the murder mystery – I can forgive this very small foible.

Overall, I would recommend this mystery to anyone who enjoys reading cozy mysteries, culinary mysteries, and/or culturally diverse mysteries. Raquel V. Reyes did a great job creating a new exciting character, who I am looking forward to meeting again.

(BTW – Thanks to JB who emailed me about this great book!)

JB

Craig Johnson’s new Longmire, Daughter of the Morning Star is a puzzler. I don’t mean that due to it’s mystery and crime and whodunnit elements. I mean it from the point of view of “where is this going”?

Walt spends the book up in Montana, helping the locals search for a missing Indian woman. The issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women is a real and frightening problem but Walt is the sheriff of the largest county in WY, he doesn’t have a huge staff (is the Powder River annex still manned? Was it rebuilt after it was torched? Has his Basque deputy been replaced?) Who’s running the place? While the hunt for the missing girl is the plot, the story is more about Walt’s continued brush with Native American spirituality, what it means to him, how he deals with it – or not – and how the Spirits deal with Walt. There are a number of Mallo wrappers in the story and if you’ve been reading the books you understand their significance.

There’s a lot of basketball, not enough Vic, and the oddity of Dog shying away from Walt after a Spirit encounter but then everything is normal between them with no explanation.

Felt, again, like a bridge book – taking the series somewhere but not going very fast. Still, anytime with Walt and Henry is time well spent.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

After becoming frustrated with the commercials during BBC’s airing of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I turned off the TV and started re-reading the book. It has to be at least 20 years since I first read it. I was struck – again – by how well crafted it is as a mystery/thriller/crime novel, how assured it was as a first time work of fiction, and how serious Stieg Larsson was about addressing the violence done to women. Re-read all three. Great trilogy!

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SHOP SMALL ~ BUY SMALL

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MAY 2021

In the market for an illuminated manuscript? Got £8 million?

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a stratospheric $3.25-million record sale of rare Superman comic

Got £2.75 million to spare? Now you can buy Agatha Christie’s house.

New York bookstore figures out the perfect sideline: pickles

Grammar-Nerd Heaven: A new exhibit showcases the surprisingly contentious history of English grammar books

Imagine your ideal artist’s retreat in this breathtakingly beautiful forest library

Of course Vladimir Nabokov imagined emoticons over a decade before they were invented

Words of the Month

griff (n.): Slang, an accurate account. Also, inside information. (Says You! #720)

Serious Stuff

The Pandemic’s Wrongest Man: In a crowded field of wrongness, one person stands out ~ Alex Berenson.

Banned Books: Books by Steinbeck, Alexie among most objected to in 2020

Surprise: the ALA’s 2020 list of most challenged books shows an uptick in antiracist texts.

He Led Hitler’s Secret Police in Austria. Then He Spied for the West.

Climate change is a major threat to stability, spy agencies say

The Women of the OSS: On The Pioneering American Spies of WWII

Cuomo staffers were (illegally) asked to work on Cuomo’s memoir as part of their government jobs

‘Out of Control’ Cape Town Fire Destroys Historic University Library, Students Evacuated

Sinn Féin president apologizes for murder of Lord Mountbatten

Here’s what QAnon documentaries reveal about how conspiracies flourish

How the Kremlin provides a safe harbor for ransomware

Mexico cartel used explosive drones to attack police

Publishers Are Using E-books to Extort Schools & Libraries

For the 1st time in history an Air Force general will face court-martial

Spanish Police Raided a 3D Printed Gun Workshop And Found Nazi Symbols

Remains Of Black Children Killed in MOVE Bombing Cannot Be Located

U.S. Federal Investigators Are Reportedly Looking Into Codecov Security Breach, Undetected for Months

Tool Links Email Addresses to Facebook Accounts in Bulk

False Memories and Manufactured Myths: Growing Up in a Conspiracy Theory Household

Hackers Say They Stole 250GB of Internal Documents From DC Police

Towards A New Understanding of Psychosis and Violence

Feds Raid Giuliani’s NYC Apartment in Ukraine Probe

Murder Cover-Up: Man Allegedly Set Deadly Wildfire to Hide His Crime

From Canada ~ Last Publisher Left Standing: Why Books Are Facing a Bleak Future

What Abusive Partners, Corrupt Cops and Authoritarian Leaders Have in Common – A VICE News podcast about power and control

Extremists find a financial lifeline on Twitch

The Incredible Rise of North Korea’s Hacking Army

SPECTRE Stuff

Amazon Intended Its Army of Paid Twitter Sycophants to Be ‘Authentic,’ Have a ‘Great Sense of Humor’

What on Earth Is Amazon Doing? The company’s social-media aggression is shocking. It shouldn’t be.

How Amazon and America’s one-click obsession are warping the future of work

Malls that buckled due to e-commerce or suffered during the pandemic are being given new life by the very entity that precipitated their decline — Amazon.

Texas Man Charged In Plot To Bomb Amazon Web Services Data Center “The suspect’s goal was to allegedly ‘kill off about 70% of the internet.’”

‘There’s a Very Human Cost to Convenience’

Amazon internet program Project Kuiper will launch first satellites with Boeing joint venture

Amazon Launches Another Union-Busting Campaign

Amazon employees say you should be skeptical of Jeff Bezos’s worker satisfaction stat

Amazon profit more than triples as pandemic shopping boom persists

Local Stuff

Investigators hope new DNA-enhanced sketch of ‘Bones 17’ gives Green River victim a name

Powell’s says laid-off workers will have to apply for their jobs amid dispute with union

Seattle Independent Bookstore Day is back this year — with a twist

How Brick & Mortar Books has become a pillar of the Redmond community

Hacker Steals Info of Thousands of Gay Dating App Users/“’attacker’ gained access to the passwords, usernames, and emails of more than 7,700 users living in Washington State

How a journalist unraveled a gory founding myth of the Pacific Northwest

An Oregon Woman Says a Police Officer Raped Her. She Was the One Arrested

Words of the Month

Isn’t it irenic? It’s time to bring back beautiful words we have lost

Odd Stuff

John le Carré, chronicler of Englishness, died Irish, son reveals. Author was so opposed to Brexit that he took Irish citizenship to remain European

Flat Earther Busted in Freemason Arson Spree

Literature’s Most Curious Creations – A new book takes readers into collector Edward Brooke-Hitching’s “madman’s library”

People Are Stealing Legos. Here’s Why

The $50 Million Art Swindle on BBC

15 Scams People Almost Pulled Off That Will Leave You Impressed And Appalled

“Nobody ever made fun of him, but I did.” Orson Welles on his friendship with Hemingway.

