March 2023

A Sci-Fi Magazine Stopped Letting Anyone Submit Stories After Being Flooded With AI-Written Content [but shouldn’t a sci-fi magazine welcome fiction from robots??]

Man facing jail over theft of almost 200,000 Cadbury Creme Eggs

Words of the Month

steal (n.): 1825, “act or case of theft,” from steal (v.). Meaning “a bargain” is attested by 1942, American English colloquial. Baseball sense of “a stolen base” is from 1867. (etymonline)

Serious Stuff

The Waco siege’s long shadow

FBI wants more ransomware victims to report attacks

Can Community Programs Help Slow the Rise in Violence?

Is It Forensics or Is It Junk Science?

Native American Women Keep Turning Up Dead. Why Is Nothing Being Done?

‘The Nazi Conspiracy’ uncovers a little known WWII Nazi plot

Developers Created AI to Generate Police Sketches. Experts Are Horrified

Security News This Week: North Korean Hackers Are Attacking US Hospitals

Malcolm X’s family is suing the CIA, FBI and NYPD

Here Are Some of the Most Hacked States in America

Hackers breach U.S. Marshals system with sensitive personal data

Censorship/Terrorism

Neo-Nazi Lovers Charged in Plot to Nuke Baltimore Power Grid

Pennsylvania school librarian ordered to remove Holocaust survivor’s quote from the wall

Wikipedia ban in Pakistan over alleged blasphemous content lifted

Florida school district pulls children’s book on Roberto Clemente over passage that he faced racism

The ignorance is the point. Kids books about Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente get censored | Opinion

It Came From the Basement

DeSantis Now Says Teachers Are Shelving Books to Make Him Look Bad

Critics reject changes to Roald Dahl books as censorship

James Bond Books Undergo Edit to Remove ‘Offensive’ Language

A Cappella Group Says Concert at Florida Christian College Canceled Over Member’s ‘Lifestyle’

Florida teacher who posted video showing empty bookshelves in school library gets fired

Jane Smiley: Why I’m Thrilled My Pulitzer-Winning Book Has Been Banned

Neo-Nazi Homeschoolers Defend Their ‘Wholesome’ Pro-Hitler Network

School District Pays Legal Fees After Banning Mothers From Reading Sexually Graphic Passages at Meetings

Art Exhibit Canceled After Florida College Demands Diversity References be Scrubbed

The Far Right Is Calling for the Execution of Teachers and Doctors

Jimmy Kimmel hits back over report that Trump White House pressured Disney to censor his jokes

Words of the Month

swipe (v.): 1825, “strike with a sweeping motion,” from swipe (n.). The slang sense of “steal, pilfer” appeared 1885, American English; earliest use in prison jargon:

The blokes in the next cell, little Charley Ames and the Sheeney Kid, they was hot to try it, and swiped enough shoe-lining out of shop No. 5, where they worked, to make us all breeches to the stripes. [Lippincott’s Magazine, vol. xxxv, June 1885]
etymonline

Local Stuff

Inside the hunt for a serial kidnapper, and a bloody finale

Erika Christensen on why ‘Will Trent’ is unlike other police procedural shows [based on novels by Karin Slaughter]

The books we love: Seattle’s reading habits reflect city’s diversity

From Mike Lawson: The Great, Always Bizarre Florida Crime Fiction Tradition

This Seattle bookstore draws design aficionados from around the globe

Calling Lucian Connally:

Timeline of Oregon Bourbon Scandal

OLCC Director Steve Marks Resigns amid Oregon Bourbon Scandal

Oregon Liquor Officials Are Accused of Hoarding Rare Bourbon

Odd Stuff

The gadgets spies used before James Bond was even born: Concealed weapons and escape items used by British operatives in WW2 – from bladed coins to a dagger hidden in a Gillette razor – go up for auction

Photos of Obsessive Collectors With Their Collections

How fingerprints get their unique whorls

Spoken Latin Is Making a Comeback

Want to own a prison? Well good news — this one is for sale in Missouri. Check it out

SPECTRE

Amazon is taking half of each sale from its merchants

Town can’t refuse Amazon offer despite Robert Duvall opposition

FTC won’t challenge Amazon’s $3.49B One Medical deal

Jeff Bezos receives highest French honor in private ceremony

Amazon Is Already Selling Tons of Books Written by AI

Hundreds of AI-written books flood Amazon

Amazon has a donkey meat problem

As investigations mount, Kent worker describes Amazon’s ‘outrageous’ toll

Words of the Month

caper (n.2): by 1590s, “a playful leap or jump, a skip or spring as in dancing,” from caper (v.). The meaning “prank” is from 1840 via notion of “sportive action;” that of “crime” is from 1926. To “cut capers” dance in a frolicsome way” is from c. 1600, from cut (v.) in the sense of “perform, execute.” (etymonline)

Awards

Finalists for the Gotham Prize Are Revealed

All Shirley Jackson Award finalists get stoned.

Vote now for the new name of the Booker Prize trophy (Iris, obvs).

Book Stuff

The Best Crime Novels of 2022 (yeah, we’re late including this…)

It Takes a (Book) Village

A.I. uncovers unknown play by Spanish great in library archive

Want to be a writer? This bleak but buoyant guide says to get used to rejection

Famous poet Pablo Neruda was poisoned after a coup, according to a new report

Ancient Hebrew Bible May Fetch $50 Million, Becoming Priciest Book Ever Sold

An Author’s Guide to Stealing from the Books You Love by Stephen Hunter

The Strange Real-Life Mystery Behind Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat”

Why Does the Mystery of Edgar Allan Poe’s Death Still Haunt Us?

X Marks the Spot: Literary Treasure Hunts

The Life and Legacy of James Ellroy

Marcia Muller: A Crime Reader’s Guide to the Classics

Why So Many Journalists Turn to Careers in Crime Fiction

The Year Ian Fleming Finally Started Writing His Novel

British independent publishers thrive despite Brexit and Covid pandemic

Book Stalls and Back Rooms: Traveling the World in Search of Literary Serendipity

How Failure Defines the Writing Life

World’s Oldest Near-Complete Hebrew Bible Goes to Auction

What Is It That Makes Used Bookstores So Wonderful?

William Kotzwinkle could never become a monk. So he created one in crime fiction instead.

New imaging tool confirms female scribe etched her name in medieval manuscript

The Best Plot Twists in Mystery

The Odd Career of the World’s Most Upsetting Book

Chip Gaines bought Larry McMurtry’s legendary bookstore to… fix up, we hope?

How the Armed Services Editions Created a Nation of Readers

X Marks the Spot: Literary Treasure Hunts

Penguin Random House Announces New Leadership After a Turbulent Period

Vicki Hendricks, Miami Purity, and the Making of a Neo-Noir Classic [when Vicki came into the shop to sign her debut, she was wearing a custom-made leather dress that matched her book’s dustjacket!]

Author Events (in person)

Mar. 6: Rupert Holmes signs Kill Your Employer, Powell’s, 7pm

Mar. 26: J.A. Jance signs Collateral Damage, Third Place/LFP 4pm

Mar. 28: Cara Black signs Night Flight to Paris, Third Place/LFP, 7pm

Mar. 29: Cara Black signs Night Flight to Paris, Powell’s 7pm

Words of the Month

rip-off (n):”an act of fraud, a swindle,” 1969, from verbal phrase rip off “to steal or rob” (c. 1967) in African-American vernacular, from rip (v.) + off (adv.). Rip was prison slang for “to steal” since 1904, and was also used in this sense in 12th C. The specific meaning “an exploitative imitation” is from 1971, also “a plagiarism.” Related: Ripped-off. (etymonline)

Other Forms of Entertainment

‘Columbo’ is the Ultimate ‘Rich People are Weird’ Show

Guns have been in motion pictures since the start. ‘Rust’ is only the latest to have a gun death

Over 100 Pieces of Rare James Bond Film Memorabilia Can Now Be Yours for $450,000

Take a lurid look at LA noir

J.J. Abrams, Warner Bros. Team for Adaptation of Stephen King Crime Novel ‘Billy Summers’

Marcel Proust on What Writing Is

Gregory Peck’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ Script Goes to Auction

‘Murder in Big Horn’ Directors on Why “Colonization Is the True Crime” in Their Docuseries

Harry Dean Stanton is the Hero of Every Noir

The story of Caril Ann Fugate and Charles Starkweather was painted as a teen couple on a murder spree but docuseries ‘The 12th Victim’ shows that wasn’t all (JB recommends)

A trailblazer who brought a Black woman’s voice to comics

Liam Neeson says his late wife Natasha Richardson refused to marry him if he played James Bond

60 years later, ‘The Boston Strangler’ podcast revisits the murders

The New Serial Podcast Is a Return to Their Roots. It’s Going to Make Listeners Angry.

Netflix’s Murdaugh Murders Team Say They’ve Uncovered New Crimes

Ray Liotta: An Oral History

The FBI’s Persecution of Sidney Poitier

Words of the Month

heist (v.): 1943 (implied in heisted; heister “shoplifter, thief” is from 1927), American English slang, probably a dialectal alteration of hoist (v.) “to lift” in its slang sense of “shoplift,” and/or its older British slang sense “to lift another on one’s shoulders to help him break in.” As a noun from 1930. (etymonline)

RIP

Jan. 31: Carin Goldberg, 69, Who Transformed Book and Album Cover Design, Dies

Feb. 1: Allan A. Ryan, Dogged Pursuer of Nazi Collaborators, Dies at 77

Feb. 9: Marianne Mantell, Who Helped Pave the Way for Audiobooks, Dies at 93

Feb. 15: Raquel Welch, Star of Fantastic Voyage, Lady in Cement, The Three Musketeers, and One Million Years B.C., Dies at 82

Feb. 17: Donald Spoto, Biographer of Hitchcock and Many More, Dies at 81

Feb. 17: Stella Stevens, ‘The Ballad of Cable Hogue,’ ‘Too Late Blues,’ ‘The Poseidon Adventure,’ and ‘Nutty Professor’ Actress, Dies at 84

Feb. 19: Richard Belzer, Extraordinarily Smart-Ass as a Comic, Author, and a TV Cop, Dies at 78

Feb. 20: Barbara Bosson, Emmy-Nominated Actress on ‘Hill Street Blues,’ Dies at 83

Feb. 22: Simone Segouin, French Resistance fighter, dies at 97

Feb. 23: John Macrae III, Eclectic Publisher and Rights Champion, Dies at 91

Feb. 25: Walter Mirisch, Former Academy President and ‘In the Heat of the Night’ Producer, Dies at 101

Words of the Month

pilfer (v.): “to steal in small quantities” (intrans.); “to steal or gain by petty theft” (trans.), 1540s, from pilfer (n.) “spoils, booty,” c. 1400, from Old French pelfre “booty, spoils” (11th C.), a word of unknown origin, possibly related to pelf. Related: Pilfered; pilfering. Pulfrour “a thief” is attested from mid-14th C., implying earlier use.

pelf (n.): late 14th C., “stolen goods, forfeited property,” from Anglo-French pelf, Old French pelfre “booty, spoils” (11th C.), a word of unknown origin.Meaning “money, property, riches,” with a pejorative or contemptuous overtone, also is recorded from late 14th C. It has no plural. (etymonline)

Links of Interest

Jan. 31: YouTube’s ‘Penis Enlargement’ Grifter Suffers Bloody Death in Thailand

Feb. 2: How a Champion Surfer Became a Notorious Jewel Thief and Murderer

Feb. 3: The Apache, the Irish Catholic Priest, and a 40-Year-Old Miscarriage of Justice

Feb. 3: Italian mobster, 16 years on the lam, is found working at a pizzeria

Feb. 3: “They just weren’t the kind of people for that”: The 1934 Smith Family Massacre in Demopolis, Alabama

Feb. 4: The Great Gatsby of Gold Took Their Millions—and Vanished

Feb. 8: What’s a Japanese Mobster to Do in Retirement? Join a Softball Team.

Feb. 10: ‘Furry little bandit’ causes destruction in Oklahoma Department of Libraries building

Feb. 13: Podcast sleuths hope remains in plastic bag will solve 50-year-old Swedish cold case

Feb. 14: Forensic study finds Chilean poet Pablo Neruda was poisoned

Feb. 15: Crime of the Centuries: Tomb raiders, crooked art dealers, and museum curators fed Michael Steinhardt’s addiction to antiquities. Many were also stolen.

Feb. 15: Ex-Mexico drug czar’s defense says accusers have ‘motives to lie’

Feb. 17: Who Corrupted a Top FBI Spyhunter?

Feb. 17: Spanish police nab art thieves, recover 100-year old Dali drawings

Feb. 18: How an Alleged Con Man Tore Apart One of the Nineties’ Biggest Bands

Feb. 19: As $1.6 million in rare photos vanished, the excuses piled up

Feb. 19: Guns, Grift, and Gore: The Life and Times of an Arms-Dealing Hustler

Feb. 22: The Unsettling History of Serial Killers in Colorado

Feb. 26: Elon Musk accuses media of racism after newspapers drop ‘Dilbert’ cartoon

Feb. 27: Hundreds of newspapers drop ‘Dilbert’ comic strip after racist tirade from creator Scott Adams

Feb. 27: The Con Artist and the American Dream

Words of the Month

shenanigan (n.): “nonsense; deceit, humbug,” 1855, American English slang, of uncertain origin. Earliest records of it are in California (San Francisco and Sacramento) [from that area’s Gold Rush? – eds]. Suggestions include Spanish chanada, a shortened form of charranada “trick, deceit;” or, less likely, German Schenigelei, peddler’s argot for “work, craft,” or the related German slang verb schinäglen. Another guess centers on Irish sionnach “fox,” and the form is perhaps conformed to an Irish surname. (etymonline)

What We’ve Been Up To

Amber

Round-up review of things I’ve loved watching/reading recently but are so popular they practically sell themselves!

First Up: The Glass Onion

The second installment in the Knives Out universe is absolutely awesome. Though I must admit, I was worried when I first started watching it. Very, very worried. All the cameos of well-known actors felt a bit gratuitous…but I’d looked forward to the movie for months — so I stuck with it, and boy, was my patients rewarded. The cameos enhance the feel of the billionaire jet set cast of suspects we are watching and make complete sense by the end of the movie. An end that I gotta say is one of the very best I’ve seen in a whodunnit…. since the original Knives Out movie.

Second: Desperation In Death by J.D. Robb

A page-turning, ripped-from-the-headlines thriller didn’t disappoint. Action packed from the first page to the last, if you’re looking for a good vacation read, you won’t go wrong with this installment. Though there is a trigger warning I must warn other readers about — the plot revolves around human trafficking and the sexual exploitation of women and young girls. While Robb does a good job of balancing the horror of the subject matter with the mystery (without getting overly graphic), if this is something that you struggle with, I’d skip this installment and wait for Encore In Death which is out now.

Third: The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels by India Holton

Jane Austen meets pirates meets magical flying houses — this is the best summary I can give. An amusing read full of action, swashbuckling, betrayal, and books, The Wisteria Society was a fun read. Though, if you’re well versed in steam-punk and fantasy, it’s not quite the groundbreaking book the New York Times made it out to be.

Lastly: Wednesday

A Netflix original that expands the Addams Family universe — is an exceptional show. Of course, all the traditional elements of an Addams Family story are present. Still, the writers have done a singular job of sprinkling them through the series and keeping them fresh (rather than simply regurgitating them in a cringe worthy fashion). Full of secrets, multiple mysteries, and interesting characters, this show is well worth your viewing time.

Fran

So, here’s the deal

I sometimes suffer from depression, the real deal, not just the blues or feeling down. If any of you follow Jenny Lawson, a/k/a The Bloggess, you know what I’m talking about: unable to move, almost literally, a deep fog, an endless circle of “why bother”, well, either you know or you don’t.

So I wasn’t reading because why bother, but I had to get out of bed and onto the couch because Lillian and Mazikeen insisted. Although it’s possible that Maz had ulterior motives.

Still, I wasn’t interested in much, although I did manage to lose myself in my writing, but that’s because I could think of plot pieces while doing physical therapy on my knee, which is healing better than expected, so there’s that.

But the point is, I was lethargic, so when Lillian turned on a Mexican series that’s on Netflix, I kinda shrugged and went with it.

It was great.

The series is based on books written by Paco Ignatio Taibo II, whom you might remember from our Bookshop days.

This is set in the 70’s, and it’s an homage to the classic noir stories. There is grit, there is backstabbing and double-dealing, there’s the possibility of romance, and there’s a lot of straight-up, laugh-out-loud humor. It’s captivating.

At first, I was shaking my head, thinking, “Oh no, it’s over the top and it’s just plain silly”, but it didn’t take me long to get hooked. Yeah, there are some wild things, but let’s face it, a lot of noir stories rely on head shaking moments.

Did Belascoaran lift me out of my depression? No. Only time can do that. But it helped. And it’s well worth your time, pinkie swear.

Movie Review: I know the critics have been nasty about Neil Jordan’s Marlowe, I enjoyed it. I would imagine most of the critics never read a Chandler book, much less the Benjamin Black (John Banville) novel on which the film was based (The Black-Eyed Blonde, now republished as a tie-in with the title of the movie, just to confuse everyone…). I’ve gotten the sense that they were expecting an ACTION movie, where as a 1940ish private eye movie was always one of plot, menace, femme fatales and a slow unraveling of whodunnit. They went in expecting a different movie and blamed the movie.

Marlowe unfolds like any good private eye novel – steadily, with dead ends and red herrings, thumps on the head and, of course, south-of-the border intrigue. While the book was a sequel, of sorts, to The Long Goodbye, the movie drops those connections to make it a stand-alone story and it functions well. Liam Neeson is a fine Marlowe [the 8th? – D. Powell, Bogart, R. Montgomery, Mitchum (twice), Gould, Garner, B. Powers (on HBO) before him] . Jessica Lange is startling as one of the blondes; watch her eyes during her lunch with Neeson. All of the acting is great, the faces and fashion spot on and, though not filmed in LA, Catalonia provides the warmth and colors to make you think you’re in that time.

