Daddy Dexter?

The preview looks like they're playing it for laughs. Will DEXTER pull it off?

Blogging

Walter Cronkite reading.


Funny how stories you sent to zines over a large space of time often appear at once. http://www.darkestbeforedawn.net/?q=node/40

Thanks to Aldo for posting SOURIS.




One of the the more interesting (for me) aspects of JULIA AND JULIE was the questions raised about the value of blogs. I am sure you run into people too who question the worth of blogging. Whenever I mention my blog, people get that glazed-over look. Oh, you blog. How nice that you have this hobby. We are saving the world in the meantime. We have real lives. But, you, you blog. Knitting can be useful, too.

Of course, when "Julie" of Julia and Julie blogged it was a very new thing. She had no "Crimespot" to tie her to people of similar interests. She was truly out there on her own. Was it anything more than ennui?

Has blogging changed over time? Do you get any respect for having a blog? What is the future of blogging" Will blogs take the place of newspapers and other media? Or is it mostly narcissistic? Does anyone care beside us? What say you, bloggers?

MY TOWN MONDAY-Detroit Deaths

An experiment here...stories loosely based on actual deaths in Detroit.

Willis Dumphrey and Carla Batista Stabbed in a Early Morning Holdup

The only convenient— no, the only feasible time—for them to have sex was before eight A.M. on weekday mornings. And to top it off, they did it on a narrow cot in Travis’s office. Travis, a former ballplayer and now businessman, never came in much before nine, and, in fact, most days didn’t show up at all. He was likely about to run for City Council come November, or so the Metro paper said.

Sometimes she worried the scent of their mornings would seep into the room and trip them up, but at some point in the past, it’d become part of it.

The two of them, Carla, the cook and Willis, the bartender and manager, came in before nine to set things up. The bar attracted an early lunch crowd— people from downtown offices, or the courts, or the stadium if there was a game. The waitresses and dish-washer started work at ten when things picked up and the rest of the day usually passed in a blur. They finished their shift at six and went home to their spouses.

But there was this first—this magic—and almost every day. It was not a love affair exactly: it was two lonely, horny people taking comfort in each other. Too bad it had to be at this hour, but it began to seem right. And when one of them took a vacation or got sick, the other one grew antsy. Making love with her sixty-year old husband at night twice a month—that’s what seemed odd now.

“You’re going to have Sweetie in here while I’m gone, aren’t you,” Carla asked, curled up in Willis’ arms. Sweetie was a waitress who'd just turned 22. He laughed. They were dressed now but couldn’t quite say goodbye. They had a few minutes. She was going to Lapeer for a few days to help her daughter out with her new baby. It would be her first grandchild if the kid ever got itself born. A week late now and no sign of it; her daughter was going bonkers waiting.

Willis was about to say something funny—she could tell from the smile that was beginning to form—when the door swung open and two men wearing masks pushed into the room. Carla started to scream but then thought better of it.

The larger man shrugged and without saying a word, yanked the cord from a lamp, motioned for them to get up, and herded them toward the cold storage unit down the hallway. They could hear the other man rifling the safe as they moved in single file. Once inside the room, he inadvertently rubbed up against Willis and his mask slipped down. They saw it was Travis and
glanced at each other in shock.

“Too bad,” he said. Just that. He looked indecisive for a second or two, but then pulled a knife from his pocket and quickly stabbed Willis in the chest and stomach. Willis slid to the floor as blood spurted from several places.

“Travis,” Carla started to say. “You don’t…” She could see terror in his eyes, but also the
heartlessness. Coldness. His arm rose over his head as it came down hard into her breast. His ballplayer days were behind him now, she thought as she died, but he still had some power in those arms.

Bench of the Week # 2 for RuneE

We also have our own bench. It's small but I think it qualifies as a bench since I can sit on it with my grandson.

For RuneE's benches from Norway, go here.

Bench of the Week for Barbara Martin

Have a peaceful Sunday.

Mothers and Music

Thinking about my Mom today--six months since her death-- and a feature on NPR reminded me of my mother and music. We had no record player in our house until I got a turntable as a teenager. You would probably think my mother then got most of her music via radio, but it was actually TV. Early TV was full of music. My mother's favorite was Perry Como. She was a great dancer and so is my father. And I remember dancing in our tiny living room with her.

If your mother, living or dead, was coming to dinner tonight. What music would you play for her? What was her favorite?