Can you tell when someone is lying?

Found: Page 25 of the CIA’s Gateway Report on Astral Projection

Has anybody seen some loose ceremonial swords? The Truman Presidential Library wants them back

Trove of Treasures, From Gold Skull Ring to Tudor Coins, Unearthed in Wales

These 17th-Century Skull Watches Open Up to Reveal Time as It Passes Us By

Mom busted after cops reportedly find cocaine on son’s Dr. Seuss book

Soon you’ll be able to vacation at Jane Austen’s country estate . . . in a cowshed.

California Gold Rush town votes to remove noose from its logo

I’m obsessed with Liu Ye’s gorgeous, photorealistic paintings of books.

Bang & Olufsen’s Book-Shaped Bookshelf Speaker Will Disappear Into a Shelf Full of Books

Accusations of spying and sabotage plunge Russian-Czech relations into the deep freeze

Author’s killer ‘thought victim was working with Putin to spread Covid’

Fraud and Spiritualism Between the Wars: A Study of Two Hoaxes

Sasquatch Director Joshua Rofé on Chasing After Murder Mysteries and Monsters

This bucolic 1946 newsreel about Daphne Du Maurier could also be the beginning of a horror film

Man Murders Housemate Over Bad Internet Connection

Baby Doctor Charged With Insane Dark Web Kidnapping Plot

Awards

Here are the 35 finalists for the 2021 Oregon Book Awards

Here are the literary Guggenheim Fellows of 2021.

2021 Hugo Award Finalists Announced

Announcing the winners of the 2021 Whiting Awards.

A scammer just stole £30k of literary prize money—and is trying to steal more.

A Look at Your 2021 ITW Thriller Awards Nominees

The State of the Crime Novel in 2021: A Roundtable With the Edgar Awards Nominees

The State of the Crime Novel in 2021, Part 2: Writing During the Pandemic

Congratulations to the Winners of the 2021 Edgar Awards

Book Stuff

A Pop-up Bookstore Honors a Man Who Intended to Give It All Away

A Groundbreaking Lesbian Book Is Back in Print

Readers on the bookshops they miss most: ‘I can’t wait to take my lockdown baby!’

How A Humble Bookseller Helped Give Rise To The Renaissance

How Substack Revealed the Real Value of Writers’ Unfiltered Thoughts

Who engages with books, and how? Portland State University study tells new story about consumer behavior

John Grisham Leaves the Courtroom for Basketball, and Sudan

The Story of Richard Wright’s Lost Novel

Publisher halts Philip Roth book amid sexual abuse claims against biographer

“Bailey is the story now, but Roth still looms over it all. This fiasco has tendrils reaching into every level of media and publishing.” Jo Livingstone considers the industry-wide implications of the allegations against Blake Bailey.

What Snoop Dogg’s success says about the book industry

Despite protests from employees, Simon & Schuster still plans to publish Mike Pence’s book.

Hundreds of Simon & Schuster Employees Demand No Book Deals for Authors Tied to Trump Admin

As the subject of no fewer than three biographies since her death in 1995, the popular Patricia Highsmith writer lived a complicated, if fascinating, life. What was she really like?

‘Never stupid to ask questions’: Rare Raymond Chandler essay gives writing, office tips

Remembering one of the first woman-owned bookshops in America, which Publishers Weekly, in 1916, called “something old-worldly, yet startlingly new.”

Outcry over book ‘censorship’ reveals how online retailers choose books — or don’t

A Secret Feminist History of the Oxford English Dictionary

‘Bill and I got pretty friendly’: James Patterson on writing with Clinton and clashing with Trump

An original Robert Frost manuscript is up for auction.

How the Darker Side of the Fight for Women’s Suffrage Inspired One Historical Mystery Novelist

The Revenge Novel and the Art of Getting Even

Honoring the Legacy of Eleanor Taylor Bland: A Roundtable Discussion

“Write as if you were dying.” Read Annie Dillard’s greatest writing advice.

Other Forms of Entertainment

The Last Good Friday remembered at 40 by those involved

Hippie Murderer Charles Sobhraj’s Story Is Stranger Than What’s In The Serpent 

‘The Sons of Sam’ Trailer: New Docuseries Challenges Official Narrative of Infamous Seventies Killing Spree

the 100 best, worst, and strangest Sherlock Holmes portrayals of all time

Drawing on Their Escapes From the Nazis, These Artists Became Celebrated Cartoonists

9 True Crime Podcasts You Should Be Listening to Now

All the Information You Need for the LA Book Festival

The killer question: are true-crime podcasts exploitative?

One of the bloodiest anti-Asian massacres in U.S. history, now a podcast

Lynda La Plant: The hit crime writer changed the face of television with her groundbreaking female DCI Jane Tennison, who was played by Helen Mirren. But, she tells Charlotte Cripps, the TV production companies wanted nothing to do with the show at first

Hitchcock, The Voyeur: Why Rear Window Remains the Director’s Definitive Film

The most prolific serial killer in U.S. history got away with it for almost 50 years. A new docuseries exposes how a biased system failed his victims, and fostered a murderer.

The Best True Crime Documentaries You Haven’t Binged Yet

James Ellroy Is Going to Host a Podcast About Los Angeles Crime—Seriously

Hercule Poirot’s First Appearances on Television and RadioWords of the Month

A Ruthless Ranking Of The 25 Best Muppets, According To Listeners

Netflix’s Why Did You Kill Me? Shows How One Mother Solved Her Daughter’s Murder With Social Media

The 10 Greatest Movies Adapted from Crime Novels—According to a Producer and Novelist

Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet: Film Noir’s Greatest Odd Couple

Words for the Month

buttle (v.) to act or serve as a butler (Says You! #720)

RIP

April 6: Paul Ritter dies at 54

April 8: Richard Rush, subversive film director fascinated by the counterculture who won critical acclaim for The Stunt Man, dead at 91

April 10: Ramsey Clark, attorney general who became a critic of U.S. policies, dies at 93

April 10: Giorgos Karaivaz: Veteran crime journalist shot dead in Greece

April 12: Joseph Siravo: ‘The Sopranos’ and ‘Jersey Boys’ star dies aged 64

April 14: Bernie Madoff, Financier Behind Notorious Ponzi Scheme, Dies At 82 [eds. – no rest for you, you bastard!]