Two carps: Marlowe is given a secretary, for some reason. Gittes and Spade had one, but Marlowe made enough to keep him in cigarettes, not employees, and Neeson’s fake hair color is a distraction, it looked spray painted. Marlowe can show gray, but dull brown was a mistake.

See Marlowe. Go in expecting a good, noirish private eye story and you’ll have a grand time. I did. And keep an eye and ear open for all of the sly references to crime movies from the past. I call ’em homages. The youngsters say Easter Eggs…

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Of the four other books about Watergate that I’ve read, one name kept cropping up as the writer to whom all others owe a great debt: Jim Hougan. His 1984 history of the affair, Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat, and the CIA was the first to provide a counter history to what everyone had been exposed: that the break-in, arrests, and it’s exposure was not the focus of the White House “plumbers”; rather, there was a CIA operation to gather intelligence and the plumbers efforts were sabotaged in order to hide that operation. Indeed, did the plumbers really know what the point was?

The book, whether you want to buy his arguments, is a fascinating and

detailed account of the burglaries and the oddities that have always surrounded them. If nothing else, he makes clear how far and deeply the CIA had penetrated DC. Case in point: John Paisley was a career-long CIA agent who worked in the counter-intelligence wing of the Company. He “died” under odd circumstances (some theorize that the body said to be his hid his defection to the Soviets) and one recent book, Howard Blum’s The Spy Who Knew too Much argues he was the Great Soviet Mole at the heart of the CIA. Hougan writes that Paisley was the CIA’s connection to the plumbers. No other Watergate history even lists Paisley in the index.

Besides the oddities of the burglaries, it has never been historically agreed to what exactly the June 17th break-in was to accomplish. Hougan has his theory and gives details to support it. Again, believe him or not, his story is worth the time. Watergate is another Great American Historical Mystery that just keeps giving.

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Once again, Mike Lawson has given us a smooth suspense novel, crackling with solid characters and a plot that has two major twists that are wholly unexpected. He’s also infused it with a poignancy that demands tears.

He’s also broken away from the “House” titles of earlier DeMarco books. Alligator Alley takes place mostly in Florida and has DeMarco and Emma trying to find out what happened to a Department of Justice worker, a young woman too eager to find out what the bad guys are up to. They’re asked by one of the most honored figures in DC to get the answers and Emma will stop at nothing to get them. DeMarco, of course, would rather be playing golf, but he adds important plans to their work proving he isn’t the dope he sounds to be.

And again, Mike ties the story to recent headlines with millions in Medicare fraud. Answers are found, the villains get what they deserve, but the cost is great, even if those paying the bill are at peace with it. That’s what is poignant and warrants the graveside tears.

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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

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.

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

January 2023

Book Stuff

An Exhibition Exalts the Book as a Bedrock of Cultural Memory

Smithsonian exhibit digs out the ‘nature’ in old books

These 5 Words Have Been Selected As 2022’s “Word Of The Year”

Napoleonic Conspiracy Theories, Unsociable Shabbiness, and More Occupational Hazards of the Second-Hand Book Trade

Woman’s Name and Doodles Found Hidden in 1,200-Year-Old Religious Manuscript

‘Join the club’: Stephen King, Margaret Atwood and more reassure debut author after lonely book launch

AI Bot ChatGPT Stuns Academics With Essay-Writing Skills.

The Baby Names Authors Chose for their Own Children

The Murky Path To Becoming a New York Times Best Seller

Want a Lesson in Hitchcockian Suspense? Look to Mr. Bean

Preserving Western Pulp fiction with Centuries of Western Dime Novels

Iconic Wizard Of Oz Prop Sells For Half A Million Dollars (don’t worry, some crime movie stuff sold, too. Take some time and look through all that was in the auction, it is astonishing and fun!)

Only four people have ever solved the puzzle contained in the pages of ‘Cain’s Jawbone.’ TikTok helped turn the obscure, 100-page British novel into a craze.

Words of the Month

fiddle-faddle: 1570s, “trifles” (n.); 1630s “busy oneself with trifles; talk nonsense” (v.), apparently a reduplication of obsolete faddle “to trifle,” or of fiddle in its contemptuous sense.

Serious Stuff

How Language Can Be Used to Destroy and Dominate, and How It Can Be Used to Remember and Reclaim

‘Shadow Libraries’ Are Moving Their Pirated Books to The Dark Web After Fed Crackdowns

‘Insufficient’ funds to provide free schoolbooks to all primary pupils, say publishers and booksellers

High-Ranking Prison Officer Aided a Neo-Nazi Gang Attack on Black Prisoners

*What’s More Important for This Town: A Library or a Police Station?

4 Indigenous Women Slain by Alleged Serial Killer But Cops Won’t Search for the Bodies

InfraGard, FBI Program for Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity, Breached by Hackers

Developers Found Graves in the Virginia Woods. Authorities Then Helped Erase the Historic Black Cemetery.

How Dallas homemaker Mary Ferrell became main collector of JFK assassination records

DEA seized enough fentanyl to kill every person in the U.S. in 2022

Censorship Terrorism

*Louisiana Launches Tip Line to Accuse Librarians of ‘Sexualizing Children’

A Threat Against Justice For Emmett Till Protesters Led To The Cancellation Of A Christmas Parade

A Fast-Growing Network of Conservative Groups Is Fueling a Surge in Book Bans

How Your Book Club Can Fight Against Books Bans and Censorship

Drag Queens Are Fearing For Their Lives As Right-Wing Extremist Attacks Intensify

J.D. Vance Is Coming for Your Porn–Watch Out

*Huntsville Public Library (TX) Privatized After Pride Display

‘A streak of extremism’: US book bans may increase in 2023

Words of the Month

drivel (v.): Old English dreflian “to slaver, slobber, run at the nose,” from Proto-Germanic *drab-, perhaps from a PIE *dher– (1) “to make muddy, darken.” Transferred meaning “to speak nonsense” is mid-14th C., driveling being characteristic of children, idiots, and dotards. Related: Driveling, drivelling.

drivel (n.): early 14th C., drevel “saliva, slaver,” from drivel (v.). Meaning “senseless twaddle, idiotic speech or writing” is by 1852.

Local Stuff

National forensic pathologist shortage slows autopsies in WA

Has the SS Pacific’s gold-laden wreck been found 150 years after it sank?

Major King County drug bust nets $10M worth of meth, fentanyl, heroin

Two Tacoma Power substations, one PSE facility vandalized Christmas Day, authorities say

Armed robberies at WA pot shops hit decade high

Odd Stuff

On this day in literary history, Anthony Trollope died of the giggles. (For real.)

The Darkness Within: 8 Novels About the Devil

AI Reveals the Most Human Parts of Writing

‘People think I’m stupid’: the story of the man who shot himself 192 times

Someone paid $95,000 for this pair of jeans recovered from 1857 shipwreck

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.).

SPECTRE

Amazon CEO says company won’t take down antisemitic film

Amazon Says It’ll Pay You $2 Per Month to Spy on Your Phone’s Internet Traffic

Amazon buyers beware: Scammers are targeting the bestseller badge

Amazon Agrees to Change Some Business Practices in EU Settlement

OSHA: Amazon failed to record some warehouse injuries

Amazon’s plastic packaging could circle the planet 800 times. Can it be stopped?

Amazon Has Conquered Christmas—but Its Reign May Be Ending

Amazon Investors Demand Answers About Its Cloud’s Human Rights record

Amazon Nightmare Is Reminiscent of the Dotcom Collapse

Amazon is ubiquitous. But it isn’t invincible anymore.

Words of the Month

fable (n.) c. 1300, “falsehood, fictitious narrative; a lie, pretense,” from Old French fable “story, fable, tale; drama, play, fiction; lie, falsehood” (12c.), 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”].

Biblio Stuff

When No One Turns Up To Neil Gaiman Or Stephen King’s Book Signing

Thrilled and Intrigued: An Appreciation on Classic British Thrillers

A Foretaste of Culinary Cozy Mysteries

Martin Edwards on Murder in the Basement, A Pioneering Work of Suspense

How Edgar Allan Poe Reinvented American Literature – and Science Writing

Review: Louise Penny is beloved. Her latest novel reminds us why.

Interview: ‘Hillary and I were both broken women’: Louise Penny on writing a political thriller with Clinton

Louise Penny Wrote a No. 1 Best Seller During Her Year Off

Markus Dohle Steps Down as Penguin Random House CEO

Hundreds of authors give support to striking workers at HarperCollins

Saying Goodbye to Magic Realism

Legally bookish: Reese Witherspoon and the boom in celebrity book clubs

Nazi-Looted Beethoven Manuscript Returned to Original Owners

Evan S. Connell: The Man Who Mastered Minor Writing [if you like American history and haven’t read his Son of the Morning Star, treat yourself to it ~ JB]

RIP Bookforum

In the Era of iPhones, Is Rare Book Collecting an Increasingly Quixotic Mission?

Signed, Sealed, But Not Always Delivered: The Lost Art of Letterlocking

Ancient grammatical puzzle solved after 2,500 years

PEN America Town Hall Asks “Do Publishers Have a Moral Obligation to Diversify Literature?”

Elise By Olsen Delves Into the Extraordinary Print Archive of Vince Aletti

*Librarian Archives All of the Things People Leave Behind in Books

Kate and Greg Mosse look back: ‘The shirt I’m Wearing Has Since Been Made Illegal’

*One of the World’s Most Beautiful Libraries Was Born Out of Tragedy

Barnes & Noble Opening 30 Stores in 2023, Leading Big Real Estate Wave

*The Most Borrowed Books from New York Public Library in 2022

What’s it like to own a bookstore in our digitized age?

Author Events

Jan. 5: Gerald Elias presents ‘Murder at the Royal Albert’, Third Place/LFP, 7pm

Jan. 12: Seanan McGuire in Conversation With Amanda Cherry, Powell’s, 7pm

Other Forms of Entertainment

How Hollywood Made J. Edgar Hoover and the F.B.I. Into the Mythical “G-Men”

“True Detective” Season Two: An Unholy Mess, or Better Than You Remember?

Courtroom Drama: New Legal Battle Over ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’

Matt Damon, Casey Affleck to Star in Doug Liman’s ‘The Instigators’

Canceled “Man Of Steel 2” Sequel Would Have Had The Best Superman Villain

“Watchmen” Prequel On The Way From HBO?

Bernie Madoff’s Historic Ponzi Scheme Focus of Upcoming Netflix Docuseries

Watch Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux Accidentally Topple the Presidency in ‘White House Plumbers’ Trailer

10 Best Neo-Noirs Of The 1980s

What the Mall Scene in ‘Jackie Brown’ Can Teach Us About Tarantino’s Quietest Film

Veronica Lake’s Long Escape: A Deeply Sad Page from Hollywood History

Golden Age Whodunits Are Back—and a Sign of Our Times

Why ‘Jackie Brown’ Remains Tarantino’s Coolest Movie

‘The Pale Blue Eye’ is a truly macabre military murder mystery movie

Tom Cruise’s Only Directing Credit Is A Bizarre ’90s Noir Short

Why Clint Eastwood Never Considered Another Song For Play Misty For Me

Words of the Month

falderol (n.): also falderal, falderall, folderol, etc., 18th C. nonsense words from refrains of songs; meaning “gewgaw, trifle” is attested from 1820.

RIP

Dec. 5: David Lifton, respected JFK assassination researcher, dead at 83

Dec. 12: Stuart Margolin, Director, Emmy-Winning Actor on ‘The Rockford Files,’ Dies at 82

Dec. 29: Oscar White Muscarella, Sherlock Holmes-quoting archaeologist who exposed looted artifacts and fakes, dies at 91

Links of Interest

Dec. 2: Japanese Cannibal Who Got Away With Eating and Raping a Dutch Woman Is Dead

Dec. 5: ‘Torso Killer’ admits killing 5 women decades ago near NYC

Dec. 7: DOJ watchdog finds missteps by prison officials ahead of Whitey Bulger’s killing

Dec. 7: Man Who Mysteriously Vanished Turns Up Dead a Decade Later Under New Name

Dec. 8: Philadelphia police identify body of ‘boy in the box’ after 66 years

Dec. 9: Georgia girl, 12, killed by father after family court grants him custody

Dec. 10: How Did ‘the Father of the Western’ Die on William Randolph Hearst’s Yacht?

Dec. 11: One of Britain’s most respected art dealers, who has supplied the British Museum, must repay £4 million after selling fake ‘ancient’ sculptures to sheik friend of the Royals

Dec. 13: A DEA agent tracked the source of fentanyl in Mormon country — a Mexican cartel

Dec. 13: Unassuming N.H. Craft Shop Owner Helped Run Sprawling Russian Spy Ring: Feds

Dec. 13: Chinese Police Bust Massive $1.7 billion Crypto Money Laundering Ring

Dec. 13: Lawmakers introduce bill to ban TikTok in US

Dec. 16: Glenda Cleveland – How She Tried To Stop Jeffrey Dahmer

Dec. 17: A Gruesome Mutilation. A Global Manhunt. Inside One of the Most Twisted Crimes Ever

Dec. 17: He Googled ‘How to Get Away With Murder’—Then Wife Vanished

Dec. 21: Hackers Swatted Victims and Taunted Police Through Ring Doorbell Cameras

Dec. 21: The US Is Trying to Take Down the Family Behind the Notorious Gulf Cartel

Dec. 21: Botched Executions Aren’t New—but Americans Finally Seem to Be Noticing Them

Dec. 23: GirlsDoPorn Founder and FBI Most Wanted Fugitive Arrested in Spain

Dec. 23: Retiree Accused of Offing Her Boyfriend With Toxic Milkshake

Dec. 24: Russians Hacked JFK Airport Taxi Dispatch in Line-Skipping Scheme

Dec. 27: How America’s Biggest Heist, the Great Brinks Robbery, Fell Apart

Dec. 30: Britain backed plan to kill Osama Bin Laden nine months before 9/11

Words of the Month

twaddle (n.): “silly talk, prosy nonsense,” 1782, probably from twattle (1550s), of obscure origin.

What We’ve Been Up To

Amber

Mia P. Manansala – Blackmail and Bibingka

The third installment in the Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery series finds Lila in a much better head space. Both the Brew-Ha Cafe and her personal life are starting to take off in extremely happy directions. (If you hear nerve-jangling music at the end of the sentence, there’s a reason.) On the other hand, her family life has hit a rather large speed bump — in the form of her cousin, Tita Rosie’s son, Ronnie. The teenage ne’er-do-well has returned home, still carrying all the emotional baggage he left with, to start a new business with some college chums. This powder keg of past resentment blows when Ronnie’s primary investor is poisoned, and he becomes a suspect in her murder….and Lila feels duty-bound to snoop despite Ronnie’s insistence she stays out of his affairs.

Blackmail and Bibingka is an excellent read! With just a fringe of the winter holiday season on display and a well fused food motif, neither theme ever threatens to overwhelm the book’s main plot. Blackmail and Bibingka is a thoroughly engaging mystery I enjoyed reading, as it’s been quite a while since I’ve seen poison other than arsenic, cyanide, or thallium used as a murder weapon.

A Note From The Office of Fair Warning: Our author also deftly fuses genuine family tensions and resentments in ways that push the plot forward rather than stopping it cold, which isn’t an easy feat. But they could prove a tad uncomfortable for readers who’ve dealt with similar situations.

That said, I really can’t say enough nice things about this book. Technically speaking, you don’t need to read the first two books in order to understand what’s going on in Blackmail and Bibingka — but you should just because they are both awesome reads!

Fran

What Goes Around

Back in 2020, when we were all locked down and feeling grumpy, John Connolly helped ease us through the time with a serialized story that he released weekly (if I recall properly) to keep us alert and giving us something to look forward to. He called it “The Sisters Strange”, and oh my, they certainly were.

But not everyone who loves John’s work gets his newsletter, so he decided to flesh the story out a bit and put it into a book called The Furies. Because “The Sisters Strange” was more a novella than a novel, he added another story, “The Furies”, and the two of those stories comprise the book, The Furies.

During my knee replacement recovery, I was basically locked down again, so I jumped into The Furies with wild abandon. It was good to meet up with the Sisters Strange again — well, as good as meeting them can be, what with their troubles and all — and it certainly took me away from the required exercising.

Jumping into “The Furies”, I was once again reminded why John Connolly is so good at writing creepy stuff. He picks up on our collective awareness and turns it sideways. What he writes is absolutely relatable, but also just odd enough to hold you hostage.

But it’s not just that. John has created some amazing recurring characters, and there’s a special place in my heart for the Fulci brothers, as I know is true of many of you. There’s something endearing about two bear sized men with anger issues who completely adore their mother that just makes you smile. And be glad you don’t have to repair what they break.

John knows this, so with this book, he included a little something extra, if you ordered at the right time from the right place, and I did. So I’m the proud owner of a Fulci tote bag.

Don’t look too closely at the number of fingers on the fist. *grin* Otherwise their slogan will come into play.

If you haven’t read John Connolly, what the hell are you waiting for? Start with Every Dead Thing and I promise, you’ll just keep going. If you have, but you didn’t pick up The Furies because you already read “The Sisters Strange”, it’s time to rectify that oversight because the sisters are stranger than you remember, and the furies set free in the other story will haunt you. Best get to it!

