SMB – Seattle Mystery Bookshop

‘I’ve been a lucky man’: Michael Coy, a mainstay in Seattle’s book scene, is retiring after 48 years in the business [Michael was one or JB’s teachers when Bill sent him to the American Bookseller’s Association’s Bookseller School. He’s a great guy and has always been very helpful with advice about bookselling. We wish him the best as he pushes back from selling to simply reading!]

Prosecutor admits grand jury gaffe with Thomas Wales witness but says perjury indictment should stand

Talking character, inspiration with Sujata Massey, author of Moira’s Book Club pick ‘The Widows of Malabar Hill’

From the Dossier of SPECTRE

Jeff Bezos hated ads — now Amazon is America’s top advertiser

America’s Largest Unions Are Calling on the FTC to Stop Amazon

The Amazon Critic Who Saw its Power from the Inside

MacKenzie Scott begins giving away most of her Amazon wealth. Here’s why, and where nearly $1.7 billion is going.

Words of the Month

sibylline (adj.): From the 1570s, from Latin sibyllinus, from sibylla (see sibyl: “woman supposed to possess powers of prophecy, female soothsayer,” c. 1200, from Old French sibile, from Latin Sibylla, from Greek Sibylla, name for any of several prophetesses consulted by ancient Greeks and Romans, of uncertain origin. Said to be from Doric Siobolla, from Attic Theoboule “divine wish.”) thanks to etymonline

Awards

Duende District, The Word, Launch BIPOC Bookseller Award

Colson Whitehead is the youngest writer to win the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.

Hilary Mantel, Kiley Reid, Anne Tyler in Running for Booker Prize

Book Stuff

The Postman Always Rings Twice: 1934 New York Times review of James M. Cain’s sexually-charged, hard-boiled crime novel

Every Great Writer is a Great Deceiver: Vladimir Nabokov’s Best Writing Advice

P. D. James: A Crime Reader’s Guide to the Classics

Look inside Oslo’s stunning new public library, now open to the public.

My Writing Will Never Be as Good as Charles Willeford’s

Visiting Europe’s Great Libraries from Rick Steves

With Stores Closed, Barnes & Noble Does Some Redecorating

In Publishing, ‘Everything Is Up for Change’

My First Thriller: Steve Berry

The Exhilarating, Dangerous World of Helen Eustis

6 book recommendations from crime writer Camilla Läckberg

Dorothy Parker’s Ashes Could Be Moved. Again.

The Celebrity Bookshelf Detective is Back

Cats and Cozy Mysteries, The Purr-fect Combination

María Elvira Bermúdez, the Agatha Christie of Mexican literature

The Power—and the Responsibility—of True Crime Writing

Author Events

maybe someday…..though we have heard that some places, some publishers, are doing on-line events, that still means no signatures

Other Forms of Entertainment

“I Don’t Let Regret In” Pierce Brosnan on Love, Loss, and his Life After Bond

My streaming gem: why you should watch Detour

Idris Elba says a Luther movie is ‘close’ to happening

Candy: Elisabeth Moss to star in true-crime story of notorious Texas axe killer

Fascinating Cases That ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ Viewers Helped Solve

On Netflix ~ Fear City: New York vs The Mafia & World’s Most Wanted

How They Shot the Wrong-Way Car Chase in ‘To Live and Die in L.A.’

Comfort Viewing: 3 Reasons I Love ‘Columbo’

How a 10-year-old created a lockdown print hit for punk fans

Loren Estleman:How Film Noir will Forever Change Your Worldview

Otto Penzler’s Greatest Crime Films of All Times Continues

The 50 Most Iconic Heist Movies, Ranked from Worst to Best

Podcasts

“Las Vegas was better off when it was run by the mob.” Mobbed Up: The Fight for Las Vegas, an 11-part true-crime podcast series produced by the Las Vegas Review-Journal in partnership with The Mob Museum, chronicles the mob’s rise and fall in Las Vegas through the eyes of those who lived it: ex-mobsters, law enforcement officials, politicians and journalists. [JB recommends]

7 International True Crime Podcasts You Should Be Listening To

Son of a Hitman: the story of Charles Harrelson [JB recommends]

Could the CIA Have Planted Hair-Metal Propaganda During the Cold War?In the new podcast ‘Wind of Change,’ host Patrick Radden Keefe explores how the CIA used music to change hearts and minds [it is well documented that they did this with the abstract expressionists in the 50s, so why not?? – JB]

Two versions of the same story, with different photos of the items on auction:

July 1: For Sale: Proof That Legendary Scientists Were Real People, Too

July 10: Tesla’s Patents, Einstein’s Letters and an Enigma Machine Are Up for Auction

July 10: The Secret Service Tried to Catch a Hacker With a Malware Booby-Trap. (“The attempt failed, but so-called “network investigative techniques” are not limited to the FBI, according to newly unsealed court records.”)

July 10: D-R-A-M-A ~ Big Scrabble’s decision to eliminate offensive words has infuriated players like never before.

July 13: Playing Cards Around the World and Through the Ages

July 14: Iron Age Murder Victim’s Skeleton Found in England

July 15: How Not to Deal With Murder in Space – A bizarre 1970 Arctic killing over a jug of raisin wine shows that we need to think about crime outside our atmosphere now.

July 15: The Deadly High-Speed Chase That Launched Miami into the 1980s

July 15: Don McLean’s handwritten lyrics to “Vincent” up for auction

July 16: James Patterson Reviving 30s-Era Crimefighter ‘The Shadow’ For New Novels, Films

July 16: Homicide at Rough Point: In the fall of 1966, billionaire Doris Duke killed a close confidant in tony Newport, Rhode Island. Local police ruled the incident “an unfortunate accident.” Half a century later, compelling evidence suggests that the mercurial, vindictive tobacco heiress got away with murder.

July 17: Beetle-mounted camera streams insect adventures

July 20: A ‘Fletch’ Reboot Starring Jon Hamm Is Officially In The Works

July 20: Missing Kansas dog makes 50-mile trip to old home in Missouri

July 22: The mystery of a stolen rare cello has a surprise ending

July 22: Man who forged his own death certificate to avoid jail is given away by a typo, DA says

July 23: Germany’s Ritter Sport wins square chocolate battle

July 24: Walter Mosley on What the Pandemic May Set Us Up For in the Future

July 24: Manuscript shows how Truman Capote renamed his heroine Holly Golightly

July 24: Charles Manson Wasn’t a Criminal Mastermind

July 24: Viewer spots Florida reporter Victoria Price’s cancer growth

July 24: US lottery jackpot shared after 1992 handshake

July 24: All in a Day’s Work ~ Why Do the Parker Novels Still Resonate So Powerfully?

July 27: What It’s Like To Spend A Decade Hunting A Serial Killer On The Internet

July 27: The Supreme Court Takes on a JFK Case

July 28: Banksy auctions refugee painting to aid Bethlehem hospital

July 28: It’s Pretty Easy To Level Up Your Coffee Game — Here’s How

July 28: Remington Gun-Maker Files For Bankruptcy Protection For 2nd Time Since 2018

July 29: How the U.S.-China consulate closures could impact espionage

July 29: Don Black ~ ‘the Pele of lyricists’ on Bond themes, Broadway and ‘Born Free‘

What We’ve Been Up To

Amber

Finder of Lost Things is back! With more posts and more photos!

Click here to read about the fallout from the Woman in White, what the Black-andBlue-Becker-Betting-Pool is all about and why Phoebe is sneaking out in the rain!

Grady Hendrix – My Best Friend’s Exorcism

Need a good summertime read that will take you back to all the awkward moments of childhood? No? How about a book that takes you back to some of your best memories as a kid?

Sounds better right?

Remembering all those good times you had with your best friend at skating parties, talking on the phone for hours about nothing, summer vacations, or that one time you needed to exorcise a demon from your best friend’s soul? Yeah…not something everyone can relate to…but that’s precisely what Abby needs to do to save her best friend…

This book is an intensely fun read.

While it’s occasionally awkward and cringe-worthy (but in the best possible way), this uncomfortableness generated by the author adds a whole other layer to the horror/mystery/friendship story unfolding on the page. Seriously, I don’t know how Grady Hendrix did it – but episodes (minus the exorcism, demon, and animal sacrifice) feel as if he pulled them from my own experience – both the terrific and the embarrassing.

If you’re looking for a book to read under the covers with a flashlight, in the middle of the night – that will on occasion make the familiar nightly squeaks, creaks, and groans of your home sound new and strange… My Best Friend’s Exorcism is the book you’re looking for!

(P.S. Did I forget to mention it’s set in the eighties? In all, it’s spectacular Madonna influenced glory…)

Do you like getting mail? Do you relish writing letters? Do you enjoy mysteries? Have you ever dreamed of being an armchair detective? Now’s your chance! With a mail-based mystery series called Dear Holmes.

I’ll let Mr. Holmes explain your new employment (as he’s more succinct than I):

“12/5/1901

Dear Detective,

It is my pleasure to welcome you to Dear Holmes, and your new career as a consulting detective.

For the next few months, I will be handing some of my most challenging cases to you. My associates from around the world will write you each month with a challenging new mystery in need of solving.

Every week you will receive another letter with new details on the present mystery, bringing you closer and closer to the solution. I or Dr. Watson will receive the same letters, and reach out to the client to ask probing questions on your behalf.

Since we tend to receive some more peculiar cases, I will also make the knowledge of my network of experts available to you at times, to help shed light on some of the more perplexing details of the cases we encounter.

Your challenge is to solve the mystery before I do. Once I solve the case (at the end of the month), I will write you to share how I solved it. I sincerely hope you beat me to the task.

Are you ready to put your deductive skills to the test?

The game is afoot!”

Now you can email the solution to Mr. Holmes for his perusal – but in the monthly Featured Detective contest – people who post their solutions thru the mail are given extra points! (Plus it gives you an excuse to purchase some top drawer stationary!)

Woot!

This is a fun and creative game that tests not only your deductive powers but your critical reading skills and the knowledge, you as a reader, have acquired of the era from which Holmes & Watson sprung.

I’ve only been a consulting detective for a month and I’m already hooked!

BUY SMALL ~ SUPPORT SMALL

April 2020

apriljpeg

Some Things

Our hearts go out ~

~ to Mary Daheim who lost a daughter. Mary sent this notice out: “…Barbara Daheim Resnick, who passed away Sunday at the age of 53. I also want to thank everyone who has contributed to the Go Fund Me site that Barb’s brother-in-law Paul Webber set up for her children, Flynn and Clara.”

~ to the family of Diana Mayabb, a staunch supporter of SMB for decades. She and her husband Jim were major collectors – though Jim collected mostly science fiction, we didn’t hold it against him and happily ordered those new releases for him – good friends and wonderful, kind and cheerful people. We miss them both terribly, and our thoughts are with Jim now. Dear Diana died early in March

~ to the world of mysteries, who lost Kate Mattes, of Kate’s Mysteries in Cambridge, MA. Like so many of us, she was forced to close her shop years ago and had been living in Vermont. Her health had not been good and she was taken away by her heart on March 25th.

~ to past colleague Karen who suffered a catastrophic lost due to a flooded basement. Music, art, and her mystery collection, including – prepare yourself – a first edition Nero Wolfe. AAAAAAAAARRRRGGGGG!

And while it shouldn’t come as a surprise, it is still shocking when the virus creeps into your family. We hope everyone in your world is safe and not too bored being housebound. We hope this all might take your mind away from your worries.

It’s a long one, so settle back!

Local Stories

From local writer J. Kingston Pierce: Seattle: Primed and Ready for Crime Fiction Fame ~Exploring the city’s history and character, through crime novels

And some great news after a month of horror stories:

Powell’s Books rehires over 100 employees after surge of online orders

Love and labor rights in the time of COVID-19: The Book Workers Union forms at Capitol Hill’s Elliott Bay Book Company

Serious Stuff

Nazi name lists in Argentina may reveal loot in Swiss bank

Birmingham’s “Fifth Girl” survived a notorious hate crime. Now she wants resitution.

Words of the Month

virus (n). late 14th C., “poisonous substance,” from Latin virus “poison, sap of plants, slimy liquid, a potent juice,” from Proto-Italic *weis-o-(s-) “poison,” which is probably from a Proto-Info-Eutoprsm root *ueis-, perhaps originally meaning “to melt away, to flow,” used of foul or malodorous fluids, but with specialization in some languages to “poisonous fluid” (source also of Sanskrit visam “venom, poison,” visah “poisonous;” Avestan vish– “poison;” Latin viscum “sticky substance, birdlime;” Greek ios “poison,” ixos “mistletoe, birdlime;” Old Church Slavonic višnja “cherry;” Old Irish fi “poison;” Welsh gwy “poison”). The meaning “agent that causes infectious disease” is recorded by 1728 (in reference to venereal disease); the modern scientific use dates to the 1880s. The computer sense is from 1972. [thanks to etymonine]

JB admits he sometimes scans headlines too rapidly, and perhaps this was tinted by the times in which we live, but he thought “In case you’re stockpiling books this month, here are some gems you may have missed from February. | Lit Hub” said “some germs you may have missed…”

Awards, etc.