April 28: Daniel Kaminsky, 42, found key flaw in internet’s basic plumbing

April 29: Jason Matthews, spy novelist who drew on his experience in the CIA dies at 69

Links of Interest

March 29: The Doodler: The Truth About The Unidentified Serial Killer

April 1: Arabian coins found in US may unlock 17th-century pirate mystery

April 1: Nazi-Looted Poussin Painting Found in Italy, Returned to Owners

April 1: A Swindler Almost Sold These Forged ‘Masterpieces’ for $14.7 Million

April 2: Australia: Geologist beaten up by ‘angriest octopus’ on beach

April 4: Gay, communist, female: why MI5 blacklisted the poet Valentine Ackland

April 6: Dutch Man Arrested in Connection with High-Profile Heists of van Gogh, Hals Works

April 6: Why Murder Mysteries Are a Lot Like Science, According to a Neuroscientist and Novelist

April 6: Decrypted Messages Lead to Seizure of 27 Tons of Cocaine in Europe

April 6: A Former IRA Bank Robber On Writing A Heist Novel Based on a Long-Unsolved Crime

April 7: Feds Allege Tech CEO Designed ‘Parasitic Narco Sub’ for Drug Cartels

April 9: ‘Lost golden city’ found in Egypt reveals lives of ancient pharaohs

April 10: Heinz Promises To Catch Up To Americans’ Demand Amid Ketchup Packet Shortage

April 12: SportsTrouble in Titletown ~ Georgia’s Valdosta High School, a longtime football powerhouse, is awash in a scandal involving race, funny money, allegations of improper recruiting and a one-armed booster named Nub.

April 13: The Crusade Against Pornhub Is Going to Get Someone Killed

April 13: 1st Century Roman Statue, Looted A Decade Ago, Found In Belgium By Off-Duty Police

April 14: Japan’s Most Notorious Kidnapping Is Still Unsolved

April 14: How Gilded Age Corruption Produced the Biggest, Maddest Gold Rush in History

April 15: Inspecting the NYPD “Puzzle Palace”

April 15: A Kidnapping Gone Very Wrong

April 15: NC High School Basketball Coach Killed Trying to Rob Notorious Mexican Drug Cartel

April 15: Maila Nurmi’s Oregon upbringing led to sexy horror icon Vampira; new book captures her intense, tragic life

April 15: Mystery tree beast turns out to be croissant

April 16: Pottery Shard May Be ‘Missing Link’ in the Alphabet’s Development

April 16: The Florida Resort That Played an Unlikely Role in the Bay of Pigs Fiasco

April 17: He Was Yoga’s First Star Guru. Then He Ended Up in Jail.

April 20: 7 Unsolved Mysteries of the Art World

April 21: Toronto Gallery Robbed of Almost $300,000 Worth of Art in Heist

April 21: The Crazy Way $30M Was Stolen From Safe Deposit Boxes

April 22: AI unlocks ancient Dead Sea Scrolls mystery

April 22: Italian hospital employee accused of skipping work for 15 years

April 23: Human Skeleton Found Lying on Couch in Abandoned House

April 23: The Secret Mission To Unearth Part Of A 142-Year-Old Experiment

April 23: Billionaire Mukesh Ambani Buys Golf Club Featured In James Bond Film ‘Goldfinger’ For $79 Million

April 23: A rising actor, fake HBO deals and one of Hollywood’s most audacious Ponzi schemes

April 24: Enterprise Password Manager Passwordstate Hacked, Exposing Users’ Passwords for 28 Hours

April 24: Everything We Know About The Unsolved Icebox Murders

April 24: National Spelling Bee adds vocabulary and lightning-round tiebreaker for 2021

April 24: Did Argentina rob art from its own museum to fund the Falklands War? Military junta stole £1.8m of paintings from Buenos Aires gallery to buy arms from Taiwan, new book claims

April 25: MI6 takes inspiration from James Bond with hunt for ‘new Q’ to lead high-tech team

April 26: Josh fight: Hundreds join friendly battle for naming rights

April 26: Is This Man the Evil Genius Behind the Old-Master Forgery Spree Called the ‘Crime of the Century’? We Paid Him a Visit to Find Out

April 26: Could H.H. Holmes And Jack The Ripper Be The Same Person?

April 26: She Escaped Charles Manson’s Murderous Sex Cult

April 27: The Secrets of the World’s Greatest Jailbreak Artist

April 28: How an Ex-Cop Linked to the Murder of a DEA Agent Walked Free From a Life Sentence

April 29: The Bizarre Story Of The Serial Killer Who Tried To Prevent Earthquakes

April 30: Why People Don’t Believe Son Of Sam Killed Alone

Words for the Month

eggcorn (n.) “an idiosyncratic substitution of a word or phrase for a word or words that sound similar or identical in the speaker’s dialect. The new phrase introduces a meaning that is different from the original but plausible in the same context… eggcorns are sometimes also referred to ‘oronyms’… The term eggcorn, as used to refer to this kind of substitution, was coined by professor of linguistics Geoffrey Pullum in September 2003 in response to an article by Mark Liberman on the website Language Log, a group blog for linguists.^[2] Liberman discussed the case of a woman who substitutes the phrase egg corn for the word acorn, and he argued that the precise phenomenon lacked a name. Pullum suggested using eggcorn itself as a label… An eggcorn is similar to, but differs from, folk etymology, malapropism, mondegreens or puns.” (Wikipedia)

What We’ve Been Up To

Amber

Do you need a new addiction? I’m sure you do. On the upside, this habit’s less problematic than Sherlock’s 7% solution. However, it isn’t without cost.

What am I prattling on about, you ask? 

The Deadbolt Mystery Society.

A subscription box that sends you a mystery to solve every month! 

So far, I’ve unmasked a stalker, solved a decades-old cold case, foiled a kidnaper, resolved an art heist, and unraveled several murders in Valley Falls. (The small town where these cases are set. You work for a P.I. firm that takes on all kinds of clients.) 

One of the best things about each Deadbolt Mystery Society box, beyond the variety of crimes, is the wildly different types of evidence they supply, kinds of puzzles to solve, and suspects/witnesses/victims you meet. 

Just part of the clues for one box!

