Sunday, June 28, 2015

Bill Crider, Half in Love With Artful Death

Bill Crider, Half in Love With Artful Death
St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2014
ISBN 978-250-03967-5
Also available in ebook formats


 I first read one of Bill Crider's books some time around 1995.  I had been in Bloomington (Indiana), for an Indiana University system-wide meeting, and was driving back to Chicago.  I stopped in Lafayette to eat dinner, and at a bookstore there, looking for something to read, picked up a paperback copy of Shotgun Saturday Night (1987), partly because I liked the cover illustration (a lawman leaning back on a chair on what appeared to be a walkway, with a rifle of shotgun propped up on his knee, if I recall) and partly because the description in the back made the book sound interesting.  Which it was.

Crider's 21st book about Sheriff Dan Rhodes of Blacklin County, Texas is, first of all, a perfect representative of the series--well-written, funny, with a well-plotted mystery (fairly solved) at its core.  There's an art workshop and exhibition underway in part of a building that also houses an antique store.  Local curmudgeon Burt Collins complains to Rhodes about the presence of the artists and subsequently gets into an altercation outside the exhibition.  Later that day, Rhodes has to deal with a robbery at a convenience store and to help the animal control officer corral two wayward donkeys.  And to begin the investigation of Collins' death,

As usual, Rhodes' path to a solution is not direct, mostly because other things come up (a naked woman at a roadside rest stop, for example).  And he as usual has to deal with the jail staff (Hack, the dispatcher--who, incidentally, seems to work 24/7, and Lawton, the jailer), whose method of conveying information is, shall we say, roundabout.  He worries about his diet (and goes off it once in a while), plays with his dogs (Speedo and Yancey), and continues his loving relationship with his wife Ivy. 

I really only have one question about the book.  At one point, Rhodes wakes up in the morning, having had a dream  All he can remember about it is that it involved...well, I won't go into that here--you should have the pleasure of discovering it yourself.  What I want to know, Bill, did you have that dream?  Because it sounded fascinating.  And I'm looking into how Freud would interpret it.

If you are already familiar with Dan Rhodes, Blacklin County, and the town of Clearview, you already know that you don't want to  miss this one.  If you have yet to visit, what are you waiting for?

What's the Worst That Could Happen: A Dortmunder Novel by Donald Westlake

Donald Westlake, What's the Worst That Could Happen? (1997)
As an ebook: Mysterious Press (2012)
ASIN: B001GUXJU6


The answer to the question in the title of the book is "You don't want to know." 

Dortmunder's companion, May, receives a ring from her cousin, as May's part of the "estate" of an uncle.  Dortmunder likes it and begins wearing it.  The first thing that happens is that Dortmunder and a colleague find a householder at home when they go there to liberate some things.  The colleague fades away, but the homeowner, Max Fairbanks (a billionaire industrialist), who was unexpectedly at home, calls the cops and nabs Dortmunder.  And, once the cops arrive, Fairbanks claims that the ring is actually his, and takes it from him.  From there on, Dortmunder tries and tries to recover the ring, and strange things ensue.  But Dortmunder and the gang make out better than they usually do, and order is restored to the universe.  I can't believe I hadn't read this one before. 

That's not to say there are no flaws.  The corporate bankruptcy morphs into a personal bankruptcy.  The NYC cop who arrests Fairbanks in Las Vegas (well, technically, the Vegas cops do the collar) has signed extradition papers--that's not how extradition works.  And Fairbanks seems more like the head of a sole proprietorship than of a corporation,  Not withstanding this, a joy to read.

Friday, June 26, 2015

Photograph

As our 50th high school reunion draws nearer, this song seems to be on my mind...

Photograph
Melanie Safka

...
Do you have a photograph when you were still in high school
Were you happy in it
Little reason lots of rhyme
Were you happy in it at the time

Way back in your memory
Do you recall the line
When your heart was in it
And your reason changed your mind
Did you love forever at the time


Are you living here and now
Or in the moments past
Is now tomorrow's memory and will the memory last
How much of this will pass


Do you have a photograph when you were only growing
And your heart was in it
And your reason changed your mind
When you loved forever
But your reason changed your mind

The songs that you once loved to sing
Are ones that make you cry
And wouldn't you just give it all to never say goodbye
We once lived in forevers
But we learned to say goodbye


Do you have a photograph when you were only growing
And your heart was in it
Little reason lots of rhyme
Were you happy in it
But your reason changed your mind
Did you love forever
But your reason changed your mind
Were you happy in it at the time


Is what you wanted long ago long gone from your mind
Asks a ghost in dreaming
Or a friend you left behind
The songs that you once loved to sing
Are the ones that make you cry
And wouldn't you just give it all to never say goodbye
Oh goodbye...goodbye...goodbye...goodbye...