Here are the finalists for this year’s PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

Book Stuff

David Goodis’ Bleak, Beautiful Vision of Humanity

‘Freshly cut grass – or bile-infused Exorcist vomit?’: how crime books embraced lurid green

Simon & Schuster is for sale because it is not videos.

In 1899, Arthur Conan Doyle Took Dictation for His Dying Friend’s Mystery Novel

From ‘Wuhan-400’, the deadly virus invented by Dean Koontz in 1981, to the plague unleashed in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, novelists have long been fascinated by pandemics

The new documentary “The Booksellers” looks at the esoteric world of the antiquarian trade, and the passionate, eclectic and endangered characters who make it hum.

Breathing New Life into Old Books

Woody Allen got a book deal. Staff at his new publisher have walked out in protest.

Sixteen of the Most Perfect Murders in Crime Fiction

The Fraught and Risky Business of Spotting a Historical Fake

Carolyn Wells, in the Library, with a Revolver: How a prolific mystery author with a penchant for collecting rare books helped to create the ‘biblio-mystery’ genre

8 Great Novels Where Things Disappear

Stockholm, Are You Listening?Why Don DeLillo deserves the Nobel

The Complicated Literature of Daughters and Mothers

How Bookshops Are Helping With Isolation

Dolly Parton is going to read us all bedtime stories.

Other Forms of Fun

March 1: Star Trek: Picard borrows an unexpected concept from Sherlock Holmes

March 2: A new site for headline-inspired fiction launches today with stories by Carmen Maria Machado, Colum McCann, and more.

March 2: New HBO Doc Centers on the Atlanta Child Murders, Reopening of Case

March 3: Christopher and Bobby From ‘The Sopranos’ Are Starting a Podcast About the Show

March 4: Bond movie ‘No Time to Die’ pushed back to November

March 6: Robert B. Parker’s (and Ace Atkins’) Spenser returns to TV in a Netflix movie starring Mark Wahlberg

March 6: Zodiac – The Most Dangerous Animal of All

March 6: The Zodiac Killer has been a mystery for 50 years – but one man thinks he’s solved it

March 10: ‘Briarpatch’ May Just Be the Coolest Show on TV

March 17: How Pretty Woman Erased Sex From Its Story

March 19: Coronavirus: Hallmark Channel plans feelgood Christmas movie marathon

March 25: The Artist Who Captured America’s Most Dramatic Courtroom Moments—And Was Hounded by the FBI

March 26: Remember Annie’s anti-book-banning speech in Field of Dreams?

March 27: Read a Deleted Scene From ‘Get Out’

March 27: The Crime Cinema Renaissance of 1990

March 31: Houseparty offers $1m reward for proof of sabotage

Words of the Month

quarantine (n): 1660s, “period a ship suspected of carrying disease is kept in isolation,” from Italian quarantina giorni, literally “space of forty days,” from quaranta “forty,” from Latin quadraginta “forty,” which is related to quattuor “four” (from Proto-Indo-European root *kwetwer– “four”). So called from the Venetian policy (first enforced in 1377) of keeping ships from plague-stricken countries waiting off its port for 40 days to assure that no latent cases were aboard. Also see lazaretto. The extended sense of “any period of forced isolation” is from 1670s. Earlier in English the word meant “period of 40 days in which a widow has the right to remain in her dead husband’s house” (1520s), and, as quarentyne (15th C.), “desert in which Christ fasted for 40 days,” from Latin quadraginta “forty.” [thanks to etymonine]

Links of Interest

February 20: The Hollywood Con Queen -She tormented studio executives, actors, makeup artists, security guys, photographers, screenwriters, athletes, even bobsledders and scuba divers for years—until corporate investigator Nicoletta Kotsianas was put on the case.

February 28: Ireland has a secret tree carved with famous literary autographs.

March 2: Man Fined for Engineering Without a License Was Right All Along

March 2: Stolen hearse with body inside leads police on wild chase

March 3: Double Indemnity Isn’t About Bad People – It’s About Redemption

March 4: How J. Edgar Hoover Used the Power of Libraries for Evil

March 4: Online Sleuths, Cold Cases, and The Early Days of a Very Particular Hobby

March 4: WeeGee: Photos of a seedy Underworld

March 6: The Art of Letting Your Heroes Get Beat Up Now and Again

March 8: Can you really hire a hit man on the dark web?

March 11: The Poison Pen Letter: The Early 20th Century’s Strangest Crime Wave

March 11: Dr. Lise Meitner: The Mystery of the Disappearing Physicist

March 11: Making a killing: what can novels teach us about getting away with murder?

March 12: The playboy Serbian spy who inspired James Bond

March 13: Saviour of the dead: Burying the bodies India forgets

March 16: ‘GoldenEye’: Why Timothy Dalton Didn’t Return For James Bond 17

March 17: U.S. Museum of the Bible’s Dead Sea Scroll Fragments Turn Out to Be Elaborate Fakes

March 17: In the Emergency Room, Doctors Need Detective Skills—And Empathy

March 18: Linda Fairstein Is Suing Netflix and Ava Duvernay For How She Was Depicted in ‘When They See Us’

March 18: Oldest bird fossil discovered, nicknamed ‘wonderchicken’

March 18: Your pictures on the theme of ‘reading’

March 19: ‘Roughing It’ on Seattle’s waterfront with Mark Twain

March 19: Harlan Coben Believes ‘PLANET OF THE APES’ is the Best Twist Ending in History

March 20: How Bad Times Bring Out the Best in People

March 20: Celebrating the 80th Anniversary of Batman’s Sidekick, Robin

March 21: Victor Olaiya: Nigeria’s ‘evil genius’ trumpeter who influenced Fela Kuti

March 22: Cigarette leads police to Florida cold case murder suspect

March 23: Book retrieval effort gives grad student welcome relief

March 24: ‘The Laughing Killer’: The Bay Area serial killer who wasn’t

March 26: The Evolution—and the Future—of the Private Eye

March 27 (an old article but one we don’t remember): The Mobster Who Bought His Son a Hockey Team ~ A tale of goons, no-show jobs, and a legendary minor-league franchise that helped land its owner in prison

March 27: The Long Tradition of Writers Needing Ritual

March 29: Serial Killer Lonnie Franklin, Known As The Grim Sleeper, Has Died In Prison

March 30: Van Gogh painting ‘Spring Garden’ stolen from Dutch museum

March 31: Alpine ice sheds light on medieval murder

March 31: Bob Dylan’s New JFK Assassination Epic Couldn’t Be More Prescient

Words of the Month

brigand (n): c. 1400, also brigaunt, “lightly armed irregular foot-soldier,” from Old French brigand (14th C.), from Italian brigante “trooper, skirmisher, foot soldier,” from brigare “to brawl, fight” (see brigade). Sense of “robber, freebooter, one who lives by pillaging” is earlier in English (late 14th C.), reflecting the lack of distinction between professional mercenary armies and armed, organized criminals.

brigandage (n): “highway robbery by organized gangs,” c. 1600, from French brigandage, from brigand. [hypothetically, as an example, oh let’s say Senators who dumped stock after a briefing on a pandemic before the public had the same info – you know, insider trading! – us] thanks to etymonline

R.I.P.

March 1: Laura Cauldwell, attorney, activist, and novelist

March 2: James Lipton, writer, actor, host of the wonderful “Inside the Actor’s Studio”, dead at 93

March 7: BarbaraNeely died after a short illness at 79

March 9: Max Von Sydow: The Exorcist and The Seventh Seal actor dies aged 90

March 13: Andreas Brown, Longtime Owner of Gotham Book Mart, Dies at 86

March 17: Stuart Whitman, prolific film and TV actor, dies at 92

What We’ve Been Up To

Amber

Finder Of Lost Things

I AM NEARLY DONE WRITING SEASON 2! HUZZA!!!

I’ve got two scenes to go – then I start editing, uploading and photographing for the posts! (But the writing takes far more time than these three steps.) So Season 2 will be on its way shortly? Well, sooner rather than later…then it’s on to writing Season 3!

The Greek Coffin Mystery – Ellery Queen

The Greek Coffin Mystery is the fourth novel in the overall series of Ellery Queen. Still a fledgling in the art of detection, this novel features a critical episode which informs all of Ellery’s later investigations, according to the man himself, which I won’t spoil by elucidating here!

This, I must admit, is one of the more unique classic mysteries I have ever read, from Ellery’s numerous brilliant yet incorrect solutions to his challenge at the end of chapter thirty.

What’s the challenge you ask? Well, Ellery, as the author of the mystery as well as being the detective within, breaks the fourth wall and addresses his readers directly;

“…ungentle reader, you now have in your possession all the facts pertinent to the only correct solution of the trinitarian problem…”

Now, Agatha Christie came a hairsbreadth away from breaking the fourth wall on occasion with Ariadne Oliver. Who’s memorable tirade on the frustration of inadvertently tying her writing career to her Finnish detective, Sven Hjerson – when she knew nothing or had any interest in Finland. But she never actually laid down an out and out, rather cheeky, challenge the way our author Ellery Queen does.

However, this feature, along with the clever mystery, and our intrepid sleuth combine together to create a page-turning and exciting book – I would recommend to anyone looking for an excellent classic mystery.

Though one note when reading if like me, you identify as female. The men in here are written as they were at the time of its original publication – 1932. Nothing inappropriate happens. But the way in which a few, but by no means, all, refer to or speak to women did have me doing a double-take. But it is such a small percentage of words within the book, other than rankling; it didn’t detract from the deductions taking place on the page.

Fran

I had a dream about being a bookseller again. However, this time the shop was owned by Stephen King – yes, THAT Stephen King – and no one would let me ring them up. Only Mr. King could make the sale. I was allowed to put things in bags. But the store was packed, so there’s that.

Meanwhile, Amber was stuffing books into somebody’s hands, JB was explaining to another person how the book they were describing wasn’t the book they were thinking of but another book altogether, and Adele was at the door to let customers in and out, and keep the zombies outside because they stank up the place. And wouldn’t buy anything.

I had planned all along to write this review for this month. I love this trilogy and wanted to share it with you.

But it starts with a worldwide pandemic. Yeah. Not the flu, exactly, and certainly not COVID 19, but still, I wondered if I should.

And decided yes, because while terrible things happen in The Chronicles of the One by Nora Roberts, much good and hope happens too. 9781250122971

Okay, hang on now, don’t be shaking your head like that. What, you think I can’t hear you? “Oh, Nora Roberts. I thought it might be something serious.” You’re assuming it’s three books about heaving and steamy and brainless, aren’t you? Boy, are you ever wrong!

There is, however, magick. Not prestidigitation but actual magick. People develop Uncanny talents and traits, and many of them are flat-out evil. You see, in Year One, on a New Year’s Eve in Scotland, a very nice man stumbles and bleeds into a strange little rock circle. It’s innocuous and no big deal, and he along with his very nice family have a very nice New Year’s Eve. Except he unwittingly releases a plague that decimates the Earth, and survivors are as often as not changed, physically changed into otherworldly creatures. Not everyone; there are plenty of ordinary humans left, but enough so that there’s a deep schism. Not between human and Uncanny, although that happens, but between Dark and Light.

The trilogy is called The Chronicles of The One, because there is one leading figure who can truly challenge the Darkness, and the books tell her story, so it’s about Fallon Swift and what she can accomplish.

9781250123008 The second book, Of Blood and Bone, is her coming-of-age book, and it is at times painful reading, but absolutely perfect.

And if I thought the last book, The Rise of the Magicks, was a bit too rushed, perhaps it’s because I didn’t want to lose touch with these people I’ve come to love and admire. 9781250123039

If anyone’s read the JD Robb books, you know that Nora Roberts can be absolutely vicious, bloody, and brutal to her characters, and that’s certainly true here. Very, very bad things happen, and the good guys don’t always win. The comparison to Stephen King’s The Stand are inevitable because the trope is the same one – good versus evil – but these authors are completely different, and so is their approach. Both are excellent, mind you. Just variations on a theme.

As always, it’s the people who captured me, and I still think about them. Relationships change, and under pressure, we find out who we really are.

And that’s why I decided to go ahead and review a pandemic series. Granted, none of us are sprouting wings or are able to create burning swords, which is kind of a shame, but we all have the resiliency that Nora Roberts brings to life, along with the need to help one another out, even when we’re afraid.

Besides, they’re seriously good stories!

Fran found out – her and JB’s delight – that John Connolly will be releasing a new Charlie Parker story in increments on his website. “But I did feel bad that publication of The Dirty South was postponed due to the current unpleasantness, and some editions in translation have also been affected. I also wanted to offer readers some small distraction over the coming weeks and months, because if you’re a writer, the only thing you can really do for those who enjoy your work is to write.” Starting April 2nd, “The Sisters Strange” will be posted daily as he writes it. “‘The Sisters Strange,’ by contrast, will involve letting readers see something like a work-in-progress as it’s being produced, and once I’ve committed to posting an extract, I won’t be able to rewrite it. In addition, you and I will be uncovering the nature of the story and the characters more or less at the same time.”

Thanks, John ~ we can’t wait!

JB

Earlier in March I had a dream that was very rambling. I don’t remember much now but Bill and his wife BJo were both in it. I think we were all in a big shop, a bookshop? Not sure. But they looked like they did when the shop first opened, spry and happy, and it was a gas to see them again!