Just a few of the show featuring singers in the 1950s

VARIETY SHOWS
Milton Berle
Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour
Your Show of Shows
Perry Como Show
Colgate Comedy Hour
Your Hit Parade
Jack Benny Show
People Are Funny
George Gobel Show
AND ALSO...
Arthur Godfrey
Ed Sullivan
Dinah Shore
Lawrence Welk
Red Skelton

THE SUMMING UP,, Friday, August 7, 2009

Constance Towers reading.










THE SUMMING UP

Friday, August 7, 2009

Paul Bishop, Evans Above, Rhys Bowen
Eric Beetner, Bank Job, Steve Brewer
Lisa Bork, The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
Michael Carlson, Streets of Fire, Thomas Cook
Bill Crider, Bury Me Deep, Harold Q. Masur
Blake Crouch, Testament, David Morrell
Cullen Gallagher, Allan Dwan: The Last Pioneer, Peter Bogdanovich
Ed Gorman, The Disenchanted, Budd Schulberg
George Kelley, Med Ship Saga, Murray Leenster
Randy Johnson, Cut Short, Leigh Russell
Ellen Lamb, Paperback Thriller, Lynn Meyer
Jack Martin, The Trap, John Burke
Todd Mason. The Best Detective Stories of the Year, 1961, edited by Brett Halliday
Terrie Moran, The Concubine's Tattoo, Laura Joh Rowland
James Reasoner, Exile's Request, Richard Meade (Ben Haas)
Kerrie Smith, Friday, the Rabbi Slept Late, Harry Kemelman
Kieran Shea, On the Heights of Despair, C.M. Cioran
R.T. Shotgun Opera, Victor Gischler

Friday's Forgotten Books, August 7, 2009

It said, "Students at Bob Jones University reading" but they look a bit sinister for that school.

For an entire list of the series, go here.

AUGUST 21-Forgotten Movies

August 28 and Sept. 4th, break.

We could use some more reviewers for Sept. Email me if you'd like to join in.

Blake Crouch is the author of ABANDON, out this summer from Minotaur Books.

David Morrell’s second novel, TESTAMENT, was published in 1975. You might have heard of his debut. Little book called FIRST BLOOD that introduced the character John Rambo and in the process invented the action novel. TESTAMENT is Morrell’s darkest book, and that’s saying something pretty profound. It opens "It was the last morning the four of them would ever be together" and heads downhill from there. Downhill being a good thing in this case. TESTAMENT is about a family being torn apart and having to fight for its survival under the harshest, most excruciating conditions. To give the briefest plot-tease, the husband/father has pissed off the wrong people, and those wrong people intend to murder his entire family, who’s forced to flee their home. There are scenes of such despair and power in these pages that they level you. But this is a book that must be read, and part of the fun is knowing TESTAMENT was written thirty-four years ago, in the age of Forsythe and Ludlum and the Big International Thriller. In contrast, TESTAMENT feel s contained and intimate and linear. Very much a prototype of things to come, and without question one of the best thrillers I’ve ever had the joy and horror to read.

Lisa Bork’s debut novel, FOR BETTER, FOR MURDER hits the bookstore the first week in September,. It’s the first book in the Broken Vows mystery series from Midnight Ink. The second will follow in 2010. For more information, visit www.LisaBork.com.


The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

My son completed his first summer reading assignment for school—The Secret Garden. When he brought the book home at the end of June, I sighed, “Ohhhh” in a most adoring way.

You see, I still have my first copy of The Secret Garden, a Dell paperback edition from 1962. It’s one of the few books I kept from my childhood—because it’s no secret The Secret Garden is a classic.

My son said “The names are hard in this book.” What’s so hard about Mistress Mary Lennox, except for the fact that she’s one tough cookie? Maybe he meant Ayah, Mem Sahib, Colin, Dickon, Mrs. Medlock, Lilias, Archibald Craven, or Misselthwaite Manor. Those names are not so common. I know he had trouble spelling “cholera,” which is also not so common anymore.

Perhaps that’s why the characters and the storyline of The Secret Garden are so memorable—it wasn’t common. This story introduced me to the moors and cholera. It also introduced me to India, government service, children not being raised by their parents, nurses, governesses, housekeepers, gardeners, invalids, hunchbacks, spoiled tantrums, Yorkshire accents, and walled English gardens.

So why is The Secret Garden, first published in 1911, a classic still enjoyed by all ages in every generation? Perhaps it’s the secrets, mysteries, and magic. Tragic deaths. Lost love. Orphans. Laughter and tears. Imagination. Friendship. Animals. Rebirth. Lost souls. Beautiful setting. Redemption. A little girl with a lot of gumption. Or the happy ending. This story tugs on the heartstrings.

My local library has several different editions, most out of print. Many movie and stage versions have been made. But I hadn’t thought about the book in years until my son brought it home from school.