I don’t have a book to write up so I’m recommending a few of songs that I’ve fallen for this year. A couple of years ago when Mom was dying, I asked my cousin Tom to recommend a radio station I could tap into when in the car running errands. He said “The Bridge, 90.9”. It’s the same type of station as KEXP here in Seattle – independent, listener supported – but I like their music more. Why? – just good rock, maybe not so “experimental” as just joyful. I listen to it everyday on some computer-like device. (Be Warned~ it’s out of KC, so all the ads and concert announcements are from there.) Monday’s are great as, mid-day, it’s all new music, I can’t link the songs themselves but I’ll like the youtube videos. In no particular order:

Samia’s “Mad at Me” (my latest obsession)

Hiding is easy, it’s like a daydream/You can be nowhere all the time
Hurts to be somewhere, ’cause you gotta stay there
After you say what’s on your mind

Aida Victoria’s “Ain’t Killed Me Yet”

She turned this house into a tomb/Ghosts rattle in every room, they’re doin’ their best
But they ain’t killed me yet

The National’s “Weird Goodbyes”

What was I even leaving for/I keep going back and forth
I think now I’m about to see/Didn’t know how sad it’d be

Panda Bear & Sonic Boom’s “Edge of the Edge” (for some reason, it reminds me of Beach Boys…)

One taste to break the fall/One wave to take us all to the shore
Can’t say it’s what you bargained for/It’s forever at the push of a button

Talk’s “Run Away to Mars”

What If I run away to Mars?/Would you find me in the stars? Would you miss me in the end/If I run out of oxygen When I run away to Mars

LCD Soundsystem’s “new body rhumba” (great dance tune!)

Yeah I try not to hide it/I try not to buy it
But you can’t just sit on the fence/It’s true

And, finally, my anthem for the year:

Paramour’s “This is Why”

This is why I don’t leave the house/You say the coast is clear
But you won’t catch me out/Oh, why? This is why

BUY SMALL ~ SUPPORT SMALL

Like what we do? Spread the Word!

And, of course…

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!

December 2022

Words of the Month

maundered (v): talked in a rambling, foolish, or meaningless way.

Interesting Stuff

Today in AWWWW: Reading out loud to dogs improves literacy in kids.

Professional cornhole world rocked by ‘BagGate’ cheating scandal

Jazz the dog helps victims of crime as they navigate court system

Milwaukee Police Will Stop Using Gun That Keeps Going Off by Mistake

There Are Still Codes Throughout Ancient Roman Literature

How Well Do You Know Sherlock’s London?

What I’ve Learned: John Grisham

On Bonding With Damaged Books

Jack Ruby’s wallet, JFK’s rocking chair will go up for sale in vast 1963 auction

A Detroit woman is on a mission to promote literacy with this erotic ABC for adults

This 2,000-Year-Old Inscription Changes Our Understanding of the Basque Language

‘Wizard of Oz’ Hourglass, Chris Evans’ ‘Avengers: Endgame’ Shield Go Up for Auction (oh man does JB want that shield!!

Hand-Colored ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ Strip Sells for $480,000

Favorite Children’s Book ‘Goodnight Moon’ Comes To Life With New Immersive Experience — Here’s Where To See It

Serious Stuff

37 governments band together against ransomware

Feds Seize One of the Largest Sites for Pirated Books and Articles, Z-Library

}The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

}Autonomous Vehicles Join the List of US National Security Threats

}Opinion | Why artificial intelligence is now a primary concern for Henry Kissinger

A Cartel Used Armed Drones and a Plane to Bomb Police

Judge blocks Penguin Random House-Simon & Schuster merger

Paramount scraps $2.2bn sale of Simon & Schuster publishing to Penguin

Opinion: Sam Bankman-Fried doesn’t read. That tells us everything.

“Slasher Mary”: A Brief Introduction To Political Vandalism In Museums

Censorship Terrorism

Tulsa Donut Shop Hit with Molotov Cocktail After Hosting Drag Show

The Right-Wing Mothers Fuelling the School-Board Wars

To make matters worse, an iconic L.A. bookstore was targeted by arsonists this weekend.

Help! I’m a Librarian. Local Conservatives Think I’m an Ally in Their Book Wars

Why Read a Book When You Can Ban It Instead? Inside Florida’s Clay County School District

Jamestown Library Defunded (Again) Over LGBTQ Books, Will Likely Close

A Small Town Librarian Spoke Against Censorship. Then the Dark Money Came for Her

It Only Takes One Parent to Get All The Graphic Novels Removed From a School Library

Local Stuff

Husband of ‘Lady of the Dunes’ killed in Provincetown in 1974 was also suspected of Seattle double slaying in 1960

10 bookseller-approved giftable books this holiday season

Phillip Margolin on writing “a novel that contained every cliché from the mysteries of the Golden Age”

Vancouver playwright wins Governor General’s Literary Award

Beautiful books are important historical records of Northwest Coastal art

Ruth Hayler, longtime programmer for Seattle moviehouses and SIFF, dies at 74

Oregon senator’s fiery words test free speech limits

WA attorney general seeks $1.5M to combat organized retail crime

Words of the Month

sesquipedalian (adj): a word with many syllables; to use big words habitually

Odd Stuff

Are Chemicals From Dead Bodies Oozing Into Tap Water?

Serial Killer John Wayne Gacy’s clown painting sells for $10k at spooky auction

Why is Everyone Fighting Over the Skull of ‘Brigand Villella’?

El Chapo’s Hometown Is Building a Narco Museum

‘George Kaplan’ Based On Hitchcock Character Opens At New Ohio Theatre

Oldest known sentence written in first alphabet discovered – on a head-lice comb

Delphi Murder Suspect Says He’s Flabbergasted by ‘Expensive’ Private Attorney Fees

FAMOUS ARTIST DIES PENNILESS AND ALL ALONE: The Met Museum’s Fascinating Archive of Artists’ Death Notices

Michael Lewis is writing a book about crypto hamburglar Sam Bankman-Fried, who doesn’t read books.

Lit Hub officially endorses “Goblin mode” as Oxford’s Word of the Year.

Gaslighting: Merriam-Webster picks its word of the year

Scrabble: The Last Real American Dictionary

The Fake Scorsese Film You Haven’t Seen. Or Have You? Tumblr is obsessed with the mafia film “Goncharov.” The problem is it isn’t real.

How Leonardo’s “Monstrous” Drawings Inspired Modern Caricature

Ex-Mobsters Can’t Escape Their Criminal History — So They Promote It on YouTube

Emperor Charles V’s secret code cracked after five centuries

Gold coin proves ‘fake’ Roman emperor was real

Surrounded by Beauty – Can an Object Ask you to Commit a Crime?

Words of the Month

sedulous (adj): diligent in application or attention; persevering; assiduous; persistently or carefully maintained

SPECTRE

Amazon Drivers Are Still Peeing in Bottles

A Drug Cartel Is ‘Selling’ Lawn Decorations on Amazon to Hide Their Meth Shipments

Amazon plans to invest $1 billion a year in movies for theaters

It’s not your imagination: Shopping on Amazon has gotten worse

Words of the Month

tergiversation (n): The act of abandoning something or someone, of changing sides; desertion; betrayal; to change repeatedly one’s attitude or opinions with respect to a cause, subject, etc

Awards

2022 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction

Actor wins 2022 Bruntwood Prize for debut play

Book Stuff

Judge blocks Penguin Random House-Simon & Schuster merger

A $10 million gift to the Library of Congress brings a new exhibition space

Denby Fawcett: We Should Support Independent Bookstores. They Open New Worlds To Us

Parliamentary report calls for government to support and modernise libraries

On Ed Lacy’s Room to Swing and Early Representation of Black Sleuths in Crime Fiction

My First Thriller: S.A. Cosby

Simenon in America

Megan Abbott on Writing for the Reader

The Unspoken Criminality of the Female PI

What is Roman Noir? A Brief History of the Genre

The Story of a Cheat Deserves to be Remembered

HarperCollins union goes on strike over wages and benefits, diversity policy and union protection

8 Great Thrillers with Effective Twists

The Struggle to Unearth the World’s First Author

Noir Detective Comic Books Are In A Great Place

Anthony Horowitz calls for investment in school libraries as he receives CBE

Fans aren’t happy about their $600 autopen-signed copies of Bob Dylan’s new book.

To find great female novelists, stop looking in Jane Austen’s shadow

For Emily Dickinson’s Birthday, Visit Her New England Home

Types Of Customers You Find In Bookstores

The Art of the Cozy Mystery: Six Cozy Mysteries Featuring an Art Theme

The world’s most extraordinary libraries

Is Mick Herron the Best Spy Novelist of His Generation?

John le Carré’s Letters Show the Author at His Witty, Erudite and Pugilistic Best

Washington Post: The 12 best thriller and mystery novels of 2022

Recently discovered Wind in the Willows illustration to be sold at auction

Author Events (In Person)

Dec. 9: John Straley presents Blown by the Same Wind, Third Place/Ravenna 7pm

Words of the Month

depauperate (adj): lacking a variety of species, or enough of them; badly developed

007

Spectre’s Original Story Brought Back Craig’s Best James Bond Plot

James Bond exhibit features 25 cars from 007 movies

PPK Rubber Band Gun

After acquiring James Bond, Amazon wants to spend over $1 billion on theatrical release movies every year, sources say

Aaron Taylor-Johnson May Be The Frontrunner To Play The Next James Bond

[ There’s the Marvel Universe, the Star Wars Universe, and any number of other Universes – why then isn’t there be a “00” Universe? There are so many actors who could be a great 00, whether they are Bond or not, so why can’t there be other 00 movies in between Bond? Why can’t Lashan Lynch have her own 00 movie, or Tom Hardy, Regé-Jean Page, Charlize Theron, Henry Cavill?? Sorry, but Idris Elba is now too old, but he’d make a great M. I don’t think other 00 movies would dilute the brand. If anything, it’d enlarge the brand. It appears that there will be room as we’re not likely to get any more Bourne movies and how many more Mission:Impossibles does Tom have left before one of the magnificent stunts kills him? I assume there are nine OOs: 001-009. Take out 007 and that leaves EIGHT other 00s open for their own movies. I listed five actors and it’d be pretty easy to add three more. Besides, we have to wait too damn long between Bonds! – JB]

Other Forms of Entertainment

[Somehow, we think we missed including it in the Sept. newzine!] The 80 Greatest Con Artists in Movies and TV, Ranked

‘The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’ Sequel Flopped After Dropping Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig

Mean, moody and magnificent: film noir studio portraits – in pictures

And then there were more: Knives Out, Agatha Christie and nonstop murder mystery boom

Hollywood Is Trying to Remake Escape From New York Again

The Best Cars in the History of Fictional Detectives

14 Horror Noirs To Watch If You Loved Angel Heart

TV’s True Crime Obsession Is Reaching a Tipping Point

Revisiting a movie that told the story of a fixer in South Central LA, with a Marvin Gaye score that changed the game.

Libraries Are Launching Their Own Local Music Streaming Platforms

Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s sister has a romance adaptation and streaming company called Passionflix.

A Beginner’s Guide to Identifying Movie MacGuffins

Harrison Ford Will Be De-Aged to Fight Nazis in ‘Indy 5’ (don’t worry, only for a flashback scene, not the entire movie)

‘Narcos’ Revenue Split Battle Between Executive Producers Settles

Agatha Christie’s ‘The Mousetrap’ to Debut on Broadway in 2023

Alan Rickman Almost Turned Down Die Hard But One Thing About The Script Changed His Mind

Walter Mosley on Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet

>“Three Pines” Puts a Darker Lens on Louise Penny’s Series

>Alfred Molina Thinks He May Have Found the Best Role of His Career

How accurately does ‘Alaska Daily’ portray journalists and Alaska Natives? We asked some journalists.

Words of the Month

friable (adj): easily reduced to powder, fragile and easy to crumble

RIP

Nov. 1: Julie Powell, Food Writer Known for ‘Julie & Julia,’ Dies at 49

Nov. 3: Andrew Prine, Actor in Westerns Including ‘Chisum’ and ‘Wide Country,’ [tied to infamous unsolved Hollywood homicide] Dies at 86

Nov. 3: George Booth, whose cartoon dogs became a New Yorker staple, die s at 96

Nov. 9: Paul Schrade dies; union leader injured in RFK assassination

Nov. 7: Ernie Lazar, Who Trawled for Secret Government Documents, Dies at 77

Nov. 11: Kevin Conroy, Longtime Voice of Batman, Dies at 66

Nov. 16: Robert Clary, Corporal LeBeau on ‘Hogan’s Heroes,’ Dies at 96

Nov. 19: Sci-fi Novelist Greg Bear Has Passed Away

Nov. 29: Clarence Gilyard, ‘Walker, Texas Ranger,’ and ‘Die Hard’ Actor, Dies at 66

Nov. 30: Christine McVie, Keyboardist and Singer for Fleetwood Mac, Dead at 79 (not mystery related – other than how they created that incredible music through all of their internal chaos – but it seemed to be a great omission to leave her off the list)

Words of the Month

isohyet (n): a line drawn on a map connecting points having equal rainfall at a certain time or for a stated period.

Links of Interest

Nov. 1: Amanda Knox Media Circus Hits Peak Weird on 15th Anniversary of Murder

Nov. 2: US authorities bust catalytic converter theft ring that raked in over $545m

Nov. 4: A Woman Accidentally Killed Her Rich Husband In The ’50s. A New Book Uncovers What Came Next

Nov. 4: Boston’s Combat Zone: Why Two Authors Were Drawn to the Same 45 Year-Old Crime

Nov. 7: ‘It’s him’: Lord Lucan hunt continues 48 years after nanny murder

Nov. 7: ‘Era-defining scandal’: Ireland revisits ‘Gubu’ murders 40 years on

Nov. 7: Feds Seize Over $1 Billion in Crypto Originally Stolen from Dark Web Drug Marketplace Silk Road

Nov. 9: The Macho Theater of Spies for Hire

Nov. 15: The Truth About Snitching Our legal system is intensely reliant on informants and the unregulated, mostly unknown deals that guide them into an ever-more dangerous life.

Nov. 15: First “Star Trek” comic book sells for record $46,500

Nov. 16: Shakespeare portrait said to be only one made in his lifetime on sale for £10m

Nov. 16: How ‘Dexter-inspired’ Delhi murderer was tracked down by victim’s friend

Nov. 20: He wiped out his entire family — and changed California criminal law forever

Nov. 20: Bob Dylan’s teenage love letters sell for over $650,000 at auction

Nov. 21: Book review ~ J. Edgar Hoover, Public Enemy No. 1

Nov. 22: How wild was this city near Miami? Check out the ‘sin strip’ and the steakhouse mob hit

Nov. 22: An iCloud Feature Is Enabling a $65 Million Scam, New Research Says

Nov. 22: Richmond locals are not happy with a new Virginia Woolf statue

Nov. 22: French tax inspector killed during visit to antique dealer

Nov. 22: How a Forgery of a Forgery Began a Career in the Artistic Underworld

Nov. 22: Woman Who Flew 3,000 Miles for Online Date Killed, Allegedly for Her Organs

Nov. 23: Police Finally Arrested This 65-Year-Old Transnational ‘Drug Queen’

Nov. 25: Charles Darwin: Autographed document could fetch record price

Nov. 26: Grifter Boasts of Fraud ‘More Wild’ Than ‘Inventing Anna’

Nov. 26: The 100-Year Mystery of Missing Perfume Heiress Dorothy Arnold

Nov. 28: Brett Favre files motion to dismiss Mississippi welfare lawsuit

Words of the Month

scissile (adj): capable of being divided easily

What We’ve Been Up To

Amber

Sarah Addison Allen – Other Birds

I read Sarah Addison Allen’s Other Birds back in September, and I’ve struggled to figure out how to review it ever since then. Not because it’s terrible — but because I enjoyed it so very much. And the fact that Sarah Addison Allen’s style, magical realism, is done with such a deft hand, I don’t want to ruin the book for you!

What can I tell you?

Well, there’s a peculiar death, a series of strange occurrences unrelated to the four ghosts who also call Dellawisp home, and a cantankerous flock of birds flitting about the property. Add in the living human happenings in the small block of apartments, and you’ve got a riveting read!

Seriously, Sarah Addison Allen is one of my all-time favorite writers. Who, in fact, penned my all-time favorite novel, The Sugar Queen. In Other Birds, as with Allen’s other novels, she brushes up against several writing styles, like mystery and urban fantasy — which creates a story that’s more than a sum of its parts. (Or literary techniques in this case.)

Sitting here writing this review, I realized all the nice things I wish to say about this book boil down to this: I enjoyed every page of Other Birds. And I cannot wait to revisit the Dellawisp apartments and its inhabitants again and again.

Seriously, if you’re looking for a mysterious and lovely read this festive season, you cannot go wrong with Other Birds.

Fran

Out of the loop

There are a lot of things I miss about the shop – and I do keep dreaming about it (last night it was where Diva Dolls is/was) – but one of the things I really miss is being in the know about what’s going on.

So I had no idea that Thomas Perry‘s The Old Man was a series on Hulu. But then, I don’t have Hulu either. I’m becoming a hermit. Send cookies.

But in my lack of knowledge, there are delights to be had. You all know I’m a dedicated Thomas Perry fan, and I’d follow Jane Whitefield anywhere. When JB sent me a copy of The Old Man, I figured it’s because he knows what I love. Also he wanted to give me something to think about other than my knee, which is fine so far, thank you for asking.

The old man in question has been living his life quietly in Vermont, his dogs Carol and Dave keeping him company. He seems like a harmless older man, but obviously he’s not. Dan Chase has a past, and not your ordinary one, even when you think about thrillers. See, when Dan was stationed in Afghanistan, he saw something go wrong, and he tried to make it right.

Seems simple enough, except that by doing what he did, Dan ran counter to the US government’s wishes, so he became a fugitive. Now they’ve found him, or at least they think they have.

Yeah, that’s vague and generic, but Thomas Perry delivers an amazingly complex and twisted story. Dan Chase’s name isn’t Dan Chase, and he goes through several name changes throughout the book, but you never once lose track of who’s who. I promise you, that’s masterful writing.

And I love that I thought I knew how it was going to go, only to discover I was wrong. I love being wrong for all the right reasons!

I have no idea how the TV show plays out, and if someone has watched it and read the book, I’d love to hear from you. But in the meantime, definitely pick up The Old Man by Thomas Perry.