On the morning of the 23rd I dreamt that I’d been away from the shop for a long time. No reason from the dream that I remember. I got back and found that the place was jammed with used paperbacks that were not only not needed but jammed in the shelves in odd places and out of the authors’ places. I had to run out to do something and passed Bill on my way back in. He was dressed in his usual all-tan outfit and smiled a goodbye. Back in the shop, I went into the office and Tammy followed me in. In the way that dreams make no sense, the office was my grandparents’ library, but there was crap all over the place, piles of books, junk on the floor. Tammy was drinking coffee and I don’t recall how the dream ended.

If you never knew her, Tammy was hired by Bill back in ’92 while I was on paternity leave (yes, Bill was just that hip!). Tammy had been one of his earliest book reps but was then unemployed. The three of us ran the place and she was a key member of the staff. The weekly newzines were her idea, for instance. The photo of the crow on the outdoor sign was her shot. But she and her family went through some tough times and she got sick of Seattle and they left town about a decade ago. We’ve had zero contact since, so it is very odd that she’d turn up in a dream out of nowhere. But wait – –

On the morning of the 31st, I dreamt that I was in a bookshop with a cafe. Maybe like an Elliot Bay but it wasn’t clear. I took in a stack of paperbacks to trade and handed them to this blonde woman. While she was looking at them, I got into a conversation with a couple of other booksellers, a very tall, skinny man and a shorter woman, and we commiserated about how hard it was for booksellers these days. I could see that the woman with my books was ready to talk but then my phone rang. It was Tammy. She wanted her job back. Evidently, she hadn’t heard that SMB had closed and we then got into a long conversation about how bad things were, how high rents were, and how impossible that seemed for a bookshop to be able to make it. We hung up and I went to the counter to find the woman with my books. She handed me a crumpled up piece of paper with the notes about the books. As I was trying to smooth it out, the booksellers from before called to me to join them at their table by the window. Then the blond woman shrilly whistled to get my attention – and her whistle ended the dream…..

James Ellroy’s This Storm is the second volume in his projected new quartet. It follows closely on the heels of Perfidia, which took place between the attack on Pearl Harbor and New Year’s Eve, 1941.

This Storm continues to follow that cast into uniform and into new schemes and cons during the first three months of 1942, while adding to the cast. Mendacity, violence, and lust are the order of the day while a few of the less-crooked characters actually try to solve a web of crimes instead of simply getting rich. At the center is a load of gold stolen from a train in 1931 and an LA fire in ’33. Overlording it all is Dudley Liam Smith, LAPD sergeant and now Army Major. We’re only halfway through this quartet and I already think I need to go back and re-read Clandestine and the first quartet, starting with The Black Dahlia. Considering how thick the books are, I would have all of my reading planned out for the decade. But considering that I first read the start of the quartet about 30 years ago, it’s hard to recall how this Dudley fits into that Dudley.

But think of the audacity! Clandestine unnamed is the first book in which Dudley appears, 1982. The Black Dahlia was published in ’87. He’s got to make what is happening in books written now fit into what he wrote 38 and 33 years ago. No small feat! And re-reading it all would be daunting. I mean – that’s seven and a half inches of Ellroy!

Needless to say, This Storm is brilliant and utterly scandalous. There’s not an iota of political correctness in the story. It’s violent. It’s abrupt. It’s sexy. It’s evil. It’s a drug-induced romp.

NOT TO BE MISSED

“this storm, this savaging disaster”, attributed to W.H. Auden, surely a title for our times.

During this ongoing nightmare, it is even more crucial to support your neighbors and friends by shopping with small businesses.

SUPPORT SMALL, SAVE SMALL

January 2020

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WELCOME TO A NEW YEAR

WELCOME TO A NEW DECADE

We’ve recently learned that Sandy, the creator and original editor of our quarterly newsletter and one-time bookkeeper, has moved back to town.

Welcome Back! We hope to see you soon.

‘It’s really flattering’: Obama picks Spokane’s Jess Walter for favorite books of the year list

Extra! Extra! Pike Place Market newsstand to close after 40 years

Serious Stuff

Bone-Marrow Transplants Alter Genetic IDs, Complicating DNA-Based Criminal Analysis

Henry Lee Lucas Was Considered America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer. But He Was Really a Serial Liar.

Evidence Scandal In Orange County Stirs Conflict Within Law Enforcement

How This Con Man’s Wild Testimony Sent Dozens to Jail, and 4 to Death Row

Is this cave painting humanity’s oldest story?

Stop Believing in Free Shipping

Prime Leverage: How Amazon Wields Power in the Technology World ~ Software start-ups have a phrase for what Amazon is doing to them: ‘strip-mining’ them of their innovations.

New Research Identifies Possible Mass Graves From 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

From The Guardian’s Editor’s Best Stories of 2019: ‘Blood on their hands’: the intelligence officer whose warning over white supremacy was ignored

This Is America: Eleven years after Obama’s election, and three years into the Trump presidency, the threat of domestic terrorism can’t be ignored.

A group of self-taught investigators is confronting the limits of using DNA and genetic genealogy to identify victims.

Words of the Month

vade-mecum (n.) “a pocket manual, handbook,” 1620s, Latin, literally “go with me;” from imperative of vadere “to go” (see vamoose) + me “me” + cum “with.”

Book Stuff

An Algorithm Can Tell Us How Much Shakespeare Was Actually Written by Shakespeare

In Greenwich Village, the Perfect New York Bookstore Lives On

Latin Dictionary’s Journey: A to Zythum in 125 Years (and Counting)

Janet Evanovich wins big with Stephanie Plum series and TV deals

Alaska: Northern Noir ~ Crime fiction has found a strange home in the cold wilds of Alaska. (have to say these people are way behind the curve if they think this is new…)

Couth Buzzard Books, celebrating a milestone anniversary, has become the ‘Cheers’ of Greenwood‘

The Ferrante Effect’: In Italy, Women Writers Are Ascendant ~“My Brilliant Friend” and Elena Ferrante’s other best-selling books are inspiring female novelists and shaking up the country’s male-dominated literary establishment.

New book claims Albert Camus was murdered by the KGB

7 Things Crime Readers Will No Longer Tolerate by Christopher Fowler

Get Radcliff!: The Search for Black Pulp’s Forgotten Author. Gary Phillips on the trail of Roosevelt Mallory, who helped revolutionize 1970s pulp fiction, then disappeared.

From Gar Anthony Haywood: I Wrote the Kind of Character I Wanted Most to Read About

The Elements of the Haunted House: A Primer or, How to Build a Haunted House Mystery from the Ground Up

Jeff Lindsay Has a New Anti-Hero ~ The Dexter Author Talks Craft, Character, and Cannibalism

Peter Pan’s dark side emerges with release of original manuscript

George RR Martin opens bookshop next to his cinema in Santa Fe

America 2019: Area man steals rare books in order to pay for cancer treatment.

How Do Some Authors “Lose Control” of Their Characters?

The (Quiet) Death of a Legendary Parisian Bookstore

These are the 10 Best-Selling Books of the Decade

From Portland, another bookshop closes: Another Read Through is leaving Mississippi Avenue

Do apostrophes still matter?

January 11 – Candace Robb and Kim Zarins, 4pm, UBooks

January 21 – Chad Dundas, 7:30pm, Powell’s

January 29 – Mary Wingate, 7pm, Village Books

January 30 – Russell Rowland, 7:30pm, Powell’s

Other Forms of Fun

Motherless Brooklyn: Ed Norton on the film it took him 20 years to make

How Olga Kurylenko Won ‘Bond’ and Narrowly Lost ‘Wonder Woman’

The Evolution of the Femme Fatale in Film Noir

The Bone Collector, Jeffery Deaver’s first book with forensic anthropologist Lincoln Rhyme, was made into a 1999 film staring Denzel Washington as Rhyme and Angelina Jolie as the young cop who becomes his “legman”. Rhyme is a quadraplegic and needs Amelia Sachs to visit the crime scenes. The books are a true updating of the armchair detective story – it’s a great series. Now, starting Friday, Jan. 10, the book comes to the smaller screen when ‘Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector’ debuts on NBC. As they say, check your local listings!

The Most Underrated Crime Films of the Decade

Coming in February: ‘Narcos: Mexico’: Scoot McNairy Hunts Diego Luna in Season 2 First Look

From “Making a Murderer” to “Don’t F**k with Cats,” the evolution of true crime this decade

BioShock returns for more gene-enhanced gaming

Words of the Month

Ignis fatuus: a light that sometimes appears in the night over marshy ground and is often attributable to the combustion of gas from decomposed organic matter or a deceptive goal or hope.

Ignis fatuus is a Latin term meaning, literally, “foolish fire.” In English, it has come to designate a hovering or flitting light that sometimes appears in the night over marshy ground that is attributable to the combustion of gas from decomposed organic matter. Other names for this light are jack-o’-lantern and will-o’-the-wisp—both of which are connected to folklore about mysterious men, Jack and Will, who carry a lantern or a wisp of light at night. A Scottish name for ignis fatuus is spunkie, from spunk, meaning “spark” or “a small fire.” It has also been told that ignes fatui (the Latin plural form) are roaming souls. No doubt these stories spooked listeners by candlelight, but in time, advancements in science not only gave us electricity to dispel the darkness but proved ignis fatuus to be a visible exhalation of gas from the ground, which is rarely seen today.

‘But thou art altogether given over, / and wert indeed, but for the light in thy face, the son of utter / darkness. When thou ran’st up Gadshill in the night to catch my / horse, if I did not think thou hadst been an ignis fatuus or a / ball of wildfire, there’s no purchase in money. O, thou art a / perpetual triumph, an everlasting bonfire-light! ‘

— William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1, ca. 1597

(Thanks to Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

Links of Interest

November 26: Lee Child: How Jack Reacher Fits Into a Long History of Folk Heroes

December 2: Great Film Composers: The Music of the Movies: How the rise of the Nazis gave us the best film noir music

December 2: Judge tosses $71-million verdict against NBC Universal over ‘Columbo’ profits

December 2: ‘The Irishman’ Left Out the Full Story of the Disastrous Angelo Bruno and Frank Sidone Murders

December 3: ‘He Had It Coming’ looks back on the ‘Murderess Row’ that inspired ‘Chicago’

December 4: Five ‘hot mic’ moments that got leaders in trouble

December 5: The murdered ‘handsome’ priest with a decades-long secret

December 5: Spassky vs Fischer: How the chess battle became a theatre event

December 6: How to conquer work paralysis like Ernest Hemingway

December 9: ‘Perfect’ Scotch whisky collection could be worth £8m

December 10: Failed plot to steal domain name at gunpoint brings 14-year prison term

December 11: “Portrait of a Lady” ~ Stolen Klimt mystery ‘solved’ by gardener in Italy

December 11: Art Forgery Is Easier Than Ever, and It’s a Great Way to Launder Money

December 11: Buyer returns Grease jacket to Olivia Newton-John after auction

December 12: The CIA’s Former Chief of Disguise Drops Her Mask

December 13: Hosting an Orgy? This 1970s Cookbook Has You Covered

December 13: Octopus and eagle square off at Canadian fish farm

December 16: Christopher Reeve’s ‘Superman’ Cape Sells at Auction, Sets Record

December 16: Mice watching film noir show the surprising complexity of vision cells

December 16: Babe Ruth: Baseball player’s landmark home run bat fetches $1m\

December 16: Meet a Bad Man Who Became a Truly Great Spy

December 16: Grave of top Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich opened in Berlin

December 17: A New Way of Looking at ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’

December 17: Judge rules in favor of US effort to take Snowden book money

December 19: James Blake uses unseen Planet Earth footage in new video

December 19: Is the Netherlands becoming a narco-state?

December 20: Democratic lawmakers pushed Spy Museum to alter CIA torture exhibit\

December 21: Police department finds furry culprit behind toy theft

December 22: Take a look behind the ‘small doors to imaginary spaces’ within bookshelves

December 22: The night Samuel Beckett was nearly stabbed to death by a pimp

December 23: LS Lowry: Lost painting to go on sale after 70 years

December 23: I was a teenage code-breaker at Bletchley Park

December 23: Daniel Craig Wanted to Resign as Bond After ‘Spectre’. Here’s the Real Reason He Returned For ‘No Time to Die’

December 27: Sriracha hot sauce recall over ‘exploding’ bottle fears

December 31: Lawyers: Robert Durst Wrote Incriminating ‘Cadaver’ Note

December 31: Human remains found in Idaho cave identified as outlaw who died over 100 years ago

Words of the Month

terroir: the combination of factors including soil, climate, and sunlight that gives wine grapes their distinctive character. First known use was in 1863. From Old French tieroir, from Vulgar Latin *terratorium, alteration of Latin territorium. (thanks to Merriam-Webster) [what a difference and “i” makes…]

R.I.P.