The puzzles of which I write are sometimes sneaky, always challenging, and require a vast array of skills to solve. One time I created a comprehensive timeline in order to cross-reference events against alibis—another time, I widdled down a massive list of addresses to locate a suspect’s abode and played a board game. On top of the logic & math problems, pictograms, cryptograms…The Deadbolt Mystery Society uses such a wide assortment of puzzles across all their boxes; it keeps them from becoming predictable and your wits sharp!

If you haven’t guessed – I’m a fan. 

They remind me vaguely of online hidden-object games like the Enigmatis series (I loved them), Yuletide Legends (an excellent holiday-themed game), or Dreamwalker (another I enjoyed playing). In so far as, no matter how urgent your case, you need to solve each and every puzzle provided to move closer to the penultimate solution. 

However, unlike the hidden-object games, which use short animated clips to move the story along – Deadbolt Mystery Society employs QR codes.

More often than not, these QR codes send you to password-protected web pages, which require you to input the solution from one of the aforementioned puzzles in order to obtain the next clue! Keeping the investigator honest – as you can’t just guess the answers – you need to know them.

One of the QR codes in this box tells you when to open the next packet – with more new puzzles to solve – SQUEE!!!

But once you surmount each hurtle, you are rewarded with a witness statement, diary entries, cryptic phone messages, eerie songs…the list goes on, and you never know what you’re going to uncover next – which is great fun! 

(BTW – you need either a smartphone or tablet with a camera to solve each case. Otherwise, you’re dead in the water.)

Deadbolt Mystery Society says each case takes anywhere between 2-6 hours to solve, depending on your skill level and the number of people working together. I take my time and usually solve them in a week or two – depending on how much free time I can carve out (unlike books – I don’t rush thru these). I would recommend these for adults or teens working in tandem with an adult, as most of the puzzles are pretty tricky (by design).

Not sure you’re ready to sign up? The Deadbolt Mystery Society also sells individual boxes – if you want to try it out before committing to a subscription!

FYI: While the web pages, photos, and packets don’t explicitly show any gore, the scenarios themselves can have a high body count (this last month featured a serial killer) together with the puzzle difficulty level… I’m not sure I’d be comfortable gifting a subscription to any of my nieces or nephews under fifteen or sixteen.

Fran

A Walk on the Dark Side

I haven’t been reading a lot of noir lately, because things are noir enough in real life, even though I have puppies to help liven things up. Oh, and they do!

But as I was unpacking books, I ran into Lono Waiwaiole’s “Wiley” series. Well, the first two anyway. I haven’t unearthed the third one yet. The thing is, I have them, but I never read them. I like Lono as a person, JB and Bill raved about the books, so I knew I’d like them. I just never got around to it.

Until now.

I just finished Wiley’s Lament. WHY DID I NOT READ THIS EARLIER? Holy cats.

Wiley is just kinda drifting through life. He’s living in a house owned by his old buddy, Leon, and he gambles to pay the rent. When he comes up short, Wiley leaves his home environs of Portland, OR, and wanders up to Seattle, where he robs drug dealers. He has nothing to lose, as far as he’s concerned.

“When I lose, I go to Seattle and find a drug dealer to rip off.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?”

“I like the symmetry of it. Either I get the money, or it blows up in my face and I don’t need any money.”

“It sounds like you don’t really care which one it is.”

“I don’t,” I said. “That’s the key to the whole thing.”

But when Wiley’s estranged daughter is murdered, his interest in things comes sharply into focus. He blames his buddy, Leon, for Lizzie’s death, but it turns out things are much, much more complicated than what Wiley initially thought, and that drive to find out just what happened puts both Wiley and Leon on a dark and dangerous path.

It’s brilliant.

Lono Waiwaiole‘s writing is dark, visceral, and deeply, profoundly human. Wiley and Leon and their associates are not the guys in white hats. They’re flawed and emotionally scarred, and it takes some looking to see the solid and faithful hearts beating underneath. But it’s there, and you care. Deeply.

And of all the characters I wish I could be, among a whole lot of wonderful and memorable people, I want to be Elmer. He’s a total delight to me. Granted, I want to be faster. Maybe I just want his wisdom.

I’m so sorry I took this long to read Wiley’s Lament, and I’ve got Wiley’s Shuffle close to hand. If you haven’t read them, now is a good time.

JB

Mike Lawson’s books have an subtle thrum to them, a smooth motion that seems to me to hum. They are the finest example of thrillers as, once they start, they don’t slow down. And though DeMarco is a classic reluctant hero, he never fails to see the case finished, even if he has to cut corners.

House Standoff is a departure for Lawson, this time playing with the strict rules of a whodunnit. Someone close to DeMarco has been murdered in a distant setting, and he’s not going to rest, as he warns the people he bangs into, until he finds out who pulled the trigger. Mike provides a number of suspects and seeds the stories with red herrings. The book works like a Manor House mystery, set in a small town in the Far West. And then he has the audacity of upend the rules. It is a stunning piece of work.

He buffaloed me. I was sure I’d fingered the killer, but …

There are many series I have re-read many times. I think it is time to start the DeMarcos at the beginning. Sounds like as much fun as can be had between the covers of a paperback. Keep me occupied til he next new Lawson book.

And I can’t wait for this: James Ellroy Gets to the Scene of the Crime

BUY SMALL ~ SUPPORT SMALL

APRIL 2021

~ For Your Amazement ~

How were the small words in English created?

When in Need of the Right Word, Great Writers Simply Make Them Up

Why Is Tower Records Coming Back Now, of All Times?

Dave Barry: Hiaasen’s retirement is good news for sleazeballs nationwide

clinomania: the excessive desire to stay in bed

Serious Stuff

Dr. Seuss Books Are Pulled, and a ‘Cancel Culture’ Controversy Erupts

A Dr. Seuss Expert Cuts Through the Noise on the Cancel Culture Controversy

Ransomware Gang Fully Doxes Bank Employees in Extortion Attempt

The Silent Trial of the Century

Opinion: Book sales are up, but bookstores are struggling. It matters where you shop.

Conspiracy Theories and the Problem of Disbelief – The Atlantic

New piece of Dead Sea Scrolls jigsaw discovered after 60 years

How Would the Publishing World Respond to Lolita Today?