For years I’ve been meaning to read Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert. I’ve had enough time; it was published originally in 1986. Considering all of the dire drought news, especially concerning the Mississippi (you may recall I read a book by Rinker Buck about drifting down to New Orleans from Pennsylvania earlier this year which made the later drought stories more vivid), it was time to get a copy. And it is a startlingly majestic book.

Reisner covers the entire history of the US government fiddling with nature to move water from areas where it flowed freely to areas that were naturally arid, the infighting between departments to get the job, the pork-barrel spending to keep the projects moving, and the folly and damage caused by it all.

The worst of it is that Reisner writes about a future he hopes will not unfold, and his future is our present. So you get to see where much of our current problems start. He’s entirely caustic about it all, the politicians, the government actors, the developers, the big farmers, and the inability of them all to look ahead at what their actions will cause.

For us in the Northwest, there were the frightening plans to cull off a fair amount of the Columbia to send it to the Colorado River system (read California), as well as to divert much of the Klamath for the same purpose. If you’ve paid attention to the news of late, you may have read of a plan to start removing dams on the Kalamath, the Mississippi has begun to flow better as we head into Winter but it is still dangerously low, and the pie-eyed math that divvied up the Colorado River is coming back to bite back hard. Reisner explains all of that with harsh and infuriating clarity (How a 100-year-old miscalculation drained the Colorado River). From the LA Times on Nov. 25: As California droughts intensify, ecosystems and rural communities will bear the brunt

Another thing he refers to is the 100th Meridian. That’s the imaginary line on the continental US map that marks the climate divide between the humid east and arid west in North America. Well, for the last half dozen years there has been thought that this divide is shifting EAST. This has massive implications for the crops grown in the Great Plains, what we eat, the health of farms, the economics of food, and where people live. Again, when he wrote the book, is was just a fear – now, apparently, it is our reality.

Reisner is a wonderful writer, sprinkling his story with an impressive vocabulary. I kept a pen nearby to write down words I did not know on the back of a shop bookmark. The Words of the Month are all from his book.

coterminous (adj): having the same boundaries or extent in space, time, or meaning.

And if you do read it – I highly recommend that you order a copy of the trade paperback from your local independent bookseller – you’ll find the machinations of the big shots of LA to “acquire” more and more water familiar: it’s the plot of Chinatown.

BUY SMALL ~ SUPPORT SMALL

We Wish and Yours Peace and Happiness in this Season of Silliness, Sales, and Shindigs

October 2022

SEATTLE ANTIQUARIAN BOOKFAIR ~ October 8th & 9th You don’t have to buy but it’s great to look!

Floppy disks in Japan: Minister declares war on old-fashioned technology

A shipment of baby wipes turns out to be $11.8 million worth of cocaine

Bigfoot Believers Uncovered a Lost Manuscript About the ‘Soviet Sasquatch’

Today’s hero: the 82-year-old Egyptian man who has collected 15,000 books for his community.

Sorry, Batman, This Luxury Lifestyle Brand Is All About Bruce Wayne

Longest single-volume book in the world goes on sale – and is impossible to read (at 21,450-pages – – – )

Attention, phonies: a rare signed edition of The Catcher in the Rye is up for sale.

The Enduring Wisdom of ‘Goodnight Moon’

Words of the Month

lucubration (n): a piece of writing, typically a pedantic or over-elaborate one.

Serious Stuff

A new ransomware gang is starting to ramp up its operations — and its exploits focus on a programming language that makes it harder for researchers to crack.

Here Is the Manual for the Mass Surveillance Tool Cops Use to Track Phones

Facebook Engineers Admit They Don’t Know What They Do With Your Data

A Different Heatwave Warning: Online Hate—Like Violent Crime—Soars With High Temperatures, Study Suggests

Google and Oxford Scientists Publish Paper Claiming AI Will “Likely” Annihilate Humankind [Skynet, anyone??]

FBI tracked Aretha Franklin’s civil rights activism, declassified file shows

The Sinaloa Cartel Is Controlling Water in Drought-Stricken Mexico

A Hotter, More Violent World

Screaming in Secret: Dahlia Lithwick on the Women Who Work Within the Legal System

Incel Communities Are Reportedly Engaged in a ‘Brothers-in-Arms’ War Against Women

Louisiana’s Infamous Angola Prison Will Now Lock Up Children

New report reveals ‘devastating scale’ of harassment and discrimination in the music industry

Cybersecurity firm Mandiant uncovers sophisticated espionage campaign

Researchers Say the CIA’s Amateurish Websites Led to the Exposure of Critical Assets

Censorship

Oklahoma Wants to Revoke License of Teacher Who Shared ‘Books Unbanned’ QR Code

Teens Are Fighting Back Against LGBTQ Book Bans

SLJ Survey Shows That Censorship Will Have Long-Term Effect on School Libraries

A Lot More Censorship Is Coming to a School Near You

Arizona Zine Shop Counters Book Bans With Inclusive Offerings

Book Bans Impact Over 4 Million Students: PEN America’s Sobering New Report

Overwhelming Majority of American Voters Strongly Oppose Book Banning According to National Poll

A Colorado Library Board Has Voted to Ban Book Bans

Jenny Holzer Unveils Massive Outdoor Installation at the Rockefeller Center ~ Text-based artwork that comes to the aid of writers and journalists in the midst of rising censorship around the world.

How to beat a book ban: students, parents and librarians fight back

40 Years of Banned Book Week: The ‘dangerous’ books too powerful to read

City of Chicago and Chicago Public Library Declare Themselves Book Sanctuaries

More than 1,600 books banned during 2021-22 school year, report finds

Democrats introduce ‘book ban’ resolution amid nationwide censorship movement

Brooklyn’s library moves to slip books through red state bans

Pennsylvania school district accused of banning Girls Who Code book series

The Long and Gruesome History of the Battle Over American Textbooks

Canadian Right-Wing Book Banning Groups Don’t Know How School Boards Work

Words of the Month

caconym (n.) “a name rejected for linguistic reasons, bad nomenclature in botany or biology,” 1888, from caco- “bad, ill, poor” + -onym “name” (from PIE root *no-men- “name”). (etymonline)

Local Stuff

Why Seattle libraries had 130-plus closures this summer

New Black-owned Central District bookstore celebrates Black culture

‘Riverdale’ actor Ryan Grantham gets life in prison for killing his mother

High-level gangster vanishes while on parole in B.C.

Walls of Books fills the bookstore-shaped hole in the hearts of Issaquah readers

How a Powell’s Books outpost ended up in Condon, population 760

Odd Stuff

James Patterson’s ‘Blowback’ asks, ‘What if we elected a psychopath?’

Food Delivery Robot Casually Drives Under Police Tape, Through Active Crime Scene

Five Ways to Break Up, According to Michael Mann’s Films

The Mystery of the Headless Goats in the Chattahoochee

Words of the Month

threap (n): An argument or disagreement, often un-resolvable. (Says You!, #1016)

SPECTRE

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

Amazon’s eastern Oregon expansion sends carbon emissions soaring

California sues Amazon, alleging antitrust law violations

Speedreaders Lose, Authors Win in New Amazon Ebook Policy Change

Words of the Month.

opisthography (n.) “the practice of writing on the back of anything,” 1715, from Greek opisthographos “written on the back,” from graphos “writing” (from graphein“to write” (see -graphy) + opisthen “behind, from behind, at the back,” from opi, a variant of epi “on it, at it” (see epi-). (etymonline)

Awards

The Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize named 11 recipients this year, awarding a total of $1.1 million.

The Griffin Poetry Prize has created the largest international prize for a book of poetry.

Here are the finalists for the 2022 Kirkus Prize, one of the world’s richest literary awards

Here are the bookies’ odds for the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature

Words of the Month

scrawl (v.) From the 1610s, “write or draw awkwardly and untidily,” a word of uncertain origin, perhaps from a specific use of Middle English scrawlen “spread out the limbs, sprawl” (early 15c.), which might be an alteration of sprawlen (see sprawl (v.)) or crawl (v.). Some sources suggest a contraction of scrabble. Related: Scrawled; scrawling.

The noun in the sense of “piece of unskilled or inelegant writing” is by 1690s, from the verb; the meaning “bad style of handwriting” is by 1710. (etymonline)

Book Stuff

Books at One expands to Dublin; Murder One and Capital Crime launch; Colm Tóibín premiere

A Conservative Publisher Wants to Be the Answer to Liberal Children’s Books. There’s Just One Problem. “The books aren’t bad, necessarily. They’re just not for kids.”

Books newsletter: Proust in Dublin; Culture Night; Catholicism debate; Yeats sculpture unveiled

New UK PM Truss urged to invest in libraries and abolish tax on audiobooks

Is climate-change making it too hot for many of the nation’s libraries?

The Shopkeeper Sleuth: Cozy Mysteries Featuring Crime-Solving Business Owners

Impossible Murders In Crime Fiction

Deanna Raybourn: On Writers and (Characters) of a Certain Age

The New James Bond Novels Are Fun, Progressive, and Totally Thrilling

What Women Mystery Writers and Female Sleuths Owe to Nancy Drew

A publisher abruptly recalled the ‘2,000 Mules’ election denial book. NPR got a copy.

Laurie R. King On Returning to Her San Francisco Roots During Lockdown

Boerne book festival kicks off spooky season with monsters and mysteries

A Deep Dive Into the History of Bibliomysteries

The State of the Crime Novel: A Roundtable Discussion with Crime Authors – part 1, part 2

S. A. Cosby: Interview and Cover Reveal

A recent episode of NPR’s Marketplace, reported on the continuing difficulties publishers are having getting books manufactured

Tom Hanks announces ‘wildly ambitious’ first novel

**Fall Bookmarks Perfect for Leafing in Your Current Read**

10 Shadowy Meetings of Crime and the Occult

Horror Fiction In The Age of Covid: A Roundtable Discussion

The Unstoppable, Fearsome, Delicious Allure of the Witch

On Theda Bara and the Origins of the Vamp

Miss Christie!

Rhys Bowen: Miss Marple is Agatha Christie’s best character. A new book reminds us why.

Agatha Christie by Lucy Worsley review – in search of the elusive author

Author Events (in person)

Tues, Oct 18: Candace Robb signs her new Owen Archer, A Fox in the Fold: Third Place/Ravenna, 7pm

Other Forms of Entertainment

Library Sitcom ‘SHELVED’ Could Be The Show We Need

Indiana Jones 5: Is it really over for Harrison Ford as an action star?

Scenes from a Marriage: Watching the “Thin Man” Movies as a Set

James Bond Producers Are Focused on Figuring Out a Villain Before Casting the Next 007

Porfirio Rubirosa: the Dominican man who inspired James Bond

When Hollywood Was Punished for Its Anti-Nazism

Yes, There’s a Wonderful New ‘Fletch’ Movie Starring Jon Hamm. Not That You’d Know It Exists

8 True Crime Podcasts You Need to Listen to This Fall

The Many Crime Stories of Robert De Niro

Words of the Month

chirography (n.) “handwriting, the art of writing,” 1650s, from chiro– “the hand”+ –graphy “writing.” Chirograph “formal written legal document” is attested from late 13c. in Anglo-French, from Latin chirographum, from Greek kheirographia “written testimony.” Related: Chirographer; chirographic. (etymonline)

RIP

Sept. 3: Award-Winning Underground Comics Writer/Artist Diane Noomin Dies at 75

Sept. 4: Sterling Lord Dies – Literary Agent For Jack Kerouac’s ‘On The Road’ Was 102

Sept. 7: Best-selling horror writer Peter Straub has died at 79

Sept. 11: Spanish novelist Javier Marías dies in Madrid hospital aged 70

Sept. 12: NSA analyst jailed for life for selling US secrets to Soviets dies aged 80

Sept. 13: Ken Starr, the prosecutor on the Clinton Whitewater investigation, has died at 76

Sept. 14: Earl Silbert, first prosecutor in the Watergate case, dies at 86

Sept. 14: Irene Papas, celebrated Greek actress from ‘Guns of Navarone’, ‘Zorba’ to ‘Iphigenia,’ and ‘Z’, has died at 96

Sept. 16: Henry Silva, Bad Guy in ‘The Manchurian Candidate’ and Many Other Movies, Dies at 95

Sept. 17: Maximilian Lerner, Whose Espionage Skills Helped Win a War, Dies at 98

Sept. 19: Lily Renée Phillips, Pioneering Comic Book Artist, Dies at 101

Sept. 21: John Train, Paris Review Co-Founder and Cold War Operative, Dies at 94

Sept. 23: Wolf Hall author Hilary Mantel dies aged 70

Sept. 23: Louise Fletcher, Oscar Winner for ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,’ Dies at 88

Sept. 29: Leonard Cole, Who Detailed Secret Army Germ Tests, Dies at 89

Links of Interest

Sept. 1: The nation’s poorest state used welfare money to pay Brett Favre for speeches he never made

Sept. 1: A Gang Called Drug Rich Is Robbing Celebrities All Over Atlanta

Sept. 1: What Canada’s Largest Art Heist Reveals about the Art World’s Shady Side

Sept. 4: The Fiery Godmother Who Avenged Her Husband With 29 Bullets

Sept. 5: Man Headed to Prison for Dumping Toxic Pollution Into Ocean

Sept. 6: How Eliot Ness Wound Up Hunting a Serial Killer in Cleveland

Sept.7: Suspect Nabbed in Half-Century-Old Cold Case Killing of Maryland Cop

Sept.7: Police Arrest Woman Who Faked Her Own Kidnapping to Extort Her Mom—for the Fourth Time

Sept. 8: County Official’s DNA Found at Site of Vegas Journalist’s Grisly Slaying

Sept. 8: MAGA Pastor Settles After Being Accused of Scamming Old Lady

Sept. 8: How Murdered Journalist Jeff German’s Colleagues Hunted Down His Alleged Killer

Sept. 9: CT Scans Reveal Gnarly, 1,000-Year-Old Mummies Were Murdered

Sept. 13: Looted coin worth $1m returned to Israel after years-long hunt

Sept. 13: A Sensational Murder Trial in the Newly Founded New Yorker

$ept. 14: ‘Santa came today’: Brett Favre texts show his role in Mississippi welfare scandal

Sept: 14: Arnold Rothstein: New York’s First Criminal Genius

Sept. 14: Missing people, buried bones at center of Oklahoma mystery

Sept. 15: Was This Letter Written by Sherlock Holmes?

Sept. 15: He Killed a Stranger He Thought Was a Werewolf. A Judge Just Banned Him From Social Media

Sept. 1`6: The Treasures Within the World’s Greatest Wine Library

Sept. 16: What Do We Really Know About the History of the Printing Press?

Sept. 19: 4 Library Collections Filled With Culinary Treasures

Sept. 20: Adnan Syed: Conviction overturned in Serial podcast murder case

Sept. 20: U.S. charges ‘brazen’ theft of $250 million from pandemic food program

Sept. 20: Prosecutors allege an inside job. The target? Rare bourbon

Sept. 22: Can Science Solve the Mystery of the Concrete Book?

Sept. 22: How Leopold and Loeb Ended up with the Country’s Most Famous Lawyer

Sept. 24: How a suburban St. Louis detective broke a 30-year-old serial killer case wide open

$ept. 24: Brett Favre pressed for facility funding despite being told legality in question, court filing says

Sept. 25: Author makes case for most compelling Zodiac Killer suspect in decades

Sept. 26: One Man’s Search for the First Hebrew-Lettered Cookbook

$ept. 27: Brett Favre is the face of a scandal, but Mississippi’s issues go deeper

Sept. 28: Kandinsky painting returned to Jewish family as Netherlands shifts approach to looted art

Sept. 28: The Evils of Larry Ray: A Creepy Dad Who Started a Sex Cult at Sarah Lawrence College

Sept. 28: Hollywood-Beloved Espionage Author Ben MacIntyre on What Truly Motivates Spies

Sept. 28: RFK assassin Sirhan asks to go home to live ‘in peace’

$ept. 28: Brett Favre’s foundation, aimed at helping children and cancer patients, gave funds to USM athletics

Sept. 29: Man Pays $75 for Medieval Text That Could Be Worth $10,000

Sept. 30: The Lindisfarne Gospels: ‘everyone should see this show at least once’

Words of the Month

cacoethes (n.) “itch for doing something,” 1560s, from Latinized form of Greek kakoēthēs “ill-habit, wickedness, itch for doing (something),” from kakos “bad” (from PIE root *kakka- “to defecate”) + ēthē- “disposition, character” (see ethos). Most famously, in Juvenal’s insanabile scribendi cacoethes “incurable passion for writing.” (etymonline)

What We’ve Been Up To

Amber

Deanna Raybourn – Killers of a Certain Age

Ready to retire, four women (of a certain age) are treated to a boat cruise by their former employers as a reward for their exemplary service. A vacation which they enjoy right up until one of the group spots a former colleague on the same boat.

The only problem — Billie, Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie’s former job title: Assassin.

Deanna Rabourn’s tale is a rollercoaster ride of the first water! Blending together the librarians from Gunpowder Milkshake, the general premise of Burn Notice, and Lana’s origin story from Archer — you’ve now got an inkling of the wild ride between the covers of Killer’s of a Certain Age.

Seriously, I couldn’t put Killers of a Certain Age down.

I’d recommend this book to anyone who needs a fantastic, fast-paced read for the bath or a holiday. Seriously, I love how these women outwit, outmaneuver, and outshine their pursuers using experience their younger counterparts don’t yet possess…

Plus, it was just lovely to sit down for a few hours and read a book from cover to cover — especially when Raybourn penned such a satisfying ending!

Fran

Keep an open mind

I had just finished watching the series “Madam Secretary” when I picked up State of Terror. Now, if you were going to write a thriller involving the Secretary of State, and you wanted a fast-paced, well plotted book with intriguing characters, who would you have author it? Be fair, be honest, who knows their stuff?

Hillary Rodham Clinton knows the ins and outs of being Secretary of State. Whatever you may think of her, she knows her stuff.

Louise Penny has proved time and again that she can write a gripping novel filled with real people.