December 3: D.C. Fontana, famed writer for Star Trek, dies at 80

December 7: Friends actor Ron Leibman dies at the age of 82

December 8: Winston Lawson, Secret Service agent with JFK in Dallas, dies at 91

December 8: Caroll Spinney: Sesame Street’s Big Bird puppeteer dies

December 9: Overlooked No More: Rose Mackenberg, Houdini’s Secret ‘Ghost-Buster’

December 9: Battle of Britain pilot Maurice Mounsdon dies aged 101

December 10: George Laurer, an Inventor of the Modern Bar Code, Dies at 94

December 11: Jeanne Guillemin, pioneering researcher who uncovered a Cold War secret, dies at 76

December 13: Danny Aiello, beloved character actor and Oscar nominee for ‘Do the Right Thing,’ dies at 86

December 13: Elisabeth Sifton, editor and tamer of literary lions, dies at 80

December 16: Nicky Henson: Stage and screen actor

December 20: Claudine Auger: French actress known for Thunderball role dies aged 78

December 20: Acclaimed Author and Journalist Ward Just Dead at 84

December 25: Allee Willis: ‘Friends’ theme songwriter

December 26: Sue Lyon, teenage star of Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Lolita,’ is dead at 73

December 31: Sonny Mehta, visionary editor and head of Alfred A. Knopf, dies at 77

December 31: M. C. BEATON: R.I.P.

Words of The Month

vamoose (v.): “to decamp, be off,” 1834, from Spanish vamos “let us go,” from Latin vadamus, first person plural indicative of vadere “to go, to walk, go hastily,” from Proto-Indo-European root *wadh- (2) “to go” (source also of Old English wadan “to go,” Latin vadum “ford;” see wade (v.)). (thanks to etymonline)

What We’ve Been Up To

Amber

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Finder of Lost Things

This coming Friday we come to the last post for series one! Can you believe it? And we will see how Phoebe and Joseph cope with the after effects of the Woman In White’s attack.

Series Two – will drop in about two-ish months. I will give you guys plenty of warning when I’m going to start posting! Though on the upside if you haven’t started reading my story yet – this is the perfect time to catch up!

Chloe Neill – Wicked Hour

The second book in the Heirs of Chicagoland series is a fun, fast-paced romp that is stronger than its predecessor by a factor of five. While a few of the original cast make their presence felt, they only enter into the narrative when necessary. Rather than making gratuitous and/or distracting appearances – which is really lovely.

The mystery presented in the second installment is also solid. Part of the Pack living in Northern Michigan is experiencing problems…and that’s putting it mildly. So Connor Keene, heir apparent to his father’s position as Apex, is sent to figure out what exactly is going on.

What he finds is a hornet’s nest.

Into this mess of resentment, issues, and anger Conner’s also brought, Elisa Sullivan. Because if things aren’t already stressful enough, let’s bring along the girl you’re more than just a little interested in and see how the pack reacts.

Elisa is more than capable of staring down a few shifters – katana in hand.

Then we get to the murder…and the other murder…and bad magic.

Seriously this book was a whole lotta fun to read. Neill introduced us to a quasi-new character named Alexei Breckenridge – who next to Lulu and Elisa’s cat Eleanor of Aquitaine (who will exact revenge if called by anything less than her full title) – is my favorite thus far. Mostly due to his dry sense of humor, the fact he enjoys needling Elisa by continuing to sneak up on her and the fact you never know where any of his sentences will take you.

If you are looking for a new-ish shifter/sorcerer/vampire mystery series to read, without needing to go back and read the original Chicagoland series (which honestly you should because it was great), you should start with Wicked Hour!

Fran

I’ve been trying to figure out how to sell M. R. Carey‘s post-apocalyptic thriller THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS (Orbit) to myself, if I was still selling books. Because on the surface, I’d have turned it down, despite the whole post-apocalyptic thing. I guess it’s a “Trust me” book.

9780316334754 See, it’s written in present tense, and we all know how weird I am about that. But worse, it’s about zombies. I really don’t like zombies. Bleah. I know lots of people do love them, and they’ll jump all over this book, but I find them boring.

However, I really do like the TV series “Lucifer”, and M. R. Carey is the writer behind that. He creates amazing, three dimensional and compelling characters, and I’m a sucker for great characters! And twisty, well told stories. He does those brilliantly.

Oh, short synopsis, yeah. In this devastated future in a military base in England, children are strapped into wheelchairs, arms, legs and heads. Then they’re wheeled into classrooms where they’re taught all the things school children learn. Melanie is about ten years old, and her favorite teacher is Miss Justineau. Miss Justineau makes learning fun, and she really interacts with the children. Melanie loves Miss Justineau, the other teachers not so much.

However, outside the base, things are bleak. A fungus, Ophiocordyceps, has mutated – or has been mutated – so that it no longer just infects ants, and has taken over mankind. Well, most of mankind. And the fungal infection moves quickly, thoroughly, no chance of recovery ever, and makes the new hosts mindless and hungry.

I don’t want to say too much more because THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS takes off at breakneck speed, and it really doesn’t slow down. M. R. Carey understands timing and plot and tension, but he also understands how complicated people are, and how powerful love can be.

So yeah, this is a “Trust me” book, but I really do want you to trust me on it! The science is disturbingly cool (I kind of want to watch the David Attenborough documentary about the ants, but I’m afraid it’ll just creep me out), the story revolves around a teacher and her pupil, and the writing is simply brilliant.

Trust me.

JB

Shop dream on the morning of Xmas Eve: what I remember was looking into a box of books, a shipment all jumbled together, and realizing that reserves hadn’t been pulled so I was digging through the books and flipping pages in the reserve book, trying to match up authors to lists of customers who wanted a copy. The books in the box were in no special order, so I was flipping back and forth in the reserve book as I fished out a hardcover, for some reason not taking all the books out first and organizing them… Where do these dreams come from !

Could there be a better way to end the year, and to relax over a few days away, that to catch up on a favorite author’s book you’d missed???? I doubt it, I really do.

I had ordered what I thought was his latest book last Spring to take on a trip back to KC but it ended up being the story from the year before. What the hell – I read it again on the trip, the books are that good. So it had always stuck in some shadowed part of my brain that there must’ve been a DeMarco from this year that I’d not read. Finally, I started to wonder when there’d a be a new one next year and that’s when I finally cleared to mush from my cabasa and got a copy of House Arrest.

It’s a very different DeMarco story, even while it is another great DeMarco story.

Arrested for the murder of a congressman in the Capital, DeMarco sits in jail with a target on his forehead. In many ways, this is Emma’s book, as she swings into action to prove he was framed. To do that, she’s gotta provide the FBI with the real killer. So she relies on her years of training and work and those she’s gotten to know to save DeMarco. Why? She abhors his love of baseball and golf, thinks his wardrobe is ridiculous, and is pained to know he works for a man she detests but, really, Emma likes DeMarco. She appreciates his spirit, his ethic, and his willingness to put himself in the line of fire to help someone – as he has with Emma a couple of times.

There are big changes in DeMarco’s life mandated by publicity of the arrest and I have no idea where Mike will put him. It could be the end of the series – any of books could – but I think he has freed DeMarco to do other things.

And I can’t wait.

**Fridays in January ~ Our Best of the Decade Lists**

SHOP LOCAL

SUPPORT LOCAL

November’s Newzine

Serious Stuff

My Family Story of Love, the Mob, and Government Surveillance

Samuel Little: FBI confirms ‘most prolific’ US serial killer

How Did a Serial Killer Escape Notice? His Victims Were Vulnerable and Overlooked

The Green River Killer and Me

The British Spy Who Tried to Stop the Iraq War

Cameron’s Books & Magazines, a Portland institution since 1938, is closing

New York’s infamous Rikers Island jail is to close

Seattle hosts true crime event hunting for fresh clues in decade-old murder case

Appeals Court Set To Weigh In On Request To Access Testimony From 1946 Lynching Cold Case. Can and Should Grand Jury Material ever be Made Public?

Famed NYC ME Baden Says Examination of Jeffrey Epstein Death Points to Murder

Words of the Month

myrmidon (n): One of a warlike people of ancient Thessaly, legendarily ruled by Achilles and accompanying him to Troy, c. 1400, from Latin Myrmidones (plural), from Greek Myrmidones, Thessalian tribe led by Achilles to the Trojan War, fabled to have been ants changed into men, and often derived from Greek myrmex “ant” (from Proto-Indo-European *morwi– (see Formica (2)), but Watkins does not connect them and Klein’s sources suggest a connection to Greek mormos “dread, terror.” Transferred sense of “faithful unquestioning follower,” often with a suggestion of unscrupulousness, is from c. 1600. (thanks to etymonline)

Book Stuff

The Global War on Books, Redux: Governments are spending a remarkable amount of resources attacking books — because their supposed limitations are beginning to look like ageless strengths.

Author Jenny Lawson Aims to Create a Sanctuary With Nowhere Bookshop

Ancient Greek Scroll’s Hidden Contents Revealed Through Infrared Imaging

Light Billions of Times Brighter Than the Sun Used to Read Charred Scrolls From Herculaneum

Diary of a small town sensation: how the Wimpy Kid author built his dream bookshop

“Me Before You” Author Jojo Moyes Has Been Accused Of Publishing A Novel With “Alarming Similarities” To Another Author’s Book

From The Crime Hub – Some of the Best Legal Thriller Writers

Australia’s First Published Dictionary Was Dedicated to ‘Convict Slang’

Home on the Range ~ Craig Johnson – ‘Land of Wolves’ author moseys between stacks at the ranch

Celebrating Elmore Leonard’s “Rules for Writing”

“My Ties to England have Loosened”: John LeCarré on Britain, Boris and Brexit

John le Carré: ‘Politicians love chaos – it gives them authority’

Every Child Can Become a Lover of Books

When True Crime Gets Personal

Removing the Mystery From Mystery Writing: 13 Tricks Used by Acclaimed Novelists

Tana French Is Our Best Living Mystery Writer

One Neat Trick to Writing Great Mystery Plots (in which Charles Finch raves about Tana French)

The 20 essential L.A. crime books

New Hunger Games prequel gets a compelling title, book cover

Oxford University professor accused of selling ancient Bible fragments

The Booksellers is a fascinating look into the world of rare book dealers

Writer Nicholas Meyer on the Inspiration Behind His Latest Sherlock Holmes Tale

How to Write Hercule Poirot in 2019

Learning to Write Mysteries the Mystic River Way

The Crimes Never End: A Guide to Mystery’s Biggest and Longest-Lasting Book Franchises

What It’s Like to Build and Operate a Tiny Traveling Bookshop

Diaries Expose “Strong Brew’ of Ripley Novelist Patricia Highsmith’s Dark Thoughts

The State of the Crime Novel: A Roundtable Discussion with Crime Authors

The Hunt for Shakespeare’s Library: I Couldn’t Stop Looking If I Wanted To

Words of the Month

Calliope : 1. the Greek Muse of heroic poetry 2. a keyboard musical instrument resembling an organ and consisting of a series of whistles sounded by steam or compressed air

With a name literally meaning “beautiful-voiced” (from kallos, meaning “beauty,” and ops, meaning “voice”), Calliope was the most prominent of the Muses—the nine sister goddesses who in Greek mythology presided over poetry, song, and the arts and sciences. She is represented in art as holding an epic poem in one hand and a trumpet in the other. The musical instrument invented and patented in the 1850s, played by forcing steam or compressed air through a series of whistles, was named after the goddess. Because its sound could be heard for miles around, the calliope was effective in luring patrons to river showboats, circuses, and carnivals, which is why the instrument continues its association with such attractions today.

(Thanks to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary for the definition)

Other Forms of Fun

ABC’s Stumptown is the scuzzy private-eye show we need right now (it’s also ‘set’ in Portland)

Knives Out director Rian Johnson explains how to build a great whodunnit mystery

Kenneth Branagh’s Death On The Nile Starts Filming With An All-Star Cast

Nancy Drew and the Mystery of Her Enduring Relavence

Nancy Drew Is Not Who You Remember ~ The girl detective gets a CW reboot, but is she more than endlessly recyclable intellectual property?

The Seductive Power of the Femme Fatale

Is the time finally right for a “Friends” reboot?

Sesame Street to cover addiction with new muppet Karli

Marvel Comics at 80: From bankruptcy threat to billions at the box office

Motherless Brooklyn Is a Warning About the Dangers of Unchecked Political Power

true love meets true crime

This ‘N’ That

Japan ninja student gets top marks for writing essay in invisible ink

JUNIE B. JONES: NIGHTMARE CHILD OR FEMINIST ICON

Author Events

November 1: Ann Cleeves, UBooks at University Temple United Methodist, 7pm

November 6: Curt Colbert (with Jake Rossiter!), Third Place/LFP, 6pm

Noveber 13: Warren C. Easley, Powell’s 7pm

November 13: Clyde Ford, Third Place/LFP, 7pm

November 15: Daniel H. Wilson (and the Andromeda Strain), Powell’s, 7:30pm

November 16: Clyde Ford, Village Books, 4pm

November 16: Rick E. George, Village Books, 7pm

November 23: Ace Atkins (with Spenser), Third Place/LFP, 6pm

Words of the Month

Triskaidekaphobia: fear of the number 13

It’s impossible to say just how or when the number thirteen got its bad reputation. There are a number of theories, of course. Some say it comes from the Last Supper because Jesus was betrayed afterwards by one among the thirteen present. Others trace the source of the superstition back to ancient Hindu beliefs or Norse mythology. But if written references are any indication, the phenomenon isn’t all that old (at least, not among English speakers). Known mention of fear of thirteen in print dates back only to the late 1800s. By circa 1911, however, it was prevalent enough to merit a name, which was formed by attaching the Greek word for “thirteen”—treiskaideka (dropping that first “e”)—to phobia (“fear of”).