Operation finds 150 missing children in Tennessee

Ransomwared Bank Tells Customers It Lost Their SSNs

Steph Cha: The Atlanta shooting is another reminder the cops are not our friends

Hiding in Plain Sight: How Criminals Use Public Perception to Commit Crimes

Michael Albrecht Was There When John Wayne Gacy Confessed. He Saw Through the Serial Killer’s Charm. (from Peacock’s new original docuseries John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise)

Ballistics work at D.C.’s crime lab criticized by forensic experts

True crime shows spotlight women as victims — but don’t help improve women’s safety

U.S. Special Operations Command Paid $500,000 to Secretive Location Data Firm

The big spike in murders in 2020, explained in 600 words

‘We have your porn collection’: The rise of extortionware

PNW Stuff

Portland underworld scandal in 1950s pitted gangsters against Hollywood; B-movie reshoots compare city then and now

One dead, five wounded in stabbing at Vancouver library, suspect in custody

For 10 years, Book Larder has thrived by mixing 2 of Seattle’s great loves: books and food

Convicted serial killer Joseph Duncan dies on death row

Adam Wood Reviews: 3 new crime novels transport readers across the world and back in time

Clyde Ford: How we should deal with Dr. Seuss books and cancel culture

Odd Stuff

Read a previously unpublished (New Yorker-rejected) poem about Superman… by Vladimir Nabokov.

Storied and Sordid: The History of Jeffrey Epstein’s Just-Sold Mansion

Back in 1986, the Castros helped retrieve Hemingway’s stolen Nobel Prize.

Philadelphia Is a Secret Spy Mecca

The Macabre Mystery of a British Family’s Skull-Topped Spoons

Take a look inside this rare, self-published Andy Warhol cookbook.

Octavia Butler is now officially on Mars.

Scientists Have Unlocked the Secrets of the Ancient ‘Antikythera Mechanism’

Murder Tourism in Middle America: The World of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood

The Mariko Aoki Phenomenon: When You Need To Poop After Entering A Book Store

That Time Scientists Discovered a Creature in Loch Ness and Then Realized It Was a Sunken Prop from The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes

Rare sneakers. Bots. Insider connections. This scandal has it all

Globe Trotter James Bond Sticker Collection ~ ONLY  $340

“Howl”: illuminating draft of Allen Ginsberg’s seminal poem found

Japanese Man Scales Building to Steal Pokémon Cards, Gets Arrested

I’m Alone: How One Canadian Rumrunner Defied the U.S. Coast Guard and Sparked an International Scandal

Ten Savage Insults From Literary Icons

Mafia fugitive caught after posting cooking show on YouTube

Vincent D’Onofrio wrote a book, and it looks insane and wonderful.

Words of the Month

lachschlaganfall (n): a medical term for when a person laughs so much that they fall unconscious. (thanks to Ripley’s Believe it or Not!)

Department of SPECTRE

Activists sue big French retailer over Amazon forest damage

Amazon merchant kicked off website spent $200,000 to get justice

Amazon Has Become a Prime Revolving-Door Destination in Washington

A Kansas Bookshop’s Fight with Amazon Is About More Than the Price of Books

Want to borrow that e-book from the library? Sorry, Amazon won’t let you.

Worker says Amazon hung anti-union signs in bathroom stalls

Amazon, contractors settle wage-theft lawsuit by Seattle-area drivers for $8.2 million

Amazon Illegally Interrogated Worker Who Led First COVID-19 Strikes, NLRB Says

Amazon Called out for Denying Workers are Forced to Pee in Bottles

The Amazon Union Vote Is Ending in Bessemer. Workers Are Already Preparing for the Next Fight.

Dear Amazon: Why can’t we sell our ebook on your platform?

Amazon started a Twitter war because Jeff Bezos was pissed

‘Fake’ Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

Twitter Is Banning Amazon ‘Ambassadors’ and It’s a Total Mess -The real Amazon ambassadors are fake too.

Chicago bookseller proposes class action lawsuit against Amazon over pricing (the law firm handling the suit is based in Seattle)

Awards

Here are the finalists for the 2020-21 L.A. Times Book Prize.

2021 The National Book Critics Circle Awards

Writers from 4 continents up for International Booker Prize

Book Stuff

Sara Paretsky on Dorothy B. Hughes and the Meaning of ‘Noir’

New Orleans is looking toward a hopeful future. A new bookstore is lighting the way.

Here’s the best writing advice from Colson Whitehead’s 60 Minutes interview.

My First Thriller: Tom Straw

How Kurt Wolff Transformed Pantheon into a 20th-Century Publishing Powerhouse

To Really Understand Agatha Christie, You Need to Know About Poisons

Books Hold The Key To Elly Griffith’s The Postscript Murders

My father was famous as John le Carré. My mother was his crucial, covert collaborator

The Best Books for Starting an Occult Library

Harlan Coben, 75 million books in print, and a new one coming out

Stephen Fry backs Sherlock Holmes museum campaign in Portsmouth

Scholastic Book Fairs Have Another Tough Quarter

Betrayal Is Timeless: The Evolution of George Smiley 

Dean Koontz: ‘Life is one long suspense novel’

On the Vast and Multitudinous Worlds of the Library

Authors fear the worst if Penguin owner takes over Simon & Schuster

Amanda Gorman brings the representation debate to the small world of book translation

Douglas Adams’ note to self reveals author found writing torture

‘Captain Underpants’ book pulled for ‘passive racism’ against Asians

HarperCollins will acquire the trade division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for $349 million.

New Yorker staffers vote to authorize strike amid tensions with Condé Nast

Jacqueline Winspear: How I Became A Mystery Writer While Breaking Every Rule

The Joys of Evaluating Books on Whether Their Plot Twists Are Surprising, Shocking, or Just Plain Bonkers

Other Forms of Entertainment

Mark Hofmann’s Deadly Web of Master Forgery Is at the Center of Murder Among the Mormons

Golden State Killer Investigator Joins ‘America’s Most Wanted’ Reboot

HBO’s true crime drama ‘The Investigation’ is slow and frustrating on purpose (and JB recommends the series!)

‘The Sopranos’: David Chase and mobster Johnny Sack on how they made a TV classic

David Simon headed back to Baltimore, HBO for new police corruption miniseries

Peter Falk’s ‘Columbo’: The TV Detective’s 1st Name, How It Surfaced in a Lawsuit, and What the Star Had to Say (there are a number of Columbo stories at this site this month)

Memento at 20: Christopher Nolan’s memory thriller is hard to forget

The Criminal Minds of Jim and Tim: The Clemente brothers went from the FBI to Hollywood murder consultants. Now they’re rebooting America’s Most Wanted.