Together, they created State of Terror, and honestly, now is the time to read it.

I want to sit down and talk about this book with you face to face so you can see my enthusiasm. But it’s good that I can’t, because I’d give away spoilers. For our plot purposes here, let me just say that Ellen Adams was a harsh critic of now President Doug Williams during her media mogul days, so it was a huge surprise when he appointed her Secretary of State. Adams handed off her media empire to her daughter and accepted the position, where her first assignment failed miserably. Let’s just say this did not displease President Williams.

But when bus bombs happen in a couple of European cities, Adams and Williams have to work together to figure out where the next target is. One of Secretary Adams’ people in the Pakistan office gets a clue, and the race is on.

“The most amazing thing that has happened in my lifetime is neither putting a man on the moon nor Facebook having 2.8 billion monthly active users. It is that in the 75 years, 7 months, and 13 days since Nagasaki, a nuclear bomb has not been detonated.” – Tom Peters

The more I read this book, knowing HRC‘s insider knowledge of Washington politics and its back door dealings, combined with Louise Penny’s astonishing ability to put you right in the heart of the story, the more terrifying it became. And watching current news cycles both in the US and around the world, this book becomes more relevant every day. I had no idea.

Which is not to say it doesn’t have moments of levity. Some of the characters will jump right into your heart. Betsy Jameson, Secretary Adams’ good friend and counselor is one of them. She’s the “Mrs. Cleaver” below, because she looks so ordinary and friendly.

“Steve Kowalski, Ellen’s head of Diplomatic Security, a longtime veteran of the service, turned in the front seat to look at Mrs. Cleaver as she combined and conjugated words that should never, really, have conjugal relations. The ensuing progeny was both grotesque and hilarious, as she turned nouns into verbs, and verbs into something else entirely. It was a display of linguistic gymnastics the agent hadn’t thought possible. And he’d been a Marine.”

You’ll get chills, and it’s possible that your sleep will be disrupted by this novel – and remember, it is just a novel – and with good reason. The possibilities given here are far too plausible not to be considered, and when a power team like this presents it to you, you pay attention.

Also, it’s a great thriller! Trust me, you want to read State of Terror now.

I was thrilled to find that Rinker Buck had a new book coming out. The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey was one of the best books I read when it came out in 2016. I’ve given away at least a half-dozen copies. In it he builds a canastoga wagon and set off, powered by three mules, across the Oregon Trail. It is an outstanding book, jammed with history and interesting tidbits, and I was ready for a new adventure.

Life on the Mississippi: An Epic American Adventure mirrors that earlier book but this involves first building a flatboat – the sort first used to navigate the Father of Waters – and then float it from the start of the Ohio River and down to New Orleans. Nearly everyone he discusses this plan with tells him he’s going to die. They’re all quiet serious. Perhaps it is hubris, or his own native mule-headedness, but he plunges on. It’s a daunting plan but you know he survived ’cause you’re reading the book.

Along the way you accumulate a flowing history of how the commerce and settlement of the country was enhanced by European-Americans moving West and following the waters. Of course, the current river is nothing like the unfettered highway of 200 years ago – just as the Oregon Trail no longer exists as it was when first blazzed. Buck is aghast at the garbage and trash (it often was, he says sadly, a “floating junkyard”). “And the river has been so contained and shaped so as to stay within it’s bounds that is in no way as wild as it once once. That’s not to say it isn’t dangerous; big storms along any of the rivers that feed it can make it swell and churn, and the commercial traffic is astonishing. Then, too, there are the weekend fools.

Like the junk that float by, so too does the awful history of our country – Buck does not shy from explaining the ways the waters helped to decimate the natives that had ruled and helped to spread slavery further into the landscape. Truly, life on the Mississippi is both a grand tale of human progress corrupted because of the costs that it charges on all who used it.

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

All Haunting is Regret

Don’t worry if you start Hell and Back and can’t figure out what is going on. Neither can Walt. Craig Johnson puts all of us – readers and characters – in a place that defies explanation and populates it with people who can’t possibly there. In fact, there are so many people from Walt’s past that I stopped reading the new book and re-read the previously three and it helped. It is a book overflowing with mystery and mysticism. It is a book unlike any of the previous Longmires, yet is is easily experienced as another in a long line of Absaroka County stories that are unique and comforting. Because at the center is Walt Longmire and he is trustworthy to all.

“Words are important, no matter what the language – they are perhaps one of the most powerful things we have. Words can preserve life or invoke death and should be handled with the same care as any deadly weapon.” Those are Virgil’s words, but the truth is Craig’s.

Boy Howdy…

=================================

Pulitzer-nominated investigative reporter Howard Blum‘s brand new book is astonishing. The Spy Who Knew Too Much: An Ex-CIA Officer’s Quest Through A Legacy of Betrayal begins with a boat sailing itself into the shore of the Chesapeake Bay and gets strange from there.

So starts an entertaining and convoluted story of the hunt for a Soviet mole in the CIA. Scads of books have been written about this hunt, the suspects, the battles over which Russian turncoat to believe, and the destruction and devastation the hunt caused to US intelligence. Blum’s book follows the investigation of Tennent “Pete” Bagley, a retired American spook who lived through that destruction and suffered from it. The circumstances of the mystery sail boat brings him back to the hunt and it unfolds like a well crafted whodunnit. Clues, red herrings, and blind alleys abound and, along the way, you see the Cold War games of both sides of the spy landscape.

If you’re interested in American history, Cold War history, CIA history – or even if you don’t think you are – pick up the books. It’s a great mystery, but all true.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Next up: a book that was released in Feb. but that I just discovered near the end of Sept – Fran has been yelling at me for years to read Joe Ide. So far I haven’t but I will now. To my knowledge, this is the third book the Chandler estate has engaged current authors to pen a new Philip Marlowe novel. First, in 2014, there was Benjamin (John Banville) Black’s The Black-Eyed Blonde, a follow-up to The Long Goodbye. In 2018, Only to Sleep by Lawrence Osbourne was released. In that, Marlowe is 72 and living in Mexico.

It’s one thing to search for new books by a favorite author. I’m not sure how you search for new books about a favorite character!

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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.

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…

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

May Day May Day ~ 2022

These green books are poisonous—and one may be on a shelf near you

Words of the Month

astonish (v.): c. 1300, astonien, “to stun, strike senseless,” from Old French estoner “to stun, daze, deafen, astound,” from Vulgar Latin *extonare, from Latin ex “out” (see ex-) + tonare “to thunder” (see thunder (n.)); so, literally “to leave someone thunderstruck.” The modern form (influenced by English verbs in -ish, such as distinguish, diminish) is attested from 1520s. The meaning “amaze, shock with wonder” is from 1610s. (etymonline)

Watch for this new documentary, “Hello, Bookstore”

Want to See the Weirdest of Wikipedia? Look No Further.

Debunking the Mechanical Turk Helped Set Edgar Allan Poe on the Path to Mystery Writing

Scottish university cruelly cancels poor, defenseless, under-read Jane Austen. England panics.

Turns out, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wrote an episode of Veronica Mars.

One of the greatest legacies left by “The Godfather” was basic instructions on how to make dinner

In California, you can borrow state park passes from your local library

Earliest evidence of Maya calendar found inside Guatemalan pyramid

Scientists find earliest record of aurora in ancient Chinese chronicle

A Mysterious Sarcophagus Discovered Beneath Notre-Dame Will Soon Be Opened

An Inside Look at Judith Jones’ First Notes for Julia Child

Rare proof sheets of first Harry Potter book expected to sell for £20,000

‘We got a kick out of it’: art forgers reveal secrets of paintings that fooled experts

Original Death of Superman Artwork Sells for Over Half a Million at Auction

Man Upset Over ‘Gay’ Superman Accused of Terrorizing ‘Woke’ Companies

‘Captain America Comics’ No. 1 Sells for $3.1M

1941 creation by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, first appearance of Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes and the Red Skull

Words of the Month

confound (v.) c. 1300, “to condemn, curse,” also “to destroy utterly;” from Anglo-French confoundre, Old French confondre (12th C.) “crush, ruin, disgrace, throw into disorder,” from Latin confundere “to confuse, jumble together, bring into disorder,” especially of the mind or senses, “disconcert, perplex,” properly “to pour, mingle, or mix together,” from assimilated form of com “together” (see con-) + fundere “to pour” (from nasalized form of PIE root *gheu- “to pour”).

From mid-14th C. as “to put to shame, disgrace.” The figurative sense of “confuse the mind, perplex” emerged in Latin, passed into French and thence to English by late 14th C. The Latin past participle confusus, meanwhile, became confused (q.v.). The meaning “treat or regard erroneously as identical” is from 1580s.

confounded (adj.) as an intensive execration, “odious, detestable, damned,” 1650s, past-participle adjective from confound in its older sense of “condemn, curse,” which came to be considered “a milder form of imprecation” [OED]. It is perhaps a euphemism for damned. The sense of “put to mental confusion” is recorded from mid-14th C. [etymonline]

Serious Stuff

:A Ukrainian book publisher is collecting donations to get books to refugee kids.

Waterstones launches scheme to raise £1m for Ukraine

:Russian Nobel-winning editor says he was attacked with red paint

:US Government Disrupts Botnet Controlled by Russian Government Hackers

:Tchaikovsky’s house destroyed by Russian army in north-east Ukraine

:Finnish customs seizes millions of dollars’ worth of artwork headed to Russia

:Finland Returns $46 M. In Detained Artwork to Russia, as France Continues To Hold Russian Paintings

:Navalny review – extraordinary documentary about the attempt to kill Putin’s rival

:Why Putin Is Itching to Get His Hands on This Ex-American Banker

>Book Banning Efforts Surged in 2021. These Titles Were the Most Targeted.

>Democrats must hit back hard at GOP book bans. Here’s a start

>More books are banned than ever before, as Congress takes on the issue [oh good, we’re saved...]

>New York Public Library makes banned books available for free

>The Brooklyn Public Library is giving eCards to teens nationwide to challenge book bans

>Banned Books Are About to Be the New Pussy Hats

>‘Out of touch’: children’s authors describe increasing censorship of books on diversity

>Censorship battles’ new frontier: Your public library

>Florida rejects 54 math books, claiming critical race theory appeared in some

>Oklahoma library cancels adult romance book club after board bans sexual content

>Oklahoma public library’s sexual content ban also cuts abuse prevention program and Pride displays

>Llano County faces federal lawsuit over censorship in library system

>California Man Arrested for Alleged Threats to ‘Shoot Up’ Merriam-Webster for Defining ‘Woman’

>GOP Tennessee lawmaker suggests burning inappropriate books

>Florida activist seeks to ban Bible from schools for being too ‘woke’

>Tennessee Republican says he would ‘burn’ books censored by bill

>Whitman’s ‘Leaves of Grass’ was banned — and cost him his federal job

The Female Spies Who Helped Win World War II

Two men arrested after targeting Secret Service agents in influence operation

Canadian government introduces legislation to force online giants to compensate news outlets

What We Get Dangerously Wrong About Psychopaths

A Driver Took Her Final Photo. Now She’s on a Long List of Missing Women.

–Son of novelist Paul Auster charged with homicide over baby daughter’s fatal overdose on heroin and fentanyl

–Son of acclaimed author Paul Auster dies of overdose while awaiting trial for daughter’s death

Newly formed board to review Civil Rights-era cold cases faces time crunch

Abraham Bolden: Ex-Secret Service agent pardoned by Biden [for a fuller account of Bolden’s case]

He caught the Golden State Killer, but the obsession took a toll [see signings!]

Report: Hackers Have Been Sexually Extorting Kids With Data Stolen From Tech Giants

Local Stuff

First missing, murdered indigenous alert system created in U.S.

Oregon Bandits on the Run With $1 Million in Stolen Fake Cash

Iowa survivalist who faked death to avoid trial arrested in Washington state

The Oregonian: ‘Threat Dictionary’ showcases power of words and how they’re used to spread, combat fear

Local author’s ‘Skid Road’ is a look at Seattle’s homeless past

Beachcomber stumbles across body partially buried in the sand near Lincoln City

Vancouver’s Black Dog Video closing for good

Melvin ‘Pete’ Mark’s heralded collection, featured at Oregon Historical Society, goes to auction

Lateness, Cursing, a Broken Sink: Starbucks Keeps Firing Pro-Union Employees

Very Oregonized Crimes ~An atlas of Oregon crime fiction.

My First Thriller: Robert Dugoni

The Oregon literary community is pissed off about poet Carl Adamshick’s $10,000 fellowship.

Words of the Month

confusion (n.) c. 1300, confusioun, “overthrow, ruin,” from Old French confusion “disorder, confusion, shame” (11th C.) and directly from Latin confusionem (nominative confusio) “a mingling, mixing, blending; confusion, disorder,” noun of action from past-participle stem of confundere “to pour together,” also “to confuse” (see confound).

Meaning “act of mingling together two or more things or notions properly separate” is from mid-14th C. Sense of “a putting to shame, perturbation of the mind” (a sort of mental “overthrow”) is from c. 1400 in English, while that of “mental perplexity, state of having indistinct ideas” is from 1590s. Meaning “state of being mixed together,” literally or figuratively, “a disorderly mingling” is from late 14th C.

confuse (v.) From the 1550s in a literal sense “mix or mingle things or ideas so as to render the elements indistinguishable;” from mid-18th C. in the active, figurative sense of “perplex the mind or ideas of, discomfit in mind or feeling,” but not in general use until after c. 1800. From 1862 as “erroneously regard as identical.” It took over these senses from its older doublet, confound (q.v.).

The past participle confused (q.v.) is attested much earlier, in Middle English (serving as an alternative past tense to confound), evidently an adaptation of Old French confus or Latin confusus, “with the native ppl. ending -ED and the present stem a much later inference from it” [OED]. (etymonline)

Odd Stuff

QAnon Surfer Who Killed His Kids Was Radicalized by Lizard People Conspiracies

In Minnie Mouse’s Dress, Right Wingers See a Penis — and a LGBTQ Conspiracy

David Mamet Comes Out as Right-Wing Culture Warrior, Claims Teachers Are Inclined to Pedophilia

Man Inspired by QAnon and Hopped Up on Caffeine Purposefully Derailed Train

Gender-Neutral Words Like ‘People’ and ‘Person’ Are Perceived as Male, Study Suggests

Shelf-promotion: the art of furnishing rooms with books you haven’t read

Goldfinger Onesie, anyone? Yours for only $545! Not the one from the movie…

Sinaloa Cartel Suspect Arrested in Colombia Thanks to His Date’s Facebook Pics

Twice Accused of Murder, This Writer Later Foresaw the Sinking of the Titanic

He Created the First Known Movie. Then He Vanished.

D.C. police arrest seven people found with dog taken in armed robbery

The Business of Fake Martian Dirt Is Blasting Off

A New Electronic Nose May Help Sniff Out Counterfeit Whiskey

The CIA’s ‘Torture Queen’ Is Now a Life Coach Hawking Beauty Products

Two Charged After Pet Duck Helps Solve Murder Mystery

The One American Serial Killer Whose Star Won’t Stop Rising

Walter Sickert review – serial killer, fantasist or self-hater? This hellish, brilliant show only leaves questions

Anglo-Saxon kings were mostly veggie but peasants treated them to huge barbecues, new study argues

Words of the Month

puzzle (v.) 1590s, pusle “bewilder, confound, perplex with difficult problems or questions,” possibly frequentative of pose (v.) in obsolete sense of “perplex” (compare nuzzle from nose). To puzzle (something) out “resolve or discover by long cogitation or careful investigation” is by 1781. Puzzling (adj.) “bewildering, perplexing,” is from the 1660s. Bepuzzle (v.), to “perplex,” from the 1590s, from be- + puzzle. (etymonline)

SPECTRE

Amazon plans to block words including “union,” “ethics,” and “restroom” from its employee chat app

Amazon Discussed Banning the Words “Fairness” and “Pay Raise”

>A Cinderella Story: How Staten Island Amazon Workers Won Against the Multi-Billion-Dollar Company

>He was fired by Amazon 2 years ago. Now he’s the force behind the company’s 1st union

>Amazon seeks to undo Staten Island union victory

Delivery company files class action on behalf of 2,500 Amazon-branded partners

Working at an Amazon Warehouse Got Even More Dangerous in 2021

Amazon CEO Blames New Workers for the Company’s High Injury Rate

How Barnes & Noble Went From Villain to Hero

What You Don’t Know About Amazon

From Amazon to Apple, tech giants turn to old-school union-busting

9 Ways to Imagine Jeff Bezos’ Wealth (a visual presentation, best viewed seated)

Words of the Month

boggle (v.): 1590s, “to start with fright (as a startled horse does), shy, take alarm,” from Middle English bugge “specter” (among other things, supposed to scare horses at night); see bug (n.); also compare bogey (n.1), boggart. The meaning ” hesitate, stop as if afraid to proceed in fear of unforeseen difficulties” is from 1630s; that of “confound, cause to hesitate” is from 1640s. As a noun from 1650s. Related: Boggled; boggling; boggler (from c. 1600 as “one who hesitates”). [etymonline]

Awards

Rabih Alameddine takes home the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

Announcing the winners of the 2022 Whiting Awards.

This year’s International Booker Prize shortlist is led by women

38th annual B.C. and Yukon Book Prizes shortlist announced

Vancouver poet makes short list for top Griffin poetry prize

The winner of this year’s Story Prize is Brandon Taylor’s Filthy Animals

The National Book Foundation has announced this year’s 5 Under 35

Here’s the very first Chowdhury Prize in Literature winner.

Lauren Groff has won the 2022 Joyce Carol Oates Prize.

Interview: Evelyn Araluen wins $60,000 Stella prize: ‘I was one paycheck away from complete poverty’

Women’s Prize for Literature Shortlist showcases global talent

Here are the winners of the 2022-2023 Rome Prize in literature.

Here are the winners of this year’s LA Times Book Prizes.