(Thanks to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary for the definition)

Links of Interest

September 26: Sold ~ Charles Dickens’s Liquor Log

September 30: Piece of missing L.A. Library sculpture found in Arizona. Where are the other two?

October 1: The Messy Consequences of the Golden State Killer Case

October 1: Japan’s last pagers beep for the final time

October 3: How Mary Roberts Rinehart, Queen of the Mystery Novel, Was Very Nearly Murdered (And don’t miss Amber’s write up further along!)

October 3: Gandhi’s ashes stolen and photo defaced on 150th birthday

October 4: ‘Object, matrimony’: The forgotten tale of the West Coast’s first serial bride killer

October 4: Herculaneum scroll: Shining a light on 2,000-year-old secrets

October 5: Playing Catch a Killer With a Room Full of Sleuths – At a forensic conference in California, law enforcement officials grappled with how to avoid destroying one of the field’s biggest innovations in decades.

October 5: John Dillinger: US gangster’s body set to be exhumed

October 6: The peculiar bathroom habits of Westerners

October 7: The Comic That Explains Where Joker Went Wrong

October 7: Paul McCartney’s psychedelic Wings tour bus rediscovered

October 7: Saturn overtakes Jupiter as planet with most moons

October 8: Rube Goldberg: celebrating a remarkable life of cartoons and Creations

October 8: Here Are All the Aston Martins Confirmed for James Bond’s “No Time to Die”

October 8: Inside the abandoned Soviet base the Cold War left behind

October 8: See How The Foremost ‘50s Pulp Fiction Illustrator Anticipated Fake News In This Unusual Museum Show

October 10: Harry Potter first edition sells for £46,000 at auction

October 12: How to protect your books with medieval curses

October 14: After years searching, I found my sister next door

October 15: Blooming fakes: Amsterdam tourists hit by tulip scam

October 16: The art of doing makeup on a dead body

October 16: Would You Buy Serial Killer John Wayne Gacy’s Property?

October 16: Egypt archaeologists find 20 ancient coffins near Luxor

October 16: For Sale: Jane Austen’s Wince-Inducing Descriptions of 19th-Century Dentistry

October 16: The mysterious ‘inverted tower’ steeped in Templar myth

October 17: Why is Banksy vetting the customers of his online store?

October 17: Leonardo da Vinci feud: The ‘earlier’ Mona Lisa mystery

October 17: Paul Dano to play the Riddler in The Batman (briefly mentioned in the story is this gem: “He’s also attached to The Power of the Dog, the new film from Jane Campion that will also star Kirsten Dunst and Benedict Cumberbatch.” !!!

October 18: Fierce Australian dust storm turns day to night in seconds

October 18: Fearless, free and feminist: the enduring appeal of Jack Reacher

October 20: Longtime Universal boss Ron Meyer sues art dealer over ‘forged’ Mark Rothko painting

October 21: Australian newspapers black out front pages in ‘secrecy’ protest

October 21: Why Do We Rewatch Our Favorite Films?

October 21: Franco exhumation: Why is Spain moving a dictator’s remains?

October 24: Roy DeCarava’s photos of jazz greats

10/26: Defying the Cosa Nostra: The Man who Accidentally Bought a Mafia Stronghold

October 27: Kurt Cobain cardigan sells at auction for $334,000

October 27: Cimabue painting found in French kitchen sets auction record

October 28: Mystery of the skeleton hijacked by Nazis and Soviets

October 26: Ted Bundy Said an Entity Made Him Murder. These Ghost Hunters Went Searching for It

Oct 28: Want free barbecue for life? Help catch the burglars who stole from this restaurant

October 30: Australian police freeze multi-million dollar properties in Chinese crime link probe

Words of the Month

Scaramouch: 1. a stock character in the Italian commedia dell’arte that burlesques the Spanish don and is characterized by boastfulness and cowardliness 2: a cowardly buffoon

In the commedia dell’arte, Scaramouch was a stock character who was constantly being cudgeled by Harlequin, which may explain why his name is based on an Italian word meaning “skirmish,” or “a minor fight.” The character was made popular in England during the late 1600s by the clever acting of Tiberio Fiurelli. During that time, the name “Scaramouch” also gained notoriety as a derogatory word for “a cowardly buffoon” or “rascal.”

Today not many people use the word (which can also be spelled “scaramouche”), but you will encounter it while listening to Queen’s ubiquitous rock song “Bohemian Rhapsody,” in the lyric “I see a little silhouetto of a man / Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the fandango?”

(Thanks to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary for the definition)

R.I.P.

October 7: Rip Taylor Was In On The Joke

October 12: Robert Forster, Oscar-Nominated ‘Jackie Brown’ Actor, Dead at 78

October 13: Hitchhiker’s actor Stephen Moore dies aged 81

October 21: Nick Tosches, writer of great variety, dies at 69

October 28: Robert Evans, Chinatown producer, dies at 89

What We’ve Been Up To

Amber

Today on Finder of Lost Things...Beatrice stuns Little Ben with a compliment of sorts, Phoebe gives him some much needed advice all before dinner arrives at their table!

Miss Pinkerton – Mary Roberts Rinehart

When you start this mystery, there are a few things you should keep in mind.

One, Miss Pinkerton reads differently than most modern mysteries. Due in large part to the had-I-but-known writing device, Rinehart is credited with founding. Meaning? Sprinkled here and then in the narrative are tantalizing hints of what’s to come — placed there by Rinehart to keep her readers turning the page late into the night.

By today’s standards, this method of storytelling is considered old fashioned. But it makes sense as most of Rinehart’s work was initially serialized in magazines, so she used this style of foreshadowing to hook her readers into buying the next edition of said publication. Initially, until I read enough to understand her style, it felt very staccato. But now that you’ve been forewarned, this shouldn’t be a problem for you!

(I didn’t find out any of this background information until after I finished the book – because I don’t read introductions until I finish said story, due to the shocking number I’ve read which contained inadvertent spoilers for veteran readers.)

Second, Rinehart not only was a novelist but a trained nurse as well. This hands-on experience allows Rinehart to infuse nurse Hilda Adams with some real depth, allowing our amateur detective to rise above her cookie-cutter counterparts in other mysteries of a similar vintage.

Not unlike Agatha Christie’s Superintendent Battle, who uses his police uniform to dupe the unsuspecting into thinking him dull and slightly stupid. Miss Adams uses her crisp white uniform to fade seamlessly into the background of a household to become a police detective’s ‘man on the inside’ and help solve a murder or two.

Third, similar to Georgette Heyer mysteries, Rinehart adds several different types of love/romantic entanglements to her story. Each fitting well into the narrative, they add extra layers to the story and the characters.

This touch of romance didn’t bother me in the least as Rinehart wove it into the text seamlessly. However, I know this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, so I’m letting you know. (BTW – it isn’t sappy and provides motive – so if you’re on the fence never fear it only adds layers.)

Overall I enjoyed reading this book.

In fact, the byplay between Miss Adams and her police counterpart intrigued me enough I’m going to hunt down the rest of the Miss Pinkerton mysteries! Because I’d really like to know where Miss Adams’ story started and where it ends since Rinehart provided just enough hints to make me want to find out.

Fran

9781501998096 I know, I know, you’re going to say, “Oh look, Fran’s touting a book by William Kent Krueger. So what? She always does.” It’s true. I do.

But wait, hear me out! STOP SCROLLING, DARN IT!

Desolation Mountain (Atria) is somewhat different from the rest of the Cork O’Connor books, and in an intriguing – if dark – way. Now I’ll grant you, I’ve spent several years poking around the North Country with Cork and his family, so in the first chapter I knew who the two people talking were even before I read the names. And what’s exciting about Desolation Mountain is it taps into something Kent is really good at: coming-of-age stories.

Go re-read Ordinary Grace and tell me I’m wrong.

Stephen is really growing up, and I can see him eventually taking Cork’s place as an investigator, even though that’s not his path. But in addition to becoming a Mide, Stephen has a powerful need to know, to understand. And he has to learn who he is first, hence the coming-of-age bit. Granted, he’s 20 now, but sometimes I still think he’s 6. It’s been a delight watching Stephen grow up under William Kent Krueger’s skillful hands, and he’s becoming a powerful character on his own, which is fantastic.

But the other seriously cool aspect to Desolation Mountain is that Kent brought in a character from his stand-alone book, The Devil’s Bed. Bo Thorsen is involved in the same investigation as Cork and Stephen, but he’s not necessarily their ally. It makes for some off-the-charts tension.

So yeah, I’m pushing a book by William Kent Krueger, and it’s not a surprise, but the book itself, Desolation Mountain, really is! And if you haven’t read any others and pick this one up to start with, like my wife did, you’re gonna want to go back to the beginning and start with Iron Lake.

*************************************

Note from the real crime world – I’ve been reading a lot of police reports in my job, and I can now definitively say that every crime, every last one, is made infinitely worse when you read, “The suspect was wearing a clown suit.”

JB

Blowout came from an interesting question. 9780525575474

Rachel Maddow wondered why Putin would risk messing with the 2016 US election. In hindsight, we know they did and, to some point, it was worth it – but it clearly wouldn’t have been a sure bet. Had Clinton won, the full weight of the US government would’ve been pointed at Russia in retribution. So why the risk? It is an interesting question.

“The meek may inherit the earth, but the bold could certainly screw it up in the interim.”

And that’s where the book goes. Along with way, she provides a succinct and entertaining history of the oil industry and the birth of fracking. She overlays it with the growth of Exxon/Mobil, the corporate rise of Tillerson, the political rise of Putin, the growth of Russia’s kleptocractic state, and the economic pit Putin drilled for himself and his country.

And the center of it all is Ukraine. The Ukraine of Crimea, and Manafort, and the crippling sanctions affixed by the Obama administration due to Russia’s interference in Ukraine and its elections, and their military incursions. Ukraine remains in the center of things, now thanks to Drumpf and his quid pro quo, Giuliani and his buddies, and, of course, Putin’s schemes. Power, money, oil, natural gas, and more power.

“Putin and his techno-warriors figured out what differences and disagreements and prejudices were corroding the health and cohesion of American society. They found the most ragged faults and fissures in our democracy: immigration, race, religion, economic injustice, mass shootings. Then they poured infectious waste into them.” Putin just hack America. She adroitly shows he fracked us.

It’s a book with a broad topic but written with confidence and comedy – that which makes no sense is not spared her wit and scorn. What is or was farce is clearly shown to be. You hear her voice in her words as clearly as if she was sitting at your side reading it to you.

Blowout is a gusher of info and a barrel of fun. It is also a serious work.

9780982565087 A while ago, I wrote a couple of posts about a trip to San Francisco and taking the Dashiell Hammett Walking Tour. It took me a couple of weeks but I hunted down a copy of Don Herron’s out-of-print book about it. It is great fun. It provides an entertaining and informative biography of Hammett as the tour proceeds around the city, telling you what he did when he lived at this address or that address, why this building or that building is mentioned in The Maltese Falcon and what the support of that conclusion is (the late PI and crime writer Joe Gores plays a hefty part in the opinions), and includes photos and maps of the routes. If you find a copy, and it is the 30th Anniversary edition with forwards by Hammett’s daughter Jo and by crime writer Charles Willeford, snag it.

Lastly ~ My Latest Seattle Mystery Bookshop Dream!

Bill Farley and I were some kind of contractors, doing painting in someone home (certainly affected by my current work in a hardware store). We walked into the bookshop – which was in a dingy area of town but not on Cherry St, I don’t think, the street was level – and it was clear it had just moved into this smaller space. Empty bookshelves were stacked to the left side of the door in front of a big window. There were also some that were jammed with books – I think it was the beginning of the alphabet. There were shelves lining the walls and Amber was busy loading books into them. There weren’t very many people in the shop at that moment but more began to come in. I stepped behind the register to ring someone up and there was suddenly a long line of people plus a cranky old woman who wanted to ask question NOW. Then the space was much smaller and it was hard to move around the shelves that cluttered the space. and the jam of customers.

Once again, Fran wasn’t in the dream. Not sure what that means…

But it was nice to spend time with Bill again!

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July

I’ve written this to her a number of times but thought it was time to do it publicly: Amber does a great job creating a header for each month’s newzine. All Hail Amber! ~ JB

Odds~n~Ends

When I moved out to the PNW for grad school, one of my teachers was a great artist named Frank Okada. I got to know him very well. He kindly allowed me to borrow records from his vast jazz collection to tape. He also loaned me a copy of his late brother’s book, No-No Boy, a novel about a Japanese boy who joins the army in WWII. It’s a great book.

It’s now become the center of controversy as it was believed to be under copyright but it is now to be released by Penguin/Randomhouse. Here’s a story from the Seattle Times about the situation. I would recommend the novel to anyone but I would urge that they buy the University of Washington Press edition as it includes material from his siblings and the estate gets the royalties. As of now, PenguinHouse gives the family nothing. ~ JB

Hard to know what this portends: Barnes & Noble Set To Be Sold To Elliott Management For About $683 Million

Sellers in Amazon’s bookstore feel beaten up by counterfeit Wild West

“Since 1944, the mystery of how Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince, went missing remained unsolved for decades. That was until the chance discovery of a bracelet by a fisherman began to unravel what had happened”. BBC.com

Here’s one for Adele: What Really Happened to Malaysia’s Missing Airplane?