Fifty Years Later, Get Carter Is Still the Iconic British Gangster Film

Why Are We Obsessed With Psychopaths?

Why the Coen Brothers’ Cinematic Sleight of Hand is So Good

Cutter and Bone: Two Masterpieces Deserve Their Proper Due

Inside the Twisted Making of Basic Instinct

Revisiting The Anderson Tapes, Sidney Lumet’s Wisely Paranoid Heist Film, 50 Years Later (JB recommends the original book AND the movie)

Hitchcock Presents: A Brief History of the Weird, Wild Hitchcock Shows That Once Dominated TV

Thief at 40: Michael Mann’s confident debut sent a message

Comfort in the Uncomfortable: How Christopher Nolan Uses Noir to Get Weird

Words of the Month

bad penny (n): This proverb has lived long in the language. It derives from the notion that some coins were ‘bad’, that is, they were debased or counterfeit.

The ‘clipping’ of coins was rife in the Middle Ages, long before standardisation of the coinage was reliably enforced. This example from the reign of Edward I shows the degree of ‘badness’ that pennies then endured.

The term ‘bad penny’ was established enough in English by the late 14th century for it to have been used in William Langland’s famous prose poem The vision of William concerning Piers Plowman, 1370-90: “Men may lykne letterid men… to a badde peny.”

thanks to phrases.org.uk

Links of Interest

March 2: I-5 Strangler Killed in Prison

March 3: A breakthrough technology allows researchers to see inside sealed centuries-old letters.

March 3: My Babysitter, the Serial Killer

March 5: My Novel Reopened A Cold Case. My True Crime Book Puts Ghosts To Rest.

March 5: Napoleon Has Always Fascinated Novelists, But His Life Really Was Fit for a Thriller

March 7: Wife’s Body Dug Up in Florida Backyard After Hubby Made Chilling Taunts

March 8: I Was Hired to Assassinate Pablo Escobar

March 8: Behind Enemy Lines: Women in Combat During World War II

March 9: Researchers Uncover Remains of Polish Nuns Murdered by Soviets During WWII

March 10: DNA study of 6,200-year-old massacre victims raises more questions than answers

March 12: Scientists unlock mysteries of world’s oldest ‘computer’

March 15: French Government to Seek Return of Klimt Painting Sold Under Duress During World War II

March 15: Mother ‘used deepfake to frame cheerleading rivals’

March 19: Greek bull figurine unearthed after heavy downpour

March 21: The Most Shocking True Crime Revelations, Every Year Since 1999

March 23: She had a ‘cool’ childhood babysitter. Four decades later, she learnt he was a serial killer

March 24: Israeli Spy Pollard Betrays America Yet Again

March 25 : The Murder That Stunned Gangland Philadelphia

March 25: The Actress, the Steward and the Ocean Liner: What Really Happened in Cabin 126?

March 28: True-crime fanatics on the hunt: inside the world of amateur detectives

March 28: A Biblical Mystery and a Reporting Odyssey

Words of the Month

to coin a phrase : Coining, in the sense of creating, derives from the coining of money by stamping metal with a die. Coins – also variously spelled coynes, coigns, coignes or quoins – were the blank, usually circular, disks from which money was minted. This usage derived from an earlier 14th century meaning of coin, which meant wedge. The wedge-shaped dies which were used to stamp the blanks were called coins and the metal blanks and the subsequent ‘coined’ money took their name from them.

Coining later began to be associated with inventiveness in language. In the 16th century the ‘coining’ of words and phrases was often referred to. By that time the monetary coinage was often debased or counterfeit and the coining of words was often associated with spurious linguistic inventions; for example, in George Puttenham’s The arte of English poesie, 1589: “Young schollers not halfe well studied… will seeme to coigne fine wordes out of the Latin.”

Shakespeare, the greatest coiner of them all, also referred to the coining of language in Coriolanus, 1607: “So shall my Lungs Coine words till their decay.”

Quoin has been retained as the name of the wedge-shaped keystones or corner blocks of buildings. Printers also use the term as the name for the expandable wedges that are used to hold lines of type in place in a press. This has provoked some to suggest that ‘coin a phrase’ derives from the process of quoining (wedging) phrases in a printing press. That is not so. ‘Quoin a phrase’ is recorded nowhere and ‘coining’ meant ‘creating’ from before the invention of printing in 1440. Co-incidentally, printing does provide us with a genuine derivation that links printing with linguistic banality – cliché. This derives from the French cliquer, from the clicking sound of the stamp used to make metal typefaces.

‘Coin a phrase’ itself arises much later than the invention of printing – the 19th century in fact. It appears to be American in origin – it certainly appears in publications there long before any can be found from any other parts of the world. The earliest use of the term that I have found is in the Wisconsin newspaper The Southport American, July 1848: “Had we to find… a name which should at once convey the enthusiasm of our feelings towards her, we would coin a phrase combining the extreme of admiration and horror and term her the Angel of Assassination.”

thanks to phrases.org.uk

RIP

February 23: Edgar-winner Margaret Maron dead at 82

March 3: Marie Tippet, Widow of Dallas officer slain by Lee Harvey Oswald, dies

March 6: Lou Ottens, Inventor of the Audio Cassette Tape, Dead at 94

March 7: Judith Van Gieson: R.I.P.

March 7: Remembering Allan McDonald: He Refused To Approve Challenger Launch, Exposed Cover-Up

March 8: The Phantom Tollbooth Author Norton Juster Dies At 91

March 9: Roger Mudd, probing TV journalist and network news anchor, dies at 93

March 9: ‘Phantom Tollbooth’ Author Norton Juster Dies At 91

March 15: Yaphet Kotto, Bond Villain and ‘Alien’ Star, Dies at 81

March 16: Ronald DeFeo, Killer Who Inspired ‘The Amityville Horror,’ Dead at 69

March 19: Henry Darrow, ‘High Chaparral’ actor who fought to expand roles for Latinos, dies

March 23: George Segal, Leading Man of Lighthearted Comedies, Dies at 87

March 25: Jessica Walter, Play Misty for Me and beloved ‘Arrested Development’ star with a long resume, dies at 80

March 26: Children’s Author Beverly Cleary, Creator Of Ramona Quimby, Dies At 104

March 26: Larry McMurtry, bookseller and award-winning novelist who pierced myths of his native Texas dies at 84

March 29: Brian Rohan, San Francisco attorney for Ken Kesey, Grateful Dead and the counterculture, Dies at 84

March 31: G. Gordon Liddy, Watergate mastermind, dead at 90

Words of the Month

shot in the dark: The term ‘shot’ has been slang for an attempt since the middle of the 19th century; for example, this piece from Joseph Hewlett’s comic work Peter Priggins, the college scout, 1841: “After waiting for a little while, Ninny… made a shot, and went so near the mark.”