Book Stuff

Remembrance of Bookstores Past

‘Stolen’ Charles Darwin notebooks left on library floor in pink gift bag

The Library Ends Late Fees, and the Treasures Roll In

What Kind of Bookstore Browser Are You? We booksellers have seen it all.

Why a Bookstore’s Most Quiet Moments Are (Sometimes) Its Most Important

Tokyo’s Manuscript Writing Cafe won’t let you leave until you finish your novel

Why the Color Red Carries so Much Weight in Film and Literature

Gillian Flynn’s Anti-Heroines And The Dark Side of Feminism

Brandon Sanderson’s Record-Breaking Kickstarter Is the Exception, Not the Rule

Ebook Services Are Bringing Unhinged Conspiracy Books into Public Libraries

The book that sank on the Titanic and burned in the Blitz

Interview: Don Winslow ~ ‘I’m a cupcake. I certainly couldn’t be a leg-breaker’

Dope: On George Cain, New York City, and Blueschild Baby

A Treasured Mumbai Bookstore’s Colorful Makeover, and Other News

On the (Secret) Crime Novels of E.L. Doctorow

Lost Charlotte Brontë Manuscript Sells for $1.25 Million

Holocaust Survivors Ask Israel Museum to Return One-of-a-Kind Haggadah

The Charming Mid-Century Murder Mysteries and Rich Interior Life of Edith Howie

UK publishers take £6.7bn in sales as TikTok crazes fuel purchases

Waterstones launches scheme to raise £1m for Ukraine

‘I can’t leave all 10,000 to my son’: the bookshop selling one man’s lifetime collection

Interview: Stella Rimington: ‘I fell into intelligence by chance’

Library of Congress Acquires Neil Simon’s Papers and Manuscripts

Four times more male characters in literature than female, research suggests

Why is the second hand book business booming?

Dispatches from this year’s New York International Antiquarian Book Fair

Why the Mystery Novel Is a Perfect Literary Form

Don Winslow on New England Roots, Greek Poetry, and Clams in Broth

How Dorothy B. Hughes’ In a Lonely Place Brought a New, Disturbing Kind of Noir to the Postwar American Experience

Lost and Found: Rediscovering E.C.R. Lorac’s Two-Way Murder

6 Thrillers That Will Fool the Most Seasoned Readers

The State of the Crime Novel: A Roundtable With The Edgar Nominees Edgar Awards Nominees Reflect On How The Pandemic Has Changed Their Writing Lives

The State of the Crime Novel in 2022, Part 2: Genre, Publishing, and What to Read Next

Famous first lines, rewritten with a thesaurus.

Find books set in your hometown with this neat tool

Industry trend? Jon McGregor just did his book tour by bicycle.

In-Person Author Events

May 3: Seanan McGuire, University Bookstore, 6pm

May 4: : Paul Holes, Powell’s, 7pm

May 17: Christopher Moore, Powell’s, 7pm

May 18: Christopher Moore, Third Place Books/LFP, 7pm

May 23: Adrian McKinty, Third Place Books/LFP, 7pm

Other Forms of Entertainment

Sherlock Holmes May Be Coming to Streaming Thanks to Robert Downey Jr.

Mugshots of the Real Peaky Blinders

Bruce Willis’s Minimalist Star Power

15 years ago, Tarantino released his worst movie — with the most incredible stunts

Jason Isaacs: ‘Daniel Craig is more comfortable naked than with clothes on’

A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes audiobook review – vintage crooks and conmen (read by Samuel L. Jackson)

My streaming gem: why you should watch Scarlet Street

“Operation Mincemeat”: the startling story of deception that fooled Hitler and helped win the war

‘Operation Mincemeat’: The Welsh drifter who helped end WW2

Harrison Ford Didn’t Do It

Serial-Killer Clown John Wayne Gacy Speaks in New Docuseries

~Peter Berg on Being Linda Fiorentino’s Sex Toy

~Kathleen Turner Made the Modern Femme Fatale

‘Killing Eve’ EP Sally Woodward Gentle on How Going With Her Gut Shaped Four Seasons and a Finale

Podcast: Run, Bambi, Run Profiles Playboy Bunny Turned Milwaukee Police Officer Turned Killer

Looking back on one of the scariest serial-killer films ever made, 10 Rillington Place

– Hugh Laurie brings Agatha Christie murder-mystery to TV [his favourite, Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?]

– On the Genuine Delights of Hugh Laurie’s Murder Mystery Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?

The Hound of the Baskervilles review – tongue-in-cheek sleuthing

= David Simon, Jon Bernthal and the Makers of HBO’s ‘We Own This City’ on Dirty Cops, the Drug War and the Legacy of ‘The Wire’

=‘We Own This City’ Brings George Pelecanos Back to Baltimore

Sam Peckinpah’s ‘The Osterman Weekend’ Finally Comes Home

‘Villanelle will be back!’ Killing Eve’s author speaks out over the catastrophic TV finale

‘Shining Girls’: Elisabeth Moss Tracks a Time-Traveling Serial Killer

‘The Offer’ review – the making of The Godfather makes for hit-and-miss TV

Thomas Perry’s The Old Man comes to TV staring Jeff Bridges on June 16

The True Story Behind ‘The Untouchables’

Insiders Call B.S. on ‘Tokyo Vice’ Backstory

James Patterson: “The Hollywood adaptations of my books suck”

Words of the Month

amaze (v.)”overwhelm or confound with sudden surprise or wonder,” 1580s, back-formation from Middle English amased “stunned, dazed, bewildered,” (late 14th C.), earlier “stupefied, irrational, foolish” (c. 1200), from Old English amasod, from a- (1), probably used here as an intensive prefix, + *mæs (see maze). Related: Amazed; amazing. (etymonline)

RIP

A farewell to long-time customer John Cunningham who died March 2, 2022

Mar. 30: Paul Herman Dies: ‘The Sopranos’, ‘Goodfellas’ Actor Was 76

April 2: Thomas F. Staley, Dogged Pursuer of Literary Archives, Dies at 86

April 5: Alan J. Hruska, a Founder of Soho Press, Dies at 88

April 6: Nehemiah Persoff Dies: Prolific Actor Of ‘Yentl’, ‘The Twilight Zone’, ‘Gunsmoke’ & Many More Was 102 (he was in EVERY crime show in the 60s, probably more than once!)

April 10: Bestselling author Jack Higgins dead at 92

April 9: Mimi Reinhard, secretary who typed ‘Schindler’s List,’ dies at 107

April 14: Letizia Battaglia, pioneer photographer who defied the Mafia, dead at 87

April 1`5: Christopher Coover, Auction Expert in the Printed Word, Dies at 72

April 30: Neal Adams death: Batman comic artist dies, aged 80

Links of Interest

Mar. 31: This Father-Son Team Helps People Brute-Force Their Lost Bitcoin Wallet Passwords

Mar. 31: St. Louis’ Murder Total Has Fallen, but Some Killings Went Uncounted

Mar. 31: More Than a Dozen Antiquities Linked to Disgraced Dealer Seized from Yale’s Art Gallery

April 2: Jack Ruby Is the Key to the Kennedy Assassination Conspiracy Theories. So Why Have We Forgotten About His Trial?

April 2: Man Sentenced to 650 Years in Prison in Brutal 1980s Sex Crimes

April 2: Did Body Found on Somerton Beach Belong to Cold War Spy?

April 5: Mob Hit Man Who Escaped as Sentence Neared Its End Is Recaptured

April 5: Hackers Hijacked Crypto Wallets With Stolen MailChimp Data

April 5: The novelist who wrote “How to Murder Your Husband” is now on trial for murdering her husband.

April 6: Investigating the Cold Case That Inspired ‘Twin Peaks‘

April 7: Yakuza Boss Bagged at Steakhouse in Rockets-for-Heroin Plot

April 8: Alex Jones Accused of ‘Jaw-Dropping’ Scheme to Hide Money From Sandy Hook Families

April 8: Former Goldman Sachs banker found guilty in 1MDB scheme

April 8: D.C. Man Pleads Guilty to Attempting to Steal More than $31 Million in COVID-19 Funds

April 8: Cops Nab Five Alleged Ringleaders of Scam-Filled Assassin Marketplace on Dark Web

April 9: Florida Man Stole Almost $600K in Crypto While Setting Up Security System: Cops

April 10: Man Finds “Priceless” Napoleon Memorabilia Stolen in Museum Heist — on eBay

April 11: Police Discover More Than 1,000 Stuffed Wild Animals in Giant Taxidermy Bust

April 12: Aides to Texas County Judge Indicted in $11M Vaccine Contract Scandal

April 12: Law Enforcement Seizes RaidForums, One of the Most Important Hacking Sites

April 13: Gangs are following and robbing LA’s wealthiest, LAPD says

April 13: US federal alert warns of the discovery of malicious cyber tools

April 14: Coca-Cola Enterprises boss admits taking £1.5m in bribes

April 14: Meet the Blockchain Detectives Who Track Crypto’s Hackers and Scammers

April 14: One hundred years ago, the British spy was caught in what appears to be the Irish Republican Army’s only authorized attack on American soil

April 15: QAnon Leaders Push Followers Into Multi-Level Marketing

April 15: How Cryptocurrency Gave Birth to the Ransomware Epidemic

April 15: ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ Is Changing His Tune on Crypto

April 16: How An Alleged Rapist And Former Twitch Streamer Helped Build An NFT Startup By Hiding Behind A Pseudonym

April 20: Cops Arrest COVID-19 Vaccine Scammer With ‘Top Secret’ Clearance Hookup

April 20: He Was a Penniless Donor to the Far Right. He Was Also a Russian Spy.

April 21: Shiba Inu Memecoin Launches Metaverse, Someone Creates Swastika Immediately

April 21: Supreme Court ruling aids family seeking return of painting confiscated by Nazis

April 21: After Pardon for Bannon, 2 Admit Bilking Donors to Border Wall

April 22: EXCLUSIVE – Washington man arrested for impersonating agent left trail of defaults and debt

April 22: Jeffrey Epstein, a Rare Cello and an Enduring Mystery

April 23: U.S. hasn’t stopped N. Korean gang from laundering its crypto haul

April 28: Ten men from same family arrested in Amsterdam for money laundering

April 28: Meta Found Snooping on Student Aid Applicants

April 29: Val Broeksmit, Deutsche Bank, and the Birth of a New Conspiracy Theory

April 29: Cops Kill Man Over Stolen Pokemon Cards in Target Parking Lot

Words of the Month

bamboozle (v.) “to cheat, trick, swindle,” 1703, originally a slang or cant word, of unknown origin. Perhaps Scottish from bombaze, bumbaze “confound, perplex,” or related to bombast, or related to French embabouiner “to make a fool (literally ‘baboon’) of.” Wedgwood suggests Italian bambolo, bamboccio, bambocciolo “a young babe,” extended by metonymy to mean “an old dotard or babish gull.” Related: Bamboozled; bamboozler; bamboozling. As a noun from 1703. (etymonline)

What We’ve Been Up To

Amber

Murder Maps: Crime Scenes Revisited 1811 – 1911 — Dr. Drew Gray

There are many reasons why Murder Maps makes an excellent read. One of which is the selection of crimes featured in the book. Namely, most cases highlight a new forensic technique, first conviction using said technique, and/or new methodology police use to catch the perpetrator. We take techniques like fingerprinting, crime scene photography, and criminal profiling for granted – however, they aren’t nearly as old as one might think!

The second reason why I loved reading this book was the crimes Dr. Grey decided to detail. Of course, the covered period 1811 – 1911 includes the notorious crimes of H.H. Holmes, Crippen, and Jack the Ripper. However, rather than sticking to the stock descriptions of these heinous crimes, Dr. Grey includes often overlooked details. Including the five other possible victims of Jack the Ripper, the pioneering techniques the police used during the Ripper’s spree, and their failures.

Besides coving the most notorious crimes and culprits, Murder Maps also includes all kinds of other murders, including examples I’ve read repeatedly in fiction but never imagined having a real-life counterpart! Such as this old trope: an innocent actor unwittingly wields a real weapon instead of a prop and kills a fellow actor while on stage during a performance….

Speaking of the crimes detailed in Murder Maps, it reminds me of one of my favorite podcasts, The True Crime Files. The book gives you just enough details of the crime: who the victims were, where it took place, if/how it was solved, and how the judicial system dealt with the perpetrators (if they were, in fact, guilty). So if, for one reason or another, one of the crimes sparks your interest, you’ve enough information at your disposal to look it up for yourself.

Then there are the maps.

Each entry in Murder Maps, no matter how big or small, contains at least one illustration (usually from one newspaper or another) or photo (mug shots and/or crime scene photos), a brief description, and a map. Now, I must admit (for me), the maps containing only a single point (where the crime occurred) were only somewhat helpful. However, the maps where Dr. Grey put multiple features of interest, such as where the killers lived, worked, or were born in relation to where the victims were worked, attacked, or found – provide a wealth of information.

I can honestly say it’s been a very long time since I’ve enjoyed a piece of true-crime writing as much as I’ve enjoyed Murder Maps.

I would highly recommend Murder Maps to anyone who would like to dip their toes into the genera or to an aficionado looking for a new case to obsess over, new details/perspective on an old fave, and/or appreciates a well-laid-out book.

Seriously, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Fran

A Touch of Home

Since we moved back to New Mexico, I’ve been drawn to re-reading some of the authors that made New Mexico home. I know, you’re thinking about Tony Hillerman, and you should since he was fantastic, and I hope you’ve followed his daughter, Anne’s career.

But looking at these mountains out my front door has led me down more non-traditional paths.

So I decided to read some Walter Satterthwait. Granted, his Joshua Croft books are set in Santa Fe, which this absolutely is not, and there’s a definite rivalry between northern and southern New Mexico, but for a good, solid story, Walter Satterthwait is spot on.

“But outside town, the countryside is still spare and uncluttered, the sunlight still reels down from a clear blue silky sky, the mountains and the buttes still soar wild and reckless from a landscape so nonchalant about its lean rugged beauty, so indifferent to the passage of time, and the passage of man, that it takes the breath away. Driving through this country can be, should be, an exercise in humility; and that may be one of the very best exercises possible.“

One of the things that I like about Joshua Croft is that his cynicism extends to himself. He questions everything, including his own impressions of people and events, and that is brilliantly showcased in The Hanged Man, where Croft is asked to investigate the murder of a man who just paid an undisclosed but enormous amount for a single Tarot card.

The cast of characters and suspects is just as colorful as any Tarot deck, and the delight of Satterthwait’s writing is that the people come close to being cartoonish, almost caricatures, and then he brings them back down to earth in some commonplace way that resonates.

The Hanged Man was written in 1993, and the delight of it is that, while much of New Mexico has urbanized and changed, the bones are still the same. I know these dusty roads, and back ways, and the way that people here can seem more open when they’re really quite secretive.

Maybe it’s the sun, maybe it’s the heat, maybe it’s the fact that you can trust a rattlesnake to be more honest than a human being half the time, but whatever it is about living in New Mexico, and about looking into the shadows, Walter Satterthwait is well worth your time.

National Portrait Gallery exhibition looks at Watergate 50 years later

Jack Davis’s 1973 caricature of Richard Nixon, center, and his closest aides is part of the National Portrait Gallery exhibition “Watergate: Portraiture and Intrigue.” (Photo by Mark Gulezian/National Portrait Gallery/Gift of Time Magazine)

BUY SMALL ~ SUPPORT SMALL

October 2021

Seriously Scary Stuff

Gabby Petito’s disappearance, and why it was absolutely everywhere, explained

Gabby Petito’s Family Asks ‘Amazing’ Social Media Sleuths to Help More Missing Persons

Femicides in the US: the silent epidemic few dare to name

Craig Johnson on Spirituality, the West, and the Plight of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: From the introduction to Craig’s new Longmire:

“The plight of missing an murdered indigenous women is so great that I had to reassure my publisher that the statistics contained in this novel are accurate. The numbers are staggering, and they speak for themselves. What if I were to tell you that that the chances of a Native woman being murdered is ten times the national average, or that murder is the third leading cause of death for indigenous women? What if I told you that four out of five Native women have experienced societal violence, with having experienced sexual violence as well. Half of Native women have been stalked in their lifetime, and they are two times as likely to experience violence and rape than their Anglo counterparts. Heartbreakingly, the majority of these Native women’s murders are by non-Natives on Native owned land.

“The violence is being addressed, but there is so much more to do. Jurisdictional issues and a lack of communication among agencies make the investigative process difficult. Underreporting, racial misclassification, and underwhelming media coverage [emphasis from us] minimize the incredible damage that is being done to the Native communities as a whole.

“There are a number of wonderful organizations that are attempting to make a difference, the nearest to me being the Native Indigenous Women’s Resource Center in Lame Deer, Montana.”

Please join us in donating.

Seasonal Stuff

Remember the creepy house from The Silence of the Lambs? Now it’s a vacation rental

Company Apologizes for Sending Clowns to Schools and Terrifying Parents

Words of the Season

rougarou (n.): “Rougarou” represents a variant pronunciation and spelling of the original French loup-garou. According to Barry Jean Ancelet, an academic expert on Cajun folklore and professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in America, the tale of the rougarou is a common legend across French Louisiana. Both words are used interchangeably in southern Louisiana. Some people call the monster rougarou; others refer to it as the loup-garou. The rougarou legend has been spread for many generations, either directly from French settlers to Louisiana (New France) or via the French Canadian immigrants centuries ago. In the Cajun legends, the creature is said to prowl the swamps around Acadiana and Greater New Orleans, and the sugar cane fields and woodlands of the regions. The rougarou most often is described as a creature with a human body and the head of a wolf or dog, similar to the werewolf legend. (wikipedia)

Something for Bill: Detroit Crime Fiction: A Literary Tradition Like No Other (but he’d fidget that Rob Kantner and Jon A. Jackson weren’t included…)

Cool Stuff

Anthony Sinclair’s “Goldfinger Suit” lets you dress like Bond – with stitch-perfect authenticity

Don’t despair: LeVar Burton has designs on his own book-themed game show

James Patterson and Scholastic are joining forces to mitigate illiteracy

Bookseller of Kabul vows to stay open despite only two customers since the rise of the Taliban

Serious Stuff

So Sally Rooney’s racist? Only if you choose to confuse fiction with fact

Biles: FBI turned ‘blind eye’ to reports of gymnasts’ abuse

They Follow You on Instagram, Then Use Your Face To Make Deepfake Porn in This Sex Extortion Scam

Three former U.S. intelligence operatives admit to working as ‘hackers-for-hire’ for UAE

There Are Too Many Underemployed Former Spies Running Around Selling Their Services to the Highest Bidder

Stephen King has released a new short story, with profits going to support the ACLU

Long-Secret FBI Report Reveals New Connections Between 9/11 Hijackers and Saudi Religious Officials in U.S.