Pistol that Van Gogh ‘used to shoot himself’ sells for £115,000 at Paris auction

‘I Really Thought He Was Going to Kill Me and Bury My Body’ Sherrilyn Kenyon accused her husband of poisoning her. Was it her wildest fiction yet?

Podcasts!

There isn’t really much crime or mystery – as defined classically – in this podcast but it sure is an interesting take on modern America: Michael Lewis is probably most widely known for his book Moneyball (its a great book and was a good movie, too). His podcast is called Against the Rules and deals with the erosion, if not elimination, of referees in our lives. And by referees, he means those neutral people who used to be in the middle of disagreements and who would dispassionately follow the rules to settle the dispute. It is not just about umpires!

Words for the Month

idioticon (n): “a dictionary of a dialect,” 1842, via German, from Latinized form of idiotikon, neuter of Greek idiotikos, from idioma (see idiom). [thanks to etymonline]

Not at all what you expected, right?

Author Events

July 1: Deborah Harkness, Third Place/LFK, 7pm

July 8: Brad Holden, Elliot Bay, 7pm

July 9: Julie Weston, Third Place/LFP, 7pm

July 24: Daniel Nieh, Powell’s, 7:30pm

July 30: Kevin O’Brien, Elliot Bay, 7pm

Words for the Month

gore (n.): A “triangular piece of ground,” Old English gara “corner, point of land, cape, promontory,” from Proto-Germanic *gaizon- (source also of Old Frisian gare “a gore of cloth; a garment,” Dutch geer, German gehre “a wedge, a gore”), from Proto-Indo-European *ghaiso- “a stick, spear” (see gar). The connecting sense is “triangularity.” Hence also the senses “front of a skirt” (mid-13th C.), and “triangular piece of cloth” (early 14th C.). In New England, the word applied to a strip of land left out of any property by an error when tracts are surveyed (1640s). Only later comes –

gore (n.): “thick, clotted blood,” Old English gor “dirt, dung, filth, shit,” a Germanic word (cognates: Middle Dutch goor “filth, mud;” Old Norse gor “cud;” Old High German gor “animal dung”), of uncertain origin. Sense of “clotted blood” (especially shed in battle) developed by 1560s (gore-blood is from 1550s). [thanks to etymonline]

Links

May 23: Reading a ridiculously long book might seem like a chore, but it offers an unexpected reward

May 30: VICE LITTLE EARNER- Bawdy guide to London’s secret brothels in 1840s sells for £4k at auction

May 30: James Bond still a strong ‘recruitment sergeant’ for MI6, says expert

May 30: The Curious Origins of the Dollar Symbol

June 1: There are floating library boats in Sweden

June 1: House used as Tony Soprano’s is on the Market

June 1: So you want to be a novelist? A New York literary agent, editor and author reveal how bestsellers are born

June 2: James Ellroy says film adaptation of LA Confidential was ‘as deep as a tortilla’

June 2: Jodie Comer: “Mum and Dad took my BAFTA on a pub crawl”

June 3: ‘When They See Us’ Sparked a Boycott Against Central Park Five Prosecutor Linda Fairstein

June 3: Long-lost Lewis Chessman found in Edinburgh family’s drawer

June 4: Manson Family Member Leslie Van Houten Denied Parole by California Governor

June 4: Tin House magazine ends a 20-year run that helped make Portland’s literary reputation

June 5: Tourist’s lucky guess cracks safe code on first try

June 5: James Bond set ‘explosion’ at Pinewood Studios injures one

June 7: Linda Fairstein, Former ‘Central Park 5’ Prosecutor, Dropped By Her Publisher

June 7: “Langdon”, based on the Dan Brown books, is headed to NBC TV

June 7: George Orwell’s 1984: Why it still matters

June 7: The Intimacy of Crime Scene Photos in Belle Epoque Paris

June 9: A telephone for grief after the Japanese tsunami

June 10: New knees and tourist selfies: OJ Simpson on life post-prison in Las Vegas

June 10: The story of Australia’s oldest LGBTI bookstore

June 10: The First Murder Case to Use Family Tree Forensics Goes to Trial

June 11: Restaurant Temporarily Closed After Decomposing Body Leaked Through Its Ceiling

June 11: People Who Pay People to Kill People

June 12: Kim Goldman’s crusade: Make O.J. Simpson pay and never forget

June 12: A Very Happy 50th Birthday To ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’

June 12: Nirvana and Eminem music ‘lost in fire’

June 12: This Archive Captures Centuries of British Crime, From Cheese Theft to Murder

June 13: ‘Making a Murderer’ Brings Call to Abolish Actual Malice in Libel Suits

June 13: Trove of English Court Records Reveal Stories of Murder, Witchcraft, Cheese Theft

June 13: Lost Miles Davis album, Rubberband, to be released in September

June 13: Narnia creator CS Lewis’s letters to children go on sale

June 13: When Pepsi was swapped for Soviet warships

June 13: D.B. Cooper boat tour will offer insight into famous case during trip to sandbar where skyjacker’s money found

June 14: Leonard Cohen love letters fetch $876,000 at auction

June 14: Disappeared Argentina activists’ son finds family after 40 years

June 15: Kate Atkinson: ‘I live to entertain. I don’t live to teach or to be political’

June 15: Why would a nurse become a serial killer?

June 16: Babe Ruth jersey fetches record-breaking $5.64m at auction

June 17: North Carolina suspect fought off by boy with machete due in court

June 18: Mobster’s son behind dad’s murder at McDonald’s drive-thru: feds

June 18: A Prison Death, A Mysterious Autopsy, and Official Silence

June 18: NPR Identifies 4th Attacker In Civil Rights-Era Cold Case

June 20: Faber & Faber: by Toby Faber review – the untold story of a publishing giant

June 21: A Library Thrives, Quietly, in One of Pakistan’s Gun Markets

June 21: DC Comics shutters its legendary Vertigo imprint in reorganization

June 22: ‘Building over history’: the prison graveyard buried under a Texas suburb

June 22: Rogue slug blamed for Japanese railway chaos

June 23: Timeless Literary Feuds

June23: By the Book: Greg Iles

June 24: The Chilling Story of Three Women Haunted by the Same Rapist—And How the Law Failed Them

June 24: How Amazon benefits from counterfeit books

June 25: Death in Ice Valley – New clues in Isdal Woman mystery

June 25: Stan Lee’s ‘first novel for adults’ to be published this autumn

June 25: Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul spark “Breaking Bad” reunion buzz with cryptic “Soon” messages

June 26: Target Pulls New Thread in Bikini Yarn

June 26: MOST STOLEN BOOKS 2018–2019 SCHOOL YEAR

June 27: ‘The Books Will Stop Working’: How The Microsoft Store Is Retiring Its Books Category

June 27: ‘Harry Potter’ Book With Daniel Radcliffe’s ‘First’ Autograph Sold For Over $3,000

June 28: MacKenzie Lueck murder suspect apparently wrote book involving burning bodies

June 28: No need to feel guilty about the pleasures of mystery books

June 29: Romance novelists speak out on the harassment they face online

June 29: Book details British cop’s impressions of Detroit crime

June 29: Five Examples of Steve Englehart’s Love of Obscure Comic Book History

R.I.P.

June 1: Frank Lucas, Dies at 88; Drug Kingpin Depicted in American Gangster

June 8: Anthony Price, espionage fiction master and respected reviewer, dead at 90

June 8: Nicky Barnes, ‘Mr. Untouchable’ of Heroin Dealers, Is Dead at 78

June 12: Sylvia Miles, Scene-Stealer in ‘Midnight Cowboy’ and ‘Farewell, My Lovely,’

June 13: Bill Wittliff, ‘Lonesome Dove’ Screenwriter, Dies at 79

June 15: Italian film director Franco Zeffirelli dies at 96

June 23: Judith Krantz, Whose Tales of Sex and Shopping Sold Millions, Dies at 91

June 24: Billy Drago, who machine-gunned Sean Connery in “The Untouchables, Dies at 73

June 27: Max Wright: Star of Alf and Buffalo Bill dies aged 75

Words of the Month

vulgate (n.): Latin translation of the Bible, especially that completed in 405 by St. Jerome (c.340-420), c. 1600, from Medieval Latin Vulgata, from Late Latin vulgata “common, general, ordinary, popular” (in vulgata editio “popular edition”), from Latin vulgata, feminine past participle of vulgare “make common or public, spread among the multitude,” from vulgus “the common people” (see vulgar). So called because the translations made the book accessible to the common people of ancient Rome.

vulgar (adj.): From the late 14th C., “common, ordinary,” from Latin vulgaris, volgaris “of or pertaining to the common people, common, vulgar, low, mean,” from vulgus “the common people, multitude, crowd, throng,” perhaps from a Proto-Indo-European root *wel- “to crowd, throng” (source also of Sanskrit vargah “division, group,” Greek eilein “to press, throng,” Middle Breton gwal’ch “abundance,” Welsh gwala “sufficiency, enough”) [not in Watkins]. Meaning “coarse, low, ill-bred” is first recorded 1640s, probably from earlier use (with reference to people) with meaning “belonging to the ordinary class” (1530). Related: Vulgarly.

What we have added to human depravity is again a thoroughly Roman quality, perhaps even a Roman invention: vulgarity. That word means the mind of the herd, and specifically the herd in the city, the gutter, and the tavern. [Guy Davenport, “Wheel Ruts”]

vulgarian (n.): A “rich person of vulgar manners,” 1804, from vulgar (adj.) + -ian.

What We’ve Been Doing

Amber

Finder Of Lost Things:

Last Friday – Phoebe mails off her anonymous tip to Ranger Lade about The Woman In White, Beatrice gets an epic stomach ache, and Ms. Hettie voices her displeasure.

The Disappearance of Alistair Ainsworth – Leonard Goldberg

So here’s the thing – my local book store only had the new volume of the Daughter of Sherlock Holmes series on the shelves…

However, the title & summary of the new book intrigued me. Holmes’s daughter, 221b Baker Street, two Watsons, German spies, and a missing cryptographer – how could I resist such a combination?

So, not so shockingly, I went ahead and bought the book – and even less shockingly since I’m writing this review – I was rewarded for my out of order reading.

The Disappearance of Alistair Ainsworth is an intriguing, intelligent, and well-plotted mystery. While Joanna (Sherlock’s daughter), Dr. Watson and Dr. Watson Jr. depend on the Sherlockian method, they are not bogged down or bound by the minutia of the original stories. Goldberg cleverly works in select slices of the Doyle mysteries but reworks them, so they feel natural and unwilted.

Even better? Goldberg doesn’t spoil the mysteries which came before The Disappearance of Alistair Ainsworth, so you can start with the third book without knowing the solutions to the previous installments! Now, this doesn’t mean you aren’t left wondering what exactly happened to Sherlock, what happened to Joanna’s first husband or how she came to marry Dr. Watson Jr. – it means you need to go back and read the other two books to find the answers!

Even if you aren’t knowledgeable of Sherlock Holmes’s exploits, this book won’t leave you scratching your head. It is very grounded in 1914 London, the First World War, and the mystery at hand. I think anyone who enjoys historical mysteries, which just happened to feature well-known detectives, will find this book an enjoyable read!

I know I did!

Fran

In my experience, there are three types of people who are late to the party. Spoiler alert, I know this from experience.

You’ve got the genuinely late, genuinely remorseful types. (rushes in wailing, “I’m so sorry! Traffic (or whatever)….)”

Then there are the fabulously late. (swanning in, “I’m here, let’s get this party started!”)

And the guiltily late. (sneaks in, hides in a corner, pretending to have been there all along, says nothing).

In this particular scenario, I’m the last one. I mean, I’m owning it and all, and I’m genuinely sorry about not having attended this party sooner, but…yeah. I should have been here earlier and I’m absolutely and most sincerely remorseful that I haven’t been. Because boy, have I been missing out.

I finally read Louise Penny. 9781250068736

I know! I know! And yes, you’re right, and yes, I should have begun the journey with Inspector Gamache back when Adele told me to, but since the Pennys seemed to sell themselves, and no one can match Adele’s brightness and delight when talking about them, I figured I’d get around to them one of these days. That day arrived, and I’ve blasted through Still Life and A Fatal Grace almost without taking a breath.

Except I had to stop and let you all know that while I may be late to this particular party, I’m about to jump out of the corner and start dancing with everyone else.

At least until I get my hands on The Cruelest Month (which I just did). Then I’m going back to ignoring all y’all. I’ll be needed in Three Pines. And yes, I want to live there too, even if it does give intimations of being the Quebecois version of Cabot Cove or Midsomer. I don’t care. I love these people!

Let’s Party!

JB

It is my pattern, my want, my curse, that whenever I get interested in something, I have MV5BNTEyYmIzMDUtNWMwNC00Y2Q1LWIyZTgtMGY1YzUxOTAwYTAwXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjIyMTc0ODQ@ to search out info about it until I feel “full”. As soon as HBO began to air promos for “Chernobyl”, I was sold on watching it and looked forward to it. That desire was rewarded, I felt, by it being terrific TV – compulsively watchable, vivid, dynamic, truthful in is presentation, and honest. After the first episode I began to look for information about the show and the accident itself.