‘A shot in the dark’ is simply a hopeful attempt to hit an enemy that you can’t see.

George Bernard Shaw seems to have been the first to use it metaphorically, in The Saturday Review, February 1895: “Never did man make a worse shot in the dark.”

thanks to phrases.org.uk

What We’ve Been Up To

Amber

Ashley Weaver – A Deception At Thornecrest

Change is a tricky thing. Often uncomfortable, awkward, unsightly, and a difficult thing to manage gracefully. Whether it’s moving to a new house in a new city, purchasing a new car, or adopting a new pet, unexpected complications always seem to creep into the proceedings.

Books series are no different. 

Any author worth their salt, who endeavors for a successful string of books knows – eventually – they will need to change things up. Otherwise, the series stales and stalls. 

Elizabeth Peter’s efficiently handled this problem by sending Amelia Peabody to a different location in Egypt (generally speaking) for each installment. Patricia Moyes employed a similar tactic by sending her husband & wife team on vacation all over the world. J.K. Rowling sends her famous wizard off to school (or to defeat dark wizards every year.

In the case of Ashley Weaver’s A Deception At Thornecrest, she does the reverse – she sends Amory Ames and her husband Milo home.

And it works beautifully.

Over the past six books, neither member of our dynamic duo has spent much time at Thorncrest – so it’s the perfect place for Weaver to set her transition mystery. By mixing a bit of old with a bit of new, Weaver is all set to send our heroine into new and exciting directions in future books. Even better? She accomplishes this aim with such flawless skill it makes A Deception At Thornecrest a joy to read.

One of the most significant changes in Amory’s life? She’s about to become a first-time mother! A fact which both she and Milo are over the moon about, in their understated way. The only hitch in the giddy-up? During the annual Springtide festival, a stable hand is murdered…Amory, our remarkable amateur sleuth, is discouraged at every turn from investigating because of her “delicate condition”.

Fortunately for Lady Justice and us readers, Amory has zero interest in heeding their unsolicited opinions. 

A Deception At Thornecrest was a compelling historical mystery, one which I thoroughly enjoyed reading from beginning to end. Even better, if you’re not interested in reading the previous exploited of our heroine and her husband (but I would highly suggest you do as they are lovely), you don’t have to! Because this is a transitional book, so long as you aren’t starting with numero uno, you can start with this installment and be alright.

Honestly, I cannot say enough good things about A Deception At Thornecrest. 

Fran

It’s not her latest, but it’s the most recent one I’ve read, and holy cats, does J.T. Ellison have a twisty mind! Just one more reason to love her, honestly, just like you’re going to love Good Girls Lie.

The Goode School is an Ivy League feeder boarding school in Virginia, and there’s a long waiting list of girls hoping to be chosen. The Goode School accepts only 50 girls for each grade level, and each girl is properly and thoroughly vetted before acceptance. You know what I mean, right?

Ash Carlisle is a bit of an exception. She’s British, for starters. She was being considered before her parent suddenly died, and no one can say that the Goode School is without compassion.

However, Ash’s new classmates don’t take to her that well, and Ash has secrets, so she doesn’t want to make a fuss. The resulting dynamic of mean girls, vulnerable girls, and a certain amount of looking the other way by staff members leaves Ash in a precarious position.

Then things start to get really ugly. Even deadly.

J.T. Ellison attended a similar school, although it wasn’t as perilous, so her insights and knowledge about this setting give Good Girls Lie an added edge that, combined with J.T.’s fabulous writing, makes this novel deeply disturbing. And did I mention it’s twisty as all get out? You get to see events through multiple viewpoints, and very little of what everyone sees on the surface is real. Just like most social interactions, I suspect.

You don’t have to have attended a posh boarding school to appreciate Good Girls Lie, although if you have, I bet you’ll recognize some of the people. You’re in for a treat!

JB

The title alone gave me hope that the book would answer some of my questions about why there have been so many serial killers in the last decade. Peter Vronsky is a Canadian with a PhD in criminal justice history. I saw that he’d written a couple of other books on the subject and this new one, American Serial Killers: The Epidemic Years 1950-2000, seems the most promising to address my curiosity.

Why so many? Why now? Why do many not fit the profile we’re always told about? And most strangely, why do some seem to quit?

Vronsky carefully explains what he sees as the roots – fathers who came back damaged from WWI, the great number of desertions by fathers during the Depression, and those effects on families and sons specifically. There were women who really should never have been mothers due to domineering personalities or mental health issues, the frequent element of head injuries and you have a pool ready for the birth of trouble. As youngsters, they were subjected to the social traumas of WWII, the revelations of horrors of the Holocaust, the dawn of the atomic age, and the movement of the population from the smaller towns where everyone was known to one another to the large cities and their anonymity, and evil can erupt. Mix in the interstate highway system… OK, so far I understand.

But he then begins to mix in the proliferation of true crime magazines in the 40s and 50s – when they’d begun in the 20s. I understand that many of the killers in the 60s, 70s and 80s mention them as formative with their lurid imagery. But I don’t see that had there not been these magazines, things would’ve been far different. It strikes me as a cheap target, like Bundy saying it all started with pornography.

Similarly, Vronsky puts blame on film noir and the pessimism and corruption they portrayed. He neatly glides by the fact that film noir was a direct outgrowth of the crime novels of the 20s, 30s and 40s. He doesn’t attempt a connection that the fiends were reading novels about sex and death, just looking at images of it. Municipal corruption was a massive menace well before the killers of the last half of the 20th C., but he gives little attention to the first half. I can make a couple of guesses as to why: killers could still travel around by jumping trains but the journalism may’ve lacked the ability to connect murders in different locales. He often points to the problem with killers crossing jurisdictions and police from one town/city/county/state not communicating with one another. Indeed, it still seems to be a problem – not every facet of law enforcement knew what was going on at the Capitol on January 6th, or 9/11.