After student protests, a Pennsylvania school district has reversed its ban on diverse books

In 1865, thousands of Black South Carolinians signed a 54-foot-long freedom petition

She bought her dream home; a ‘sovereign citizen’ changed the locks

CIA Reportedly Considered Kidnapping, Assassinating Julian Assange

Paper shortage hits American retailers when they need it most

Everything you need to know about the current book supply-chain issues—and how you can help.

How can independent bookstores begin to pay their booksellers a fair and living wage?

America Is Having a Violence Wave, Not a Crime Wave

Local Stuff

More fallout from how we’re defunding Seattle police backward, this time in Pioneer Square

Portland Cop Who Was Caught on Video Bashing the Head of a Protest Medic Won’t Be Charged With a Crime

Bitcoin uses as much electricity as Washington State. How is that possible?

Proud Boy Shot While Chasing Anti-Fascists as City Fears More Violence

Huge hack reveals embarrassing details of who’s behind Proud Boys and other far-right websites

This was the worst slaughter of Native Americans in U.S. history. Few remember it.

Joie Des Livres brings life and culture to Tiny Seabrook

Odd Stuff

30 delightful puns from the Victorian Era

When Ray Bradbury Asked John F. Kennedy if He Could Help with the Space Race

Bart’s Books, an Ojai landmark, is a Central California destination unlike anything you’ve ever seen

Mom and Daughter Killed Adult Film Actress With Backyard Butt Implants, Cops Say

Accused cannibal gets prison time for botched castration in remote cabin

New Zealand Covid: Men caught smuggling KFC into lockdown-hit Auckland

Far-Right Group Wants to Ban Books About MLK, Male Seahorses

Read Herman Melville’s embarrassingly short, typo-marred obituary.

Awards

Washington State Book Awards 2021 winners announced (congratulation to Jess Walter!)

Here are the finalists for the 2021 Kirkus Prize

Read the short story that won this year’s Moth Short Story Prize

Here are the recipients of the 2021 American Poets Prizes.

Analysis: the 2021 Booker shortlist tunes in to the worries of our age

Here’s the longlist for the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction

Announcing the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 honorees

Here’s the longlist for the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature

Here are this year’s Dayton Literary Peace Prize honorees

Words of the Season

soucouyant (n.): The soucouyant is a shapeshifting Caribbean folklore character who appears as a reclusive old woman by day. By night, she strips off her wrinkled skin and puts it in a mortar. In her true form, as a fireball she flies across the dark sky in search of a victim. The soucouyant can enter the home of her victim through any sized hole like cracks, crevices and keyholes. Soucouyants suck people’s blood from their arms, legs and soft parts while they sleep leaving blue-black marks on the body in the morning. If the soucouyant draws too much blood, it is believed that the victim will either die and become a soucouyant or perish entirely, leaving her killer to assume her skin. The soucouyant practices black magic. Soucouyants trade their victims’ blood for evil powers with Bazil, the demon who resides in the silk cotton tree. To expose a soucouyant, one should heap rice around the house or at the village cross roads as the creature will be obligated to gather every grain, grain by grain (a herculean task to do before dawn) so that she can be caught in the act. To destroy her, coarse salt must be placed in the mortar containing her skin so she perishes, unable to put the skin back on. Belief in soucouyants is still preserved to an extent in Guyana, Suriname and some Caribbean islands, including Dominica, Haiti and Trinidad. The skin of the soucouyant is considered valuable, and is used when practicing black magic. Many Caribbean islands have plays about the Soucouyant and many other folklore characters. Some of these include Trinidad Grenada and Barbados. Soucouyants belong to a class of spirits called jumbies. Some believe that soucouyants were brought to the Caribbean from European countries in the form of French vampire-myths. These beliefs intermingled with those of enslaved Africans. (wikipedia)

Book Stuff

Bristol manuscript fragments of the famous Merlin legend among the oldest of their kind

Beautiful, Decorative, and Sometimes Crude: Illuminated Manuscripts and Marginalia

S.A. Cosby, a Writer of Violent Noirs, Claims the Rural South as His Own

Michael Connelly Can’t Stop Chasing Leads

Why William Gibson Is a Literary Genius

My First Thriller: James Grady

This Gemlike Library Put America on the Architectural Map

Top 10 books about lies and liars

Newly discovered Tennessee Williams story published for the first time

Women Crime Writers Discuss Violence, Women, and What Readers Will and Won’t Accept

What Is Crime in a Country Built on It?

Peek inside Waseda University’s brand new Haruki Murakami library

Ken Follett Returns to Espionage Thrillers

Zibby Owens to publish books using a company-wide profit-sharing model

Lena Waithe, Gillian Flynn to Start Book Imprints

Sara Gran Talks Publishing, Sex Magic, and Ownership for Authors

A Brief History of Giallo Fiction and the Italian Anti-Detective Novel

This new vending machine will provide New Yorkers with short stories on the go

Love in the Bookshop: A Mystery Writer’s Ode to Bookstore Romances

Democracy is Cheap, but the Constitution Expected to Fetch at least $15M at Auction

He Taught Ancient Texts at Oxford. Now He Is Accused of Stealing Some

Edwin Torres’ Way

This year’s literary MacArthur fellows on the best writing advice they’ve received (and more)

They’ve Seen the Future And They Don’t Like It: The Year’s Best Scifi Noir (So Far)

The Real-Life Political Scandal That Inspired Jean-Patrick Manchette’s First Thriller

Other Forms of Entertainment

Vince Vaughn to star in film version of Hiaasen’s Bad Monkey

Hillary and Chelsea Clinton’s HiddenLight Options Maisie Dobbs Series of Novels

Quentin Tarantino: ‘There’s a lot of feet in a lot of good directors’ movies’

30 Things We Learned from Quentin Tarantino’s ‘True Romance’ Commentary

How British Crime Dramas Became Appointment TV

David Chase Chose Journey for ‘Sopranos’ Finale Because Song Was Hated by Crew

Michael Gandolfini and the Riddle of Tony Soprano

‘Narcos: Mexico’ to End With Season 3 at Netflix

Ray Liotta Says Iconic ‘Goodfellas’ Tracking Shot Take Was Ruined by Line Flub

Here’s the tantalizing first trailer for Denzel Washington’s Macbeth

No Time To Die: The Inside Story Of Daniel Craig’s Final Hurrah

Why the world still loves 1970s detective show “Columbo”

Apple bags rights of Brad Pitt, George Clooney’s new thriller

Words of the Season

manananggal (n.) The manananggal is described as scary, often hideous, usually depicted as female, and always capable of severing its upper torso and sprouting huge bat-like wings to fly into the night in search of its victims. The word manananggal comes from the Tagalog word tanggal, which means “to remove” or “to separate”, which literally translates as “remover” or “separator”. In this case, “one who separates itself”. The name also originates from an expression used for a severed torso. The manananggal is said to favor preying on sleeping, pregnant women, using an elongated proboscis-like tongue to suck the hearts of fetuses, or the blood of someone who is sleeping. It also haunts newlyweds or couples in love. Due to being left at the altar, grooms-to-be are one of its main targets.The severed lower torso is left standing, and is the more vulnerable of the two halves. Sprinkling salt, smearing crushed garlic or ash on top of the standing torso is fatal to the creature. The upper torso then would not be able to rejoin itself and would perish by sunrise. The myth of the manananggal is popular in the Visayan regions of the Philippines, especially in the western provinces of Capiz, Iloilo, Bohol and Antique. There are varying accounts of the features of a manananggal. Like vampires, Visayan folklore creatures, and aswangs, manananggals are also said to abhor garlic, salt and holy water. They were also known to avoid daggers, light, vinegar, spices and the tail of a stingray, which can be fashioned as a whip. Folklore of similar creatures can be found in the neighbouring nations of Indonesia and Malaysia. The province of Capiz is the subject or focus of many manananggal stories, as with the stories of other types of mythical creatures, such as ghosts, goblins, ghouls generically referred to as aswangs. Sightings are purported here, and certain local folk are said to believe in their existence despite modernization. The manananggal shares some features with the vampire of Balkan folklore, such as its dislike of garlic, salt, and vulnerability to sunlight. (wikipedia)

Links of Interest

Sept 1: How Ireland’s First “Assassination Society”–The Invincibles–Was Formed

Sept 3: All I Really Need to Know I Learned Covering Homicides

Sept 7: Why some people think this photo of JFK’s killer is fake

Sept 8: A Cop Killed Another Cop. A Woman Was Charged Instead

Sept 9: Georgia DA Already Charged for Parking Lot Donuts Now Accused of Trying to Frame Man for Murder

Sept 10: Spider-Man beats Superman in record $3.6m comic sale

Sept 10: Italy seizes 500 fake Francis Bacon works

Sept 10: Books, churches, what will Canadians burn next?

Sept 11: ‘Every message was copied to the police’: the inside story of the most daring surveillance sting in history

Sept 11: Louis Armstrong and Spy: How the CIA Used him as a “Trojan Horse” in Congo

Sept 11: Lead FBI Agent in Whitmer Kidnap Plot Is Fired After Swingers Party Incident

Sept 12: The Terror and Agony of Being a Mexican Hitman’s Son

Sept 13: Why Use a Dictionary in the Age of Internet Search?

Sept 13: Capitol Police Suspect Something Amiss With Swastika-Covered Nightmare Truck, Find Driver With Machete

Sept 14: 14 Defendants Indicted, Including the Entire Administration of the Colombo Organized Crime Family

Sept 14: Austin Funeral Homes Regularly Pour Blood and Embalming Fluid Down the Drain

Sept 14: Monkey Thieves, Drunk Elephants — Mary Roach Reveals A Weird World Of Animal ‘Crime’

Sept 15: A Bonkers South Carolina Crime Saga Has Taken Another Bonkers Twist

Sept 15: Fred West: Future victim searches need strong justification, say police

Sept 17: Denmark moves to bar some prisoners from meeting new lovers after submarine killer romance controversy

Sept 19: FBI says fortune seized in Beverly Hills raid was criminals’ loot. Owners say: Where’s the proof?

Sept 20: Police Arrest 106 Tied to Mafia-Connected Cybercrime Group

Sept 21: Caril Ann Fugate and the Presumption of Guilt

Sept 21: Two Cops Are Accused of Hiring Hitmen to Take Out Their Enemies

Sept 21: Gilgamesh Dream Tablet to be formally handed back to Iraq

Sept 21: Salisbury poisonings: Third man faces charges for Novichok attack

Sept 22: Joshua Melville’s Search for the Truth About His Radical Bomber Father, Sam Melville

Sept 22: Carlos the Jackal seeks to reduce life sentence for deadly 1974 grenade attack

Sept 23: JetBlue Passenger Storms Cockpit, Strangles Flight Attendant, Breaks Out of Restraints

Sept 24: Snapchat Is Fueling Britain’s Teen Murder Epidemic

Sept 24: The Heist of the Century: Who Cracked the Manhattan Savings And Loan Safe?

Sept 24: Mexico’s Soccer League Colluded to Cap Women’s Salaries, Regulator Says

Sept 24: Mississippi woman Clara Birdlong likely Samuel Little victim

Sept 24: How Chippendales’ Male-Stripping Empire Ended in Bloody Murder

Sept 27: Judge orders ‘unconditional release’ for Reagan shooter Hinckley

Sept 28: Texas nurse faces capital murder trial for 4 patient deaths

Sept 29: For $84,000, An Artist Returned Two Blank Canvasses Titled ‘Take The Money And Run’

Sept 30: Afghans artists bury paintings, hide books out of fear of Taliban crackdown on arts and culture

Sept 30: Yale Says Its Vinland Map, Once Called a Medieval Treasure, Is Fake

RIP

Sept 6: Michael K. Williams, ‘The Wire’ Star, Dies at 54 [Joe R. Lansdale Remembers The Genesis of Hap and Leonard and Pays Tribute to Michael K. Williams]

Sept 22: Melvin Van Peebles, Godfather of Black Cinema, Dies at 89

Words of the Season

Chonchon (n.) The Chonchon is the magical transformation of a kalku (Mapuche sorcerer). It is said only the most powerful kalkus can aspire to master the secret of becoming this feared creature. The kalku or sorcerer would carry out the transformation into a Chonchon by an act of will and being anointed by a magical cream in the throat that eases the removal of the head from the rest of the body, with the removed head then becoming the creature. The Chonchon has the shape of a human head with feathers and talons; its ears, which are extremely large, serve as wings for its flight on moonless nights. Chonchons are supposed to be endowed with all the magic powers of, and can only be seen by, other kalkus, or by wizards that want this power. Sorcerers take the form of the chonchon to better carry out their wicked activities, and the transformation would provide them with other abilities, such as drinking the blood of ill or sleeping people. Although the fearsome appearance of a chonchon would be invisible to the uninitiated, they would still be able to hear its characteristic cry of “tue tue tue”, which is considered to be an extremely ill omen, usually predicting the death of a loved one. (wikipedia)

What We’ve Been Up To

Amber

Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village – Maureen Johnson & Jay Cooper

Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village is exactly what it claims to be – a guide. Elucidating all the things a tourist needs to know about a quiet English village in order to navigate it and the inevitable undercurrents successfully (i.e. not get murdered).

Its’ also one of the funniest books I’ve ever read.

Aimed at the lovers of classic manor house and/or English village mysteries (think the Queens of Crime, Georgette Heyer, Francis Duncan, Patricia Wentworth) it takes the stock characters, architecture, and events found within those pages and gives them an irreverent, rib-tickling, and on the nose descriptions.

There’s even a quiz at the end to test your prowess.

I died twice…on the same page.

What I love even more – is how many of the people, places, and things Johnson describes in Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered that I recognize either from reading them or from watching tv shows like Father Brown, Death In Paradise, and Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries.

I would recommend this book to anyone who loves classic mysteries and has a very good sense of humor – Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered will not let you down!

Fran

This is not a political post, but the book I’m talking about has its roots in politics, specifically the 2016 election. When the results were tallied, many people were upset, and out of that visceral reaction a new publishing house was born, Nasty Woman Press, the Creative Resistance.

Spearheaded by the glorious Kelli Stanley, Nasty Woman Press, a 501(c)(4) non-profit, decided to use literary creativity to bring awareness and aid to those who are struggling. To quote Kelli, “Our plan is to publish anthologies of captivating fiction and thought-provoking non-fiction, each built around a general theme – the theme itself tying in to the non-profit for which the book is raising money.”

That’s right. The profits from the sale of each book go to a cause. In the case of the the debut anthology, Shattering Glass, the theme is empowered women, and the profits go to Planned Parenthood.

Now, I know that a lot of you don’t like short stories, but here’s where you trust me. The fiction is amazing, and not all the authors are female. Anyone who says that men can’t write accurately about women needs to read some of these stories. Men can and do understand women, and know how to write them as believable characters.

But it’s not just the stories. One of the essays, written by Jacqueline Winspear about women firefighters, has stayed with me since I read it, and even as I type this, California is on fire, and I want to sit down with Jackie over a pot of tea and listen to her, because she knows her stuff.

The opening essay by Valerie Plame – yes, THAT Valerie Plame, outed CIA spy turned politician and novelist – is definitely thought provoking and erudite. I’ve read it a couple of times now.

But in the end, you’re going to love this anthology and come back to it. Parts of it will leave you aching, sometimes you’ll be so pissed you want to throw things, and at other times, you’re going to laugh out loud at the audacity. You will not remain unmoved. And that’s because these people can Write.

Who, you might ask? Well, I don’t want to spoil surprises, but if you like the writing of people like Cara Black, Catriona McPherson, Anne Lamott, Joe Clifford, Senator Barbara Boxer, Jess Lourey, and Seanan McGuire, you’re in for a treat.

Trust me.

Pickup up a copy of Scott Turow’s The Last Trial. It’s one of those many books by favorite authors that I missed after the shop closed. It’s all that you’d expect from Turow – no one else plots such stunning and sinuous legal thrillers. But the wonderful part of the book, for me, was spending time with defense attorney Sandy Stern. While the lawyer is described differently, it’s impossible for me to not picture and hear Raul Julia as him, and since it is likely to be the last book with Stern and Julia’s sadly dead, it was so nice to be in their company one last time.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

There are words authors use that are too fancy for the stories they’re telling. In a way, it’s showy. It’s proving you have a large vocabulary. “Verdant” is one. It is almost always out of place. And, please – PLEASE – can we retire “plethora”!

But, having blurted that out of my head, I am here to HIGHLY RECOMMEND Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby. A new book is out now in hardcover. It’s getting high praise. I thought I’d go back and start with his first and – man – the guy can not only write beautifully but plot a tight, thrilling story.

“That was the things about his mother. She could be emotionally manipulative one minute then making you laugh the next. It was like getting hit in the face with a pie that had a padlock in it.”

Beau is a young guy whose stuck in a thicket of bills – mortgage on his garage, his dying mother’s healthcare is a mess, his youngest daughter needs money for starting college. He’s turned his back on his past livelihood – get-away-driver. His father was a noted driver and Beau doesn’t want to follow that path. “But when it came to handling his responsibilities we both know Anthony Montage was about a useful as a white crayon, don’t we?”