While I remember the accident happening at the end of April of 1986 (the month we got the keys to our house) there was much I didn’t recall clearly. Just the scale of the accident. The series was very good in presenting the accident, what lead up to it, how it unfolded. I understood going in that there were liberties taken by the creators with some of the characters – it’s HOLLYWOOD for heaven’s sake! – in order to present the story. Some shortcuts, some composite characters, some details of the massive story have to be curtailed in order to tell the larger story and have it make sense in five hour increments.

In my readings about show, I found out that there was podcast going on to accompany the series. It was a joint effort of Peter Sagal (from NPR’s “Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me”) and the writer and producer of the series, Craig Mazin. Each episode of the show is discussed and dissected and Mazin is clear to explain what was done to make the show work. If you’ve watched the show but not listened to the podcast, I urge you to. If you’ve not watched the show, you must.

I got it through Apple’s podcast system. Should be easy to find on any system. Never once does Mazin claim his show is a complete recitation of the accident. He’s very clear that his interest was in not only portraying the accident and what it did to people but to also show the grim dangers of secrecy and lies.

Because the drive of the show is how hiding the truth is dangerous. While the men running the reactor that night made mistakes, the Soviet system set it up to happen eventually. If you’re too young to remember the USSR and the Cold War, the events and circumstances of the Chernobyl catastrophe will be an mind-blower. And in our time, when truth and science are dismissed and spat upon, the is a real-life cautionary tale whose end will not be written for thousands of years.

9781501134616 And somewhere in my reading, I ran across a book that had just been published – Adam Higginbotham’s Midnight in Chernobyl. It was being touted as the definitive account of the entire, horrific affair – and it was. It’s dramatic and heroic in scope, you get the details and numbers in a smooth, flowing narration, and portrait he provides is staggering in its breadth and honesty. It’s got maps, and diagrams, and photos. About the only thing it lacks is the distinct smell of radiation – like ozone we’re told.

He puts you into the danger, telling you that radiation pops off your eyeballs with the sensation of a spray of water. You read how much went into building the first sarcophagus over the ruined reactor and how the second structure is big enough to hold three of the St. Peter’s Basilica.

It’s a staggering story. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Now the question is, have I learned enough to satisfy the craving?

For now, perhaps – now it is back to the Mueller report!

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April Newzine

Odds ‘N’ Ends

This Week in True-Crime Podcasts: Going Deeper on Netflix’s The Keepers

JB stumbled on this site in early March. There are interesting articles going back months. This’ll be a site we’ll keep an eye on for future links. Under “Culture”, he found this:

March 1st: Fingerprinting: How Studying These Unique Patterns Forever Changed History ~A cousin of evolution theorist Charles Darwin created the first fingerprint classification system.

Next, under “Action”, then “Crime”, he found a long list of interesting pieces, from the Lufthansa Heist to the strange story of Sir Henry Whitecliffe. Lots to poke through!

Here’s a new one for us. We’ve all heard scathing reviews by critics of movies before they open. But have you ever heard a scathing review of a movie poster before the movie opens? Here’s your chance: NPR’s Ailsa Chang talks with film critic William Bibbiani about the role movie posters play today, following the release of the poster for Quentin Tarantino’s, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Words of the Month

fossick: From 1850–55; compare dial. fossick troublesome person, fussick to bustle about, apparently fuss + -ick, variant of -ock. As a verb (used without object): Mining , to undermine another’s digging; search for waste gold in relinquished workings, washing places, etc., to search for any object by which to make gain: to fossick for clients. As a verb (used with object), to hunt; seek; ferret out.(thanks to dictionary.com)

Book Events

April 1: Dana Haynes, Powell’s, 7pm

April 2: Jeffrey Siger, Third Place Books/LFP 7pm

April 8: Harlan Coben, Third Place Books/LFP 7pm

April 9: J.A. Jance, Third Place Books/LFP 7pm

April 9: Jacqueline Winspear, Elliot Bay 7pm

April 11: Mary Daheim & Candace Robb, Third Place Books, 7pm (postponed from Feb due to SNOW)

April 13: J.A. Jance, Village Books, 7pm

April 17: J.A. Jance, University Books, 7pm

April 18: Alafair Burke, Powell’s 7:30

Links of Interest

March 1: Hallie Rubenhold: ‘Jack the Ripper’s victims have just become corpses. Can’t we do better?’

March 2: How the N.Y. Public Library Fills Its Shelves (and Why Some Books Don’t Make the Cut)

March 5: Nobel prize in literature to be awarded twice this year

March 5: The Who’s Pete Townshend announces debut novel, The Age of Anxiety

March 5: Crusader skull stolen from Dublin church recovered

March 6: The boldness factor: Here’s how to distinguish a psychopath from a ‘shy-chopath’

March 7: By the Book: Donna Leon

March 7: World Book Day features Welsh-language titles in Braille

March 7: Meet the Real Estate Appraiser of the World’s Most Gruesome Murder Sites

March 7: Penn and Teller and Mischief Theatre to produce Magic Goes Wrong

March 8: 5 New International Series Visit 5 Far-Flung Crime Scenes

March 9: Mobster Carmine Persico dies after serving 33 of 139-year sentence

March 10: 3 Billboards In Baltimore: How One Woman Is Trying To Find Her Sister’s Killer

March 10: Great Escape hero’s journal of getaway plot uncovered

March 11: Will Seattle save WA’s only Black-Owned Bookstore?

March 12: Nurse from Cornwall told of own death in pension letter

March 12: Wild goats flock into town in bad weather

March 13: Chickens ‘gang up’ to kill intruder

March 14: Crime author: Life and death on Bradford’s ‘forgotten’ streets

March 14: Stolen masterpiece was switched with fake in police sting

March 14: Frank Cali, of New York’s Gambino family, is shot dead in New York

March 15: The Wild Story of the Real-Life Mobster Who Starred in ‘The Godfather’

March 16: Charles Manson, Rose Bird, Caryl Chessman and California’s wrenching death penalty debate

March 17: An app called Citizen promises “awareness” of nearby danger. What it provides is more complicated.

March 18: What Not to Do After Robbing a Bank: Put the Money Right Back

March 20: Edible Book Festivals Are for Pun and Food Lovers

March 21: The police sex scandal that ‘rocked’ 1929 Portland – and might be tied to a notorious unsolved murder

March 21: Mount Everest: Melting glaciers expose dead bodies

March 22: How a bookshop wolf handles awkward customers

March 25: The amateur sleuth who searched for a body – and found one

March 26: A Dutchman known as the “Indiana Jones of the art world” has found a Picasso painting that was stolen 20 years ago.

March 26: Vatican women editors resign from women’s magazine

March 26: Paul McCartney’s school book sold for £46k after bidding war

March 26: Sir Edward Elgar manuscript found in autograph book

March 27: Egyptian coffin art in ‘pop-up’ show in pub

March 27: Could A Novel Lead Someone To Kill? ‘Murder By The Book’ Explores The Notion

March 28: Garfield phones beach mystery finally solved after 35 years

March 28: ‘Fake’ Botticelli painting is from artist’s studio

March 28: Super-rare Harry Potter book with title misspelling sells at auction

Words of the Month

claque (n.): A “band of subservient followers,” 1860, from French claque “band of claqueurs” (a set of men distributed through an audience and hired to applaud the performance or the actors), agent noun from claquer “to clap” (16c.), echoic (compare clap (v.)). Modern sense of “band of political followers” is transferred from that of “organized applause at theater.” Claqueur “audience member who gives pre-arranged responses in a theater performance” is in English from 1837.

This method of aiding the success of public performances is very ancient; but it first became a permanent system, openly organized and controlled by the claquers themselves, in Paris at the beginning of the nineteenth century. [Century Dictionary]

Thanks to Says You!, episode #134

R.I.P.

February 10 – (but no one knew until March) Jan-Michael Vincent, star of Airwolf and The Winds of War, dies at 74

March 1: Charles McCarry, master of American espionage fiction, died at 88. “There is simply no other way to say it,” Otto Penzler, a leading expert on crime and espionage fiction, wrote in the New York Sun in 2004. “Just the straightforward, inarguable truth: Charles McCarry is the greatest espionage writer that America has ever produced.”

March 4: Luke Perry of Beverly Hills, 90210 and Riverdale dies at 52

Words of the Month

toady (n.): A “servile parasite,” from 1826, apparently shortened from toad-eater “fawning flatterer” (1742), originally (1620s) “the assistant of a charlatan,” who ate a toad (believed to be poisonous) to enable his master to display his skill in expelling the poison. The verb is recorded from 1827. Related: Toadied; toadying.

What We’ve Been Doing

Amber

Don’t forget! Check out my mystery blog! Finder Of Lost Things

This week we discover Beatrice has an arch nemesis…much to everyone’s amusement!

Deanna Raybourn – A Dangerous Collaboration

Veronica Speedwell is back! Woot! After the last fantastic installment, A Treacherous Curse, Victoria was left with a bit of a conundrum, i.e., her feelings for Stoker.

So what does she do? The only sensible thing…run away!

When she finally returns, six months later, she barely has time to unpack her bags before Stoker’s brother Lorde Templeton-Vane whisks her off to a remote island in Cornwell. Where nothing is exactly as it seems…

I don’t know how Deanna Raybourn does it – but the Veronica Speedwell Mysteries get better and better with every installment! And I’m not the only one who thinks so, as she is in the current class of Edgar Award nominees – for Best Novel. Not Best Historical Mystery – but Best Novel – the bluest of blue ribbons of the Edgars.

Somehow in this book, she manages to take a traditional country house mystery and gently twist it into something far more interesting than the original cloth it’s cut from. From changing up the setting from a manor house to a creaky old castle (with its own poison garden) to altering the typical countryside setting to a windswept island (full of superstition) each of the traditional features were there – but so artfully arranged that it wasn’t until I finished the book that I realized the style Rayborn had chosen.

And I read a lot of country house mysteries.

However, what Raybourn deftly handles in this book are the tangled feelings Veronica holds for Stoker (and vice versa). Never once did I roll my eyes or skip ahead because the words written on the page we so syrupy sweet or maudlin that they pushed the bounds of credulity. Raybourn did a seriously good job layering them into the narrative in just the right amount!

While this particular style, is usually bloodless, Raybourn is able to add a tremendous sense of urgency & horror in the solution, never fear. Even better? She plays by The Rules! Everything the reader needs to solve the mystery along with Veronica & Stoker is laid out before you. However, in true author form, you aren’t quite sure you’re correct until the crucial moment, which is a wonderful feeling!

If you can’t tell, I loved this book! It was an exciting and fast-paced read which didn’t disappoint!

Now you don’t have to read the rest of the books to read this one – but I highly suggest you at least read A Treacherous Curse first – as there will be large swaths which won’t make as much sense without knowledge of Veronica, Stokers and Lord Templeton-Vane’s backstories. (But seriously all the books are great and well worth your time – and they’re in paperback now – so why not give one a go?)

If you enjoy historical mysteries, you will not find this book or series wanting!

Fran

I took a quick break in my Christine Feehan binge because the new Anne Bishop “Others” novel is out, and, well…Anne Bishop. The Others. They’re my Kryptonite. Okay, one of many, but still.

If you haven’t read them, you absolutely have to start with Written in Red. The world she’s created is only somewhat similar to ours, so you need your feet firmly under you before you tackle Wild Country (Ace). You most especially need to have the fifth in the “Lakeside Courtyard” series, Etched in Bone, firmly in your mind before you tackle this one.

Wild Country takes place not long after the Great Predation, when everything is still very much in flux between the Others and the humans. The formerly human controlled town of Bennett is beginning a mixed species experiment, to see if this time it can work if the Others are in charge instead of the humans.

Bennett is very much an Old West frontier-type town, a boom town as long as humans remember who surrounds them, not just in the wild country but their neighbors. Anyone with any power is Other. Humans can build their businesses, as long as the Others – in this case the Sanguinati – approve.

But, as with our Old West, where there’s boomtown, there’s trouble.

I re-read Lake Silence, the first of the Others novels that wasn’t a Lakeside Courtyard novel, just to remind myself of the world. Lake Silence is a much lighter-hearted book. Not that what happens to Vicki isn’t dark, but between the Sproingers and Yorick’s Vigorous Appendage, Lake Silence was a fun read.

Wild Country hearkens back to Written in Red in many ways. It’s very dark, bad things happen to good people with no one able to stop it, and honestly, I think it’s some of Anne Bishop’s finest writing. But you have to have your feet firmly entrenched in the events that happen in Etched in Bone, not only to understand the severity of what happens, but also because some of the Lakeside Courtyard folks are involved in this story.

I was up until 3:44 in the morning finishing this. And I think I’ll have to go back and re-read it, because I was tearing through to find out what happened so quickly that I’m sure I missed bits.

What an amazing series. In fact, I may just go back and re-read the whole thing, but reverse the order of the last two books, so that I get that hard one-two punch, followed by life in Sproing, which is decidedly less dramatic, despite the eyeball in the wave-cooker.