Odder still, he spends an unnecessary amount of time and gory detail on crimes of Jeffrey Dahmer while mentioning that many others have been ignored in the study of serial killers. If we’ve never heard of them, he’s missed his chance to inform us.

But I could also guess that many killers in the century from 1850 to 1950 had easy outlets for their murderous ways – they had the Civil War where murder could easily be disguised as warfare, they had the Wild West where murder was cheap and easy, and they had the growth of Organized Crime where there were always opportunities for hired killers.

Over all, the book was interesting but frustrating. For an academic, he was flippant at time, snarky at others, and those instances felt out of place. It is one thing to be casual and entertaining. It is another to sound off key.

My largest question – why do some seem to stop – was answered in one quick paragraph about Gary Ridgeway: the thrill was gone. Really? That doesn’t feel adequate to explain why a monster who killed dozens of women would simply cease doing it. I hope to get an answer to that some day from a future author.

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“This whole arduous process began with a monumental failure by the keepers of the public memory – the government and the press. Their failure remains with us. Over the past half century, this case has been filled with bitter arguments and wild conspiracy theories; government bodies papering over significant failures; junk science and ’eminence-based’ conclusions; sober, tenacious research and trumpeting blowhards. But over these same decades and despite many mistakes and reverses, a partial truth has been brought to light. That truth, however, leaves open many of the questions that should have been answered fifty years ago and in all likelihood cannot be answered now. Principally…who did it, and why?”

Another book that had great promise yet fell slightly short was Josiah Thompson‘s Last Second in Dallas. The philosophy professor who left academia to become a private eye in San Francisco had released one of the seminal books on the JFK assassination in 1967, Six Seconds in Dallas. It’s always been hailed as a scholarly work on the shooting and, while he stayed connected tangentially with the case, he’d published nothing else in the nearly 55 years since.

His new book is in the form of a re-examination and memoir. He situates his arguments amongst the developments in his life and the assassination evidence that has come out over the decades. He admits when he had something wrong and corrects it. It’s a fascinating thing to track.

Thompson has always focused on the evidence, the “what” of the case, not the “who” of the case. As the titles say, he’s focused on the seconds of gunfire in Dealy Plaza, not those who organized the crossfire or pulled the triggers. This narrow view allows him to delve deeply into what is known and can be proved and he does a masterful job of it.

“There is, however, one fact about assassination that has not changed in fifty years. It is its most obvious feature – the brutal effectiveness of crime… In this whole narrative, what was clear in 1966 is even clearer now. This was a highly sophisticated, devastatingly effective assassination: who bullets to the head and one to the back. Its very audacity is the most compelling feature. And speculation as to who did it and why must at least start with that fact.”

However, within those seconds of shots, he does allow some questions to go unanswered. He’s got four shots being fired. What accounts for that shallow wound in Kennedy’s back that didn’t penetrate far? The Dallas doctors could feel the end of the tract with their little fingers. What of the bullet or fragment or chip of cement that nicked James Tague? Tague and his wound are not mentioned by Thompson even as he has bullet fragments bouncing around the inside of the limo. Other than the gunman behind the picket fence, he’s non-committal about the location of the other shooters – one in the depository, the other… perhaps, like the identity of the participants, he’s leaving those questions to others. He also condescendingly dismisses the Garrison investigation, which was, after all, about the “who”s. That sounded unfair, tone-deaf, and short-sighted.

Still, Last Second in Dallas is a fascinating book and a worthy addition to my shelves of books on the assassination.

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Christie and Henching

Amber Here!

Question: Have you ever moved house/apartment/room and discovered you’ve inadvertently started a collection? Or perhaps you were aware of said collection but utterly unaware of its sheer size due to it being tucked away in odd corners/cabinets/drawers of your abode.

Or – in my case – on multiple shelves, in multiple bookcases, in multiple rooms. The collection in question? Agatha Christie, and Agatha Christie adjacent, books. 

In 2014, when I started my Christie blog, I quickly discovered photos make the internet go round. Meaning? I began posting cover art along with reviews.

And you can’t photograph the same cover art over and over again…

So over the past seven years, I’ve haunted little out-of-the-way used bookshops in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and biblio.com for foreign/vintage/obscure Agatha Christie mystery covers…when I wasn’t spending my SMB paycheck to augment and enhance my collection. 

Fast forward to March 2021. When we move into new digs (and for the first time ever), I’ve my own home office and finally gathered all my Christie’s into a single room. 

Though not a single bookcase. 

Fran (who I texted when I realized how marginally out of control my collection’s got) thought you guys might be interested to see part of what I’d amassed.

These are the vintage volumes…haven’t had time to put them in order yet…perhaps on a rainy day…

These are the modern editions and my Christie research books…

(Hilariously these photos don’t include the other book cases filled with other classic mysteries and general mystery related research books! My office is mostly shelves…and yet still not enough space…)

Now For Something Completly Different.

Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots

How many of you out there watched the Venture Brothers? (If you haven’t, you really should.) To narrow our focus further, how many of you recall The Monarch’s most trusted henchman Number 24 (aka Gary)? Yes. No.

Well, I love the series (and am still miffed Adult Swim axed its longest-running series last year), and I’ve watched every episode several times over. And when I first started reading Hench, Anna loosely reminded me of Gary…if his life were bleaker.

Much, much, bleaker.

Which initially made me want to set the book down and walk away…Because I thought I knew where the story was heading (especially when Anna accepted a contract with a villain named Electric Eel).

Boy, am I glad I stuck with it. (And finished it a day later.)

Because not only did I not see the direction Anna’s life would take…I found a clever, sarcastic, and compelling hench(woman) whose motivations were entirely understandable and relatable – but whose viciousness (in her revenge) is utterly and unapologetically unrestrained. 

Seriously, Hench is an excellent read. Because it’s more than just a tale of a single all-consuming revenge…

…sigh…

This review is so hard because I want to seriously gush about this book, but in gushing over it, I would ruin the layers, nuance, and sheer evil genius found within its pages. Hench is a book, if SMB were still open, I would simply put Hench in your hands* and say: 

“Trust me.” (Squinting at Fran.) 

Because if this is a first in a series (and I suspect it is or at least will have a follow-up), I CANNOT wait to see where Anna’s henching takes her next.

(Provided I knew you enjoyed reading gritty urban fantasy and/or sci-fi.)