But the bills are demanding and off we roar into a series of sharp turns and dead ends that threaten everything he cherishes. Danger is his passenger and worse follows. “Reggie jumped like a demon had spoken to him.”

This is great noir, a great crime novel. I believe it is a stand-alone. I don’t think his books are connected. And I look forward to reading more. Cosby writes with a fluid, memorable style. How can you not want to read an author who comes up with a line like this: “She was wearing a tank top and shorts so tight they would become a thong is she sneezed.”

Here’s a great interview with Cosby. And a piece he wrote about his philosophy of writing.

Bought his new hardcover.

But it’ll have to wait ’til I finish the new Longmire.

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

The new James Ellroy, Widespread Panic, is everything you’d expect from an Ellroy book – literately lurid, speedily sleazy, and full of film faces. The narrator is real-life reprobate Fred Otash, a former cop, LA fixer, and all-around asshole. He’s into everything, everyone and everywhere. The book takes the form or a sort of memoir, a look back on a set of years in the 1950s. Naughty and nefarious nostalgia.

As with any Ellroy, when finishes, it is difficult to remember if there were any good people in the story. As with any Ellroy, the story is stocked with actual people. How does he get away with it without being sued out of his bowtie? Elizabeth Taylor in a three-way romp? James Dean, Nick Adams, Nicholas Ray and many others as reprehensible souls involved in rampant raids, reprobates riding roughshod over rights! None are alive now, but….

You enjoy Ellroy? Dig it!

SHOP SMALL ~ BUY SMALL

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SEPTEMBER 2021

Big Study About Honesty Turns out to be Based on Fake Data

A bloody shame: Britons find a new favourite swearword

Female Octopuses Throw Things at Male Harassers (GOOD FOR THEM!!)

Serious Stuff

The White Christian Nationalism Behind the Worst Terrorist Attack in American History

The rightwing US textbooks that teach slavery as ‘black immigration ‘

Downtown Seattle courthouse safety issues are keeping jurors away, judges say

Tech Firms Pledge Billions to Bolster Cybersecurity after Biden Meeting

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History displays a bullet-riddled sign that documented Emmett Till’s brutal murder

Local Stuff

Oregon High School Janitor Stockpiled Weapons for Mass Shooting: Cops

Crime historian digs for DB Cooper case evidence: ‘Authorities looked in wrong area’

More meth, cocaine contamination found at Washington state toxicology lab

High Schoolers in Seattle Build a Tiny Library That Makes Room for Everyone

Read a previously unpublished Ursula K. Le Guin poem

A naked baby helped Nirvana sell millions of records. Now 30, he’s suing the band and alleging child porn

Seattle Public Library to reopen all branches by later this fall

Words of the Month

sucker (n.) A “young mammal before it is weaned,” late 14th C., agent noun from suck. Slang meaning “person who is easily deceived” is first attested 1836, American English, on notion of naivete; but another theory traces the slang meaning to the fish called a sucker (1753), on the notion of being easy to catch in their annual migrations (the fish so called from the shape of its mouth). As a type of candy from 1823; especially “lollipop” by 1907. Meaning “shoot from the base of a tree or plant” is from 1570s. Also the old name of inhabitants of Illinois. (etymonline)

Odd Stuff

Here’s why poisonous animals don’t poison themselves

A $100,000 Chicken McNugget Triggered a Child-Sex-Trafficking Conspiracy Theory

Robert Durst Reflects on Decision to Appear in ‘The Jinx’: A ‘Very, Very, Very Big Mistake’

75 Arrests, 134 Marathons & 1 Stabbing: Kansas City Superman

What Do CIA Analysts and Investigative Journalists Have In Common?

Words of the Month

folly (n.): From the early 13th C., “mental weakness; foolish behavior or character; unwise conduct” (in Middle English including wickedness, lewdness, madness), from Old French folie “folly, madness, stupidity” (12th C.), from fol (see fool (n.)). From c. 1300 as “an example of foolishness;” sense of “costly structure considered to have shown folly in the builder” is attested from 1650s. But used much earlier, since Middle English, in place names, especially country estates, probably as a form of Old French folie in its meaning “delight.” (etymonline)

SPECTRE Stuff

We’re eliminating this section of the newzine. What’s the point? They are into everything and will soon own everything. The windmill has won…

Awards

The Barry Award Winners 2021

Amanda Gorman and PRH have established a $10,000 prize for public high school poets.

Book Stuff

After a month of major controversies, the American Booksellers Association has responded

Dolly Parton Teams With Bestselling Author James Patterson To Pen First Novel ‘Run, Rose, Run’

The summer of writing scams continues with a series of Goodreads ransom notes.

In Praise of the Info Dump: A Literary Case for Hard Science Fiction

An Original Graphic Novel about Ed Gein, The Serial Killer Who Haunted America and Inspired Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Silence of the Lambs

Advance copies of Sally Rooney’s unpublished book sold for hundreds of dollars

By the Book: The Crime Novelist William Kent Krueger Still Loves Sherlock Holmes

James Lee Burke on Organized Labor, Corporate Evils, and the Plot to Dumb Down America

Hachette Book Group Will Acquire Workman Publishing for $240 Million

Want to be a bookseller? This chicken-coop-turned-bookstore is up for grabs

Mexican Noir: Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Velvet Was the Night is a thrillingly fresh take on a hard-boiled classic

Megan Abbott Discusses How to Create an Atmosphere of Dread, Anxiety, and Obsession

New York’s Legendary Literary Hangouts: Where Writers Gathered, Gossiped, Danced and Drank in NYC

Browse over one million newly digitized images from Yale’s Beinecke Library

how publishers are approaching new releases this fall

The Joys and Difficulties of Writing a Faithful Sherlock Holmes Novel

The Storyteller’s Promise: William Kent Krueger on the power of fiction and the profound experience of offering readers a little hope

Miss Marple back on the case in stories by Naomi Alderman, Ruth Ware and more

Interview with Paula Hawkins: ‘I wasn’t interested in writing the same book again’

Other Forms of Entertainment

Kate Winslet Says Mare of Easttown’s Creator Has “Very Cool Ideas” for Season 2

Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzmán to Play Morticia and Gomez Addams on Tim Burton’s Wednesday [Cara mia!]

‘We’re not robots’: Film-makers buckle under relentless appetite for Danish TV

A Rumination on DCI Jane Tennison

How a tragic unsolved murder and a public housing crisis led to Candyman

Words of the Month

rube (n.): From 1896, reub, from shortened form of masculine proper name Reuben (q.v.), which is attested from 1804 as a conventional type of name for a country man… As a typical name of a farmer, rustic, or country bumpkin, from 1804. The Reuben sandwich of corned beef, sauerkraut, etc., on rye bread, an American specialty (1956) is the same name but “Not obviously connected” with the “country bumpkin” sense in rube [OED], but is possibly from Reuben’s restaurant, a popular spot in New York’s Lower East Side. Various other Reubens have been proposed as the originator. (etymonline)

RIP

August 7: Nach Waxman, Founder of a Bookstore Where Foodies Flock, Dies at 84

August 9: Markie Post, veteran TV actor on ‘Night Court,’ dies at 70

August 11: Patricia Hitchcock O’Connell, actor and daughter of Alfred Hitchcock, dies at 93

August 12: Una Stubbs, ‘Till Death Us Do Part’ and ‘Sherlock’ actress dies aged 84

August 28: Caroline Todd (half of the Charles Todd team) RIP

August 29: Ed Asner, the Iconic Lou Grant on Two Acclaimed TV Series, Dies at 91 [Asner was born in Kansas City and his brother Ben owned a record store just across state line in Missouri called Caper’s Corners. It was the place we all went to get concert tickets and buy LPs. Later it was revealed that Ben Asner was one of the biggest fences in the city.]

Links of Interest

July 26: Co-Owner of Shady Beverly Hills Vault Business Accused of ‘Extensive’ Criminal Empire

July 28: In Session with Lorraine Bracco at MobMovieCon

July 28: Revisiting “The Year of the Spy”

August 4: The True Crime Junkies and the Curious Case of a Missing Husband

August 5: Tycoon Arrested After Allegedly Blabbing About His $100 Million Fraud Over Email

August 5: Investigation reopened into death of tobacco heiress Doris Duke’s assistant after paperboy comes forward

August 8: Barris Kustom Industries Car Shop For Sale, In Danger Of Closing. The legendary Hollywood shop was responsible for the iconic Batmobile

August 9: How the case of the kidnapped paperboys accelerated the “stranger danger” panic of the 1980s

August 10: Piecing Together the History of Stasi Spying

August 11: A History of Serial Killers Who Went Quiet Before Being Caught

August 12: A Lawyer’s Deathbed Confession About a Sensational 1975 Kidnapping

August 13: A Brief History of the CIA’s Efforts to Infiltrate Africa by Funding an Elaborate Network of Nonprofit Goodwill Organizations

August 15: British man accused of spying for Russia will not be extradited from Germany

August 16: Dallas Police Dept Loses 8 Terabytes of Crime Data, Throwing Court Cases Into Chaos

August 16: Gunshots Were Fired at a Dutch Museum as Two Thieves Tried to Steal a Monet Painting—and Then Dropped It on the Way Out

August 19: Police Just Found Nearly 10 Tons of Cocaine Behind a Fake Wall in Ecuador

August 22: The artist, the mafia and the Italian job: is heist mystery about to be solved?

August 24: Al Capone’s granddaughters to auction his estate, including Papa’s ‘favorite’ pistol

August 24: Mexico May Free the Cartel ‘Godfather’ Behind a DEA Agent’s Murder

August 25: Sirhan Sirhan, convicted of Robert F. Kennedy assassination, seeks parole with no opposition from prosecutors

August 27: When Comic Books Were America’s Secret Superpower – The cheaply produced, easily digestible stories were once the perfect cover for state-produced propaganda

August 29: French Woman Arrested for Stealing Jewelry Off Corpses

August 30: COVID Troll Alex Berenson Implies He’ll Sue to Get Twitter Access Restored

August 31: Doctor Accused of Trying to Hire Hells Angel to Get Rid of Witness at His Oxy Fraud Trial

Words of the Month

con (adj.): “swindling,” 1889 (in con man), American English, from confidence man (1849), from the many scams in which the victim is induced to hand over money as a token of confidence. Confidence with a sense of “assurance based on insufficient grounds” dates from 1590s. Con artist is attested by 1910.

What We’ve Been Up To

Amber

Due to events – mainly moving house and then painting the entire house (inside and out) I’ve fallen behind on my writing! Season 3 is on its way – but it will be a bit before I’ve got it finished, polished, and photographed…But hey, if you’ve fallen behind this is a great opportunity to catch up…right?

A Noodle Shop Mystery (series) by Vivien Chien

One of the pitfalls of no longer working in a bookshop is that one occasionally falls behind in a series. Which I must confess – I don’t really mind. Why? Because when I eventually recall the temporarily neglected author, I’ve a backlog to zip my way thru! Thus allowing me to dive headlong and immerse myself in the world of an old friend and catch up with them…

This awkward phenomenon occurred most recently with Vivien Chien’s Noodle Shop Mystery series. Where over a week, I devoured Fatal Fried Rice – where Lana’s cooking instructor winds up dead and lands Lana in very hot water. Killer Kung Pao – where the sourest business owner in the Asian Village is accused of murder, and her sister asks Lana to clear her name. And Egg Drop Dead – during Noodle House’s first catering gig, for the owner of the Asian Village, one of the owner’s staff ends up dead, and Lana’s detective skills are pressed into service.

I reveled in every word I read.

Here’s what I love about this series: Chien does a great job in varying motives, methods, investigative techniques (as Lana learns or stumbles onto new strategies), and culprits. Thus giving each of her books a sense of freshness, variety, and surprise – a feature often missing from other cozy mysteries. Another reason I enjoy this series is the fact the book’s solutions make sense. As in, I don’t need to suspend my disbelief in thinking an amateur sleuth could stumble onto the truth. Which, again, is a nice change of pace.

Above and beyond these aforementioned attributes – these books are witty, fun, and intelligent reads.

Okay, so the titles are punny – but I can assure you that’s where the cloying coziness ends. Lana just happens to manage her family’s noodle shop – it is the backdrop for the books, not the central theme. I promise.

I would recommend this series to anyone looking for a new cozy-ish series to immerse themselves in.

(BTW – I did make an entry in my phone’s calendar to remind me Chien’s new book, Hot and Sour Suspects, is out in January 2022 – so I didn’t accidentally forget again….)

Fran

Dorothy Uhnak was a real police detective in New York in the Sixties, when being a female detective was only marginally accepted. She turned her experiences into stories, several of which were turned into movies.

Victims wasn’t made into a movie, but it should have been, and honestly, still should be. Loosely based on the brutal murder of Kitty Genovese (you remember her, right? She was murdered and over 30 people heard it but did nothing), Victims follows the investigation into the murder of a young woman while people in the neighborhood watched but did nothing because they all thought it was “the Spanish girl”.

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Victims is set in the 80’s – which, sadly, I’ve lately heard called “vintage”, which I find appalling because it was just yesterday, dammit – but the only thing that differentiates the setting between then and now are cell phones and digital capabilities. It’s a solid police procedural, but with a twist.

As Miranda Torres investigates the murder of Anna Grace, journalist Mike Stein investigates the lack of response by the neighbors with an eye to a searing expose of the witnesses. Technically, they are not at cross-purposes, and for some reason, Stein has been allowed access to all of NYPD’s findings. Torres is meticulous, observant, and wickedly smart.

Between them, the two find out a great deal, but since their final goals aren’t the same, neither are their investigations.

Dorothy Uhnak brilliantly captures the delicate and pervasive racism, favoritism, back-room dealing, and political chicanery that invades all areas of society, and she makes it personal. I’ve always been a fan of her Christie Opera series, and you should read them, but Victims hits home with a gut punch that lingers.

When you finish it, if you aren’t mad as hell, you haven’t been paying attention!

There are series that I’ve read more than once, and there are series that I’ve read many times, six or more. This series I have read, I think, twice, and some of the books more than that. I like re-reading. It’s time spend with favorite characters, favorite voices. And now and then I still read a sentence that stands out. I’m not sure how I’ve not noticed it before. Maybe I did but this time it captured my eyes. “My thoughts struggled in my brain like exhausted swimmers.”

Maybe it locked me because it is how I’m feeling these days. I find myself having difficulty focusing on things – long books, long movies, even a ball game. It’s not those things, it’s my concentration. That’s when re-reading comes in handy. I don’t have to worry too much about tuning into the pages as I’ve been there before. That’s another reason why that line hooked me; I wasn’t looking for something remarkable and new, and it fit my present self.

By the way, it was from Lawrence Block’s Eight Million Ways to Die.

Kennedy’s Avenger: Assassination, Conspiracy, and the Forgotten Trial of Jack Ruby by Dan Abrams and David Fisher was a compete waste of $27.99. I knew it from the first few pages when the authors started from the position that Oswald was the lone assassin. While Melvin Belli’s defense tactics were amusing, I quit reading before 50 pages. A waste of paper, printer’s ink, shipping, human efforts and, as I said, money.

I bought James Lee Burke’s A Private Cathedral the week it appeared in hardcover in the Summer of 2020. Just got to it now – and now it is in trade paper. I can’t quite explain why the long wait as I love the Robicheaux series. Doesn’t matter, really.

This is an odd one on two fronts. On one, it is set in the past, as if it makes any difference to Dave and Clete. Alafair is still in college and Helen isn’t the chief of police until the end, so maybe a ten, fifteen years? The other oddity is that this one deals more with the “electric mist” and it isn’t just Dave seeing figures out of time. It is almost fair to call this one a ghost story. Certainly the main characters are spooked by what they experience.

Still, for these differences, it was a great book.

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Amber Here!

A Resolution At Midnight – Shelley Noble

People around the world have different traditions concerning New Year’s.

Creating New Year’s resolutions, banging pots & pans outside at midnight (hopefully your neighbors do the same), kissing your sweetheart, or jumping off a chair at the very second the hands strike twelve – are all popular.

One particular interesting tradition that features a bit of divination, favored by Germans around the turn of the century, was placing walnut shells in a punchbowl and watching them zip around to figure out how the following 365 days will go.

However, one of the most recognized and well-known traditions is the NYC ball drop in Times Square. Which, if you didn’t already know, first started its duties by marking the end of 1907 and the beginning of 1908. And this is when A Resolution At Midnight comes to a thrilling conclusion (it’s in the title, after all).

(Fun Fact: The ball’s only failed to mark the occasion twice – in 1942 & 1943 – when the threat of air raids kept it, and the rest of New York, dark.)

Now you know where A Resolution At Midnight ends, lets got back to the beginning – ten days before Christmas, when Lady Dunbridge arrives home from gift hunting and finds a short note from Mr. X requesting a meeting at a nickelodeon…in just over thirty minutes! Even in 1907, New York traffic is still thick. So Phil, much to her annoyance, arrives late to her meeting…whereupon she discovers a man with his throat slit!

Here’s what I love about this series: Shelley Noble never loses sight of the fact she’s writing a mystery. Yes, she incorporates the very first NYC ball drop, the NY Times, the seedy underbelly of NY politics, and the slow slide of the NYPD back into its bad ways after Roosevelt moved on…but Noble never succumbs to the temptation of historical pontification. Rather, Noble seamlessly weaves just enough detail of these fascinating facts to flesh out her mystery without Without ever detracting, derailing, or slowing the pace of her storyline. Yet, she manages to give her audience enough detail to do a bit of historical sleuthing on their own – if they so choose.

A Resolution At Midnight is no exception.

Honestly, I loved every second of this book. Noble festoons her mystery with just enough of both winter holidays to give the reader a taste of the season and – not unlike Christie – counterbalances it with a nice bloody murder. Which happily sops up all the saccharine that often saturates stories set during this time of the year.

Seriously, I would recommend A Resolution At Midnight to anyone who likes strong female leads and historical mysteries.