Woof. I’m exhausted. But in a really good way. Thank you, Ms. Bishop!

JB

Magnificent, stunning, a massive and major work, an epic journey into our contemporary heart of darkness.

9781400096930

I have to believe that this really is the end of the saga due to the way the story arcs across the three books. Winslow said that he was done after The Power of the Dog.

9781101873748

Then he swore he was done after the sequel, The Cartel.

But The Border really must be it – or he continues with secondary characters… which he is capable of doing.

If you are at all interested in his new book, you must start with Power of the Dog. The Cartel begins soon afterward, as then does The Border. These are not really three books, these are three sections of one massive story.

Its a commitment, yes. It would be a marathon, yes. But if we’re in a time in which folks will binge hours upon hours of a TV series, it is nothing to commit to binging this set of books.

So do it.

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Saturday, April 27th ~ Independent Bookstore Day!

January Newzine

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL! WELCOME TO 2019!

Awards!

2018 Nero Award Winner Announced:

Winner: Stephen Mack Jones, August Snow (Soho Crime)

The 2018 Nero Finalists:

Warren C. Easley, Blood for Wine (Poisoned Pen Press)
Loren D. Estelman, The Lioness is the Hunter (Forge)
Matt Goldman, Gone to Dust (Forge)
Kathleen Kent, The Dime (Mulholland Books/Little, Brown)

November 27: MWA Announces 2019 Special Edgar Awards – Grand Master, Raven and Ellery Queen Award Recipients

Podcasts

Michael Connelly is starting a podcast called Murder Book. Sounds like fun! It starts January 28th.

Word of the Month

nick-fidge: a child who is always getting scolded (thanks to Says You, episode #815)

Book Events

January 9: Christopher Sandford, Third Place Books/SP

January 11-20: Tasveer South Asian Literary Festival

January 12 and Jan. 16.: Jayne Ann Krentz

January 18: Lindsay Faye, Powell’s

January 18: Gail Carriger, UBooks

January 29: Ian Rankin in conversation with Phillip Margolin, Powell’s

Links of Interest

November 30: Powell’s Books CEO reflects on her career, reading habits and why she loves books

November 30: Books are back: Indigo CEO talks the future of book stores, new Robson Street store

December 2: When he feared communists were infiltrating America, Congressman Larry McDonald took extreme measures — building his own intelligence-gathering arm.

December 2: Jeeves And Wooster, But Make It A Modern Spy Novel

December 2: Is Your Holiday Gift Spying On You?\

December 3: In Love With Teen Lit: Remembering The ‘Paperback Crush’ Of The ’80s And ’90s

December 3: Spoiler Alert! The Psychology Of Surprise Endings

December 3: 2018 Bad Sex Writing

~ Bad Sex in Fiction Award: James Frey ‘honoured’ to win 2018 title for novel ‘Katerina’

~ Bad Sex in Fiction Award: Haruki Murakami, James Frey and Gerard Woodward among all-male shortlist

~ Bad Sex awards: 20 of the worst shortlisted extracts from Morrissey to Stephen King

December 5: Former Guild Theatre in downtown Portland will become home to Japanese bookstore

December 6: How We Got Hooked On Grisly True Crime Murders

December 6: Val McDermid’s ‘Broken Ground’ Balances Location, Character And Props In Perfect Proportion

December 6: What Kind of Monster Tears the Pages Out of Books? Aquaman!

December 7: The worst things about working in shops at Christmas

December 7: The Paper Publishing a Holiday Books Guide since 1851

December 8: Is Listening to a Book the Same Thing as Reading It?

December 9: The Man Making Art From Government Surveillance

December 10: Starving The Watchdog: Who Foots The Bill When Newspapers Disappear?

December 10: John le Carré’s Next Novel to Land in 2019

December 11: Mystery Blast Sank The USS San Diego in 1918. New Report Reveals What Happened

December 11: Brazilian Booksellers Face Wave of Closures That Leave Sector in Crisis

December 11: What’s eating this 400-year-old painting?

December 12: Chocolate meltdown closes German road

December 12: 25 Movies Added To National Film Registry

December 12: James Patterson made $86 million in 2018, topping the list of the world’s highest-paid authors

December 12: When out-of-date code causes chaos

December 13: Roald Dahl’s war medals finally arrive, 73 years on

December 13: New Zealand anger over Google naming murder suspect

December 13: New York Times London crime Twitter appeal backfires

December 14: The inside story: How police and the FBI found one of the country’s worst serial killers

December 15: Oregon library halts book-discard effort after list revealed

December 17: Amazon faces boycott ahead of holidays as public discontent grows

December 18: She swiped her co-worker’s Coke can. Police say it cracked a 28-year-old murder case.

December 18: “Making a Murderer” detective sues Netflix for defamation

December 18: Cate Blanchett Disappears in the Trailer for “Where’d You Go, Bernadette”

December 19: Lee Child on HARDtalk

December 20: Third of rare Scotch whiskies tested found to be fake

December 21: Why this Tokyo book shop is charging customers an entry fee

December 22: True-life treasure hunt that turned into a comic book

December 23: Bottleneck at Printers Has Derailed Some Holiday Book Sales

December 27: James Lee Burke ~ By the Book

December 28: This American Life ~ The Room of Requirement: “Libraries aren’t just for books. They’re often spaces that transform into what you need them to be: a classroom, a cyber café, a place to find answers, a quiet spot to be alone. It’s actually kind of magical. This week, we have stories of people who roam the stacks and find unexpected things that just happen to be exactly what they required.”

December 28: Notes from the Book Review Archive: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Thought Sherlock Holmes Was ‘a Lower Stratum of Literary Achievement’

December 28: How paperback redesigns give publishers a second chance at winning readers

December 28: Glasgow’s LGBT book shop a ‘wonderful success’

December 28: Josephine Baker’s secret life as a World War II spy

December 29: The Krull House by Georges Simenon review – a dark masterpiece

December 29: New Life for Old Classics, as Their Copyrights Run Out

December 30: Tell Us 5 Things About Your Book: A Deep Dive Back Into ‘The Sopranos’

Word of the Month – Continued

Murdermongress – (nonce-word) A female writer of murder stories.

Origin: From murdermonger + -ess. Earliest use found in Ogden Nash’s (1902–1971) description of Agatha Christie in a 1957 work.

Pronunciation: /ˌməːdəmʌŋɡəˈrɛs//ˈməːdəˌmʌŋɡ(ə)rɪs/

(Thanks to Oxford English Dictionary)

R.I.P.

December 14: Sondra Locke: Any Which Way You Can actress dies aged 74

December 18: Penny Marshall: US TV star and director dies aged 75

December 27: Seattle loses its chronicler of vice: journalist Rick Anderson This is a photo from our old blog: “Journalist, columnist and all-around-writer Rick Anderson was in to sign ‘Seattle Vice’. The sub-title says it well: ‘Strippers, Prosititution, Dirty Money and Crooked Cops in the Emerald City’. 11.20.10”

Word of the Month – Lastly

scot-free (adj.) Old English scotfreo “exempt from royal tax,” from scot “royal tax,” from Old Norse skot “contribution,” literally “a shooting, shot; thing shot, missile” (from Proto-Indo-European root *skeud- “to shoot, chase, throw;” the Old Norse verb form, skjota, has a secondary sense of “transfer to another; pay”) + freo (see free (adj.)). First element related to Old English sceotan “to pay, contribute,” Dutch schot, German Schoß “tax, contribution.” French écot “share” (Old French escot) is from Germanic. (thanks to etymonline)

What We’ve Been Doing

Amber

Don’t forget to check out my original mystery! Finder Of Lost Things

This Friday Phoebe meets her mystery during an unexpected FLYT fare!

Murder At The Brightwell by Ashley Weaver

Murder At The Brightwell is a rare treat, a contemporaneously written mystery which feels as if it were penned during the nineteen-thirties. A closed caste of characters, subtle violence, and with the very glamorous upper-crust class of English society – all of which are hallmarks of the era (of writing).

What I find fascinating is the author’s ability to slip in complex emotional ties without ever detracting from the story: the not-so-subtle marital issues, the love triangles and a finely illustrated double standard applied to husbands & wives of the period – all of which concern, in one way or another, our band of vacationers. But Weaver does such an excellent job of using these same motives in a variety of ways it adds to the underlying tension without ever once becoming monotonous.

I loved it.

Her styles reminds me a bit if you crossed Georgette Heyer’s mysteries with Agatha Christie’s. Not romance as such portrayed on the page, but the detailing of complex relationships shared by people which can give rise to all kinds of unresolved or unexpressed feelings which in turn can lead to happy endings if hammered out or dangerous, dark emotions if left to fester.

This understated attention to the interpersonal relationships and social mores makes for fascinating and rich reading.

Because our detectives are suffering the woes of marital strife, much of the book feels a touch melancholy. Which is not usually my cup of tea, but because the mystery and the people are so interesting, for once this didn’t bother me. Which is a huge tribute to the author, because the prose never tipped into the trap over overstated sadness or despair – or having the heroine witter on about what a bad wife she thinks she is (taking on blame that isn’t her own trying to justify her husband’s bad behavior is an irritating read, in my opinion).

In any case, I would recommend this first in series to anyone who enjoys reading a great classic/historical mystery set in England!

Fran

If you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember Mr. Peabody and Sherman, and Mr. Peabody’s WABAC machine. Of course, I always thought of it as “Way Back” machine, but it did make history interesting.

Fun Fact (before I actually start talking books): For a long time, nobody knew what WABAC meant, just that computers of that period generally ended in AC – ENIAC, UNIVAC, which lead to “brainiac”, where AC stood for Analog Computer – so of course WABAC had to end in “AC”. It was theorized at one point that WABAC stood for “Wormhole Activating & Bridging Automatic Computer”, but in 2014, DreamWorks created the “Mr. Peabody and Sherman” movie, and they announced that WABAC actually stands for “Wavelength Acceleration Bidirectional Asynchronous Controller”. So now you know.

Anyway, we hop into the WABAC machine, and we head to the 1970’s, which is farther back than I’d prefer to remember it being, and the sentence that always led to brainiac exercises was, “How do you justify your existence?”

That was the question that was asked of guests at every meeting of the Black Widower Society, a fictional monthly meeting of men who were based on the real life society Isaac Asimov belonged to at the time, although the cast was never based on his compatriots.

Tales of the Black Widowers and More Tales of the Black Widowers are frequently overlooked by both science fiction and mystery lovers, which is unfortunate because they are some fabulous little mysteries. At each meeting of the Black Widowers, a puzzle is presented, whether deliberately or not, and all of the wildly intelligent members of the Black Widowers takes a turn at trying to solve it. In the end, it’s the waiter, Henry, who comes through, because he sees things simply and straightforwardly.

Okay, before someone starts shouting at me about sexism and whatnot, remember the time this was written. Yes, it’s sexist. Not necessarily misogynistic, but definitely sexist. My response is that’s the time it was written, it’s a period piece – you’ll notice no one has cell phones either – and just enjoy the puzzles. The personalities of each of the characters is well-defined, and as a treat, in one of the stories in the sequel, Asimov inserts himself as a guest, although he uses the pseudonym “Mortimer Stellar”.

Seriously, take a trip back to the mid 70’s and have a few evenings with the Black Widowers, if you can. The books are largely out of print, to the best of my knowledge, so you have the added delight of tracking them down, like the detective you know you are!

(BTW: Amber Here – I read all these short stories at Fran’s urging and she’s right – as always – these are Fine mysteries! Which are well worth the extra effort of tracking down!)

JB

I’ve read most of the books by Ben MacIntyre. I missed the book on the formation of soldiers during WW2 of what would become the SIS. That came out when the shop was closing and I just didn’t get to it. His newest is The Spy and the Traitor. It’s a very timely book as it deals with Soviet espionage and the Russian spy who became an important double agent for the West at the end of the Cold War. 9781101904190

It’s full of Soviet aims and Soviet skills, as well as the mixed efforts of their side. For every die-hard Soviet agent intent on defeating the West there was one who didn’t care and worked more for themselves. This story of Oleg Gordievsky is illuminating because he was from a KGB father and had accepted the entire Soviet line about the decadent West. While he did see as much decadence in the West as in his own country, he was staggered by the freedoms, the art, the music, and the happiness of the West.

In an age where Russia seems to be turning back to Soviet life under Putin, MacIntyre lays out the fruitlessness of this. It’s all about control at the top and power and those who suffer are those ordinary citizens, not the elite. In this, the mirror is held up to the West these days and we have to ask where we are going.

The truly alarming section of the book deals with the Andropov era and how he steered the Soviet world into a concrete belief that the West under Reagan was about to preemptively launch a nuclear attack against the Warsaw Pact and orders were sent out to be alert for certain signs that the attack was near – signs that largely were of everyday actions and policies of the West that had no part of an attack. It’s a chilling account that I had not heard about before.

I highly recommend this book, indeed, any book by Ben MacIntyre. You can’t call them “true crime” but fascinating history told well they are.

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And some great news after a month of horror stories:

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WELCOME TO A NEW YEAR

WELCOME TO A NEW DECADE

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Fridays in January ~ Our Best of the Decade Lists

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This ‘N’ That

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Not at all what you expected, right?

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**Fridays in January ~ Our Best of the Decade Lists**