Monday, June 22, 2015

Martin Edwards on The Golden Age of Murder

Martin Edwards, The Golden Age of Murder
HarperCollins. 2015
ISBN-13: 978-0008105969
Also available in ebook formats


 Encyclopedic (518 pages) consideration of mystery fiction from (roughly) 1920 to 1940, with a focus on The Detection Club.  Edwards clearly considers Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, and Anthony Berkeley to be the most important figures.  However, he provides discussions of a host of other writers as well (to many to list completely here, but including Ronald Knox, the Coles, John Connington, John Rhode, Anthony Gilbert, Gladys Mitchell...The difficulty with trying to cover such a range of writers is that we are almost forced, at least provisionally, to accept Edwards' judgments.  He could not, even if he wanted to, provide us with enough quoted material from so many authors to allow us to see for ourselves their strengths and weaknesses.  I did not disagree much with his assessments of authors whose work I know fairly well (Sayers, Christie, Knox, Carr, and some others), although I consider (for example) Busman's Honeymoon to be a stronger work than he does, and I'm less of a fan of Christie--she plots well, her solutions are ingenious (if sometimes forced, in my opinion), but I do not think she did a particularly outstanding job of characterization, even of her principals.  (One reason movies of Christie's books work so well, again in my opinion, is that there is not a strong characterization in the books to which the actors must bend.  Hence Margaret Rutherford *and* Joan Hickson as Jane Marple.)  This is not, I should note, am academic work--it is dreadfully under-sourced and had no comprehensive bibliography at the end, even of the authors' books.  Still, it is an extremely well-written, comprehensive view of the period, and well worth reading.

Sunday, June 21, 2015

On Father's Day

A friend posted this on her FB page:

My father's passions included baseball (watching), tennis (playing), photography (taking), and Broadway musicals (attending). Of those, I inherited only the Broadway gene. How about you? Any of your father's interests that you have, too?

And I find myself thinking...I have no idea what my father was passionate about.  As a boy, he became an Eagle Scout--but never talked about it to his kids, never suggested that we get into scouts.  He finished second in the Indianapolis Parks tennis tournament one year...but never (to my knowledge) played tennis as an adult (although my younger brother did).

When I was a kid, he got involved with the YMCA "Indian Guides" program, even helping people get "tribes" started, and especially in the African-American community.  But I don't remember his doing anything with it after I was 10 or 12 (say, 1960 or later).

He did not like to travel; he did not care for theater (or television); he had no particular interest in music (although Mom did--she started college as a music major, and played piano throughout her life).  He read mysteries, but never talked about them.  He tracked his investment portfolio (manually), but never talked about it.

He had no hobbies that I can remember.  He played golf for a while in the early 1960s, but stopped (the club we belonged to was purchased to build an interstate highway, and he never joined another, never played much on public courses); by the mid-'60s, he was working such long hours, and often through the weekend, that he had neither time nor energy, even if he had had the inclination.  He was not a "joiner" (he did not, for example, become a member of the American Legion or the Veterans of Foreign Wars, although he could have).  He knew how to play bridge, but didn't play much either socially or at all competitively.  He played some poker, but I wouldn't say it was a passion.  He liked baseball, but never much went to baseball games.  (I grew up in Indianapolis, and we went to maybe a half a dozen games that I can remember in the late 1950s, early 1960s; we went to one game in Chicago, as a part of a trip to see some friends of my parents who had mover there; he went to one or two Cincinnati Reds games a year after he retired...didn't watch baseball on TV).  He and Mom went to horse races in Cincinnati and Louisville in the late 1970s and 1980s, but not all that often, once or twice a year.

I could go on, but it seems pointless.

Sunday, June 7, 2015

Continuing my copycat photoblogging...

Chris Bertram's Sunday Photoblogging has this beautiful sunset shot.

I have this, taken in Italy (sunset over the Ligurian Sea, near Livorno, 2002).  I don't title many of my photos, but this is "The Phantom Photographer."