Then I got to enjoy it all over again.

And it reminded me of another favorite Frances Hodgson Burnett novel from 1905, A Little Princess, again about an orphan girl in unfamiliar circumstances using her determination and imagination to get her through and making the world a little brighter for others, too.

I may reread that next.

Eric Beetner is the c0-author of the forthcoming ONE TOO MANY BLOWS TO THE HEAD, and many crime fiction stories. He is a film-maker, screenwriter and you can find him here.

BANK JOB, Steve Brewer:

I just finished another Steve Brewer book, Bank Job, and I loved it. Why is this guy not huge in the crime writing world? He’s published sixteen books including two series and many excellent stand-alones like Bullets and Boost and Cutthroat.
His simple prose style exposes his day job as a newspaper columnist and, true to that form, he gets the action going right away - he never buries the lead. With the whole print journalism industry looking rather precarious now is the time to elevate Steve Brewer to best-selling status in case his paper folds tomorrow. You’ll be glad you did.
His characters have an amazing ability to be good and decent people while also being bad guys (and girls). Some of his hardened criminals are also some of the most lovable characters I’ve read in a while. In modern crime fiction it is easy to just go hell-bent for blood and guts and amorality but Brewer manages to inject some truly respectable qualities to characters like Vince, the aging ex-bank robber at the center of Bank Job and Lily, the assassin on the run in Bullets, a book that makes you root for a cold-blooded killer to get away with it.
I am not normally one for P.I. series but I think I am going to break down and dive into Brewer’s Bubba Mabry series. I get intimidated by having to catch up on so much backstory (starting from scrach on something like the Spenser series is beyond my patience) but in this case I am excited that there are 7 books in the series awaiting me.
One thing I really love is Brewer’s ability to skip around to multiple points of view. In Bank Job each chapter shifts to see the action through one of six major players in the twisted events. He keeps it all clear and uses the device to dole out information so that it keeps us guessing.
It’s not like Brewer is toiling in obscurity but it’s time that he is mentioned in the first breath when talking about solid, never-let-you-down crime writers.

Ed Gorman is the author of The Midnight Room, Sleeping Dogs and other crime and western stories.

THE DISENCHANTED, Budd Schulberg

The passing of Budd Schulberg at age 95 is getting a lot of press, surprisingly so since we don't much value writers in America. While most of the comments are flattering, there are a few that ask us to remember that Schulberg was a "friendly witness" when brought in front of HUAC in the Fifties. It is claimed, without much proof, that his testimony put an old friend or two behind bars. I'm nobody's idea of hero so I have to say that I have no idea how I would've reacted if I'd been dragged in front of those slime ball bastards who ran the committee. Faced with the end of my career or even prison, I don't know what I would've done.

If Schulberg's decision to talk is open to question, his work certainly is not. What Makes Sammy Run. On The Waterfront. The Harder They Fall. The masterful and all but forgotten Wind Across The Everglades. A Face in The Crowd. Wonderful American writing.

One novel that never gets much mention is The Disenchanted. This is a novel about a writer whose fame was lost to alcohol and fashion. The great artist is now a Hollywood hack working on a screenplay with a young writer who worships him. The writing takes them back to their old college where the older writer goes through alcoholic breakdown.

If you know anything about F. Scott Fitzgerald, you know this story is true. Schulberg was assigned to work on a piece of dreck called "Winter Carnival" in the course of which he saw his idol come undone. There are two stories here, the tale of Fitzgerald's destructive love for Zelda and how the honor Schulberg felt for working with Fitzgerald turns to horror and pity (as pointed out in Amazon.com).

I've often wondered if this novel failed to find a large audience because the more literary reviewers just didn't think it was possible for a writer of popular fiction (however important and occasionally profound) to understand a genius of Fitzgerald's caliber.

But the book is so powerful in places it hurts to read it. Line for line it's the best writing Schulberg ever did. No less a figure than Anthony Burgess wrote an essay about it and called it a masterpiece.

Along with the novel, I'd also recommend Schulberg's lengthy essay on Fitzgerald. It tells us far more about the man than all but a few of the many biographies written about him. Below is the link.

Ellen Lamb is a writer, editor and girl about town. You can find her at answer girl.

PAPERBACK THRILLER, Lynn Meyer

Last Saturday's packing/closing party at Kate's Mystery Books might have been a grim
occasion, if not for the company: dozens of authors and book lovers who turned out to pack away 20+ years' worth of books and memorabilia, and find a few treasures along the way.

I was lucky enough to draw Susan Conant [http://conantparkmysteries.googlepages.com/doglovers%27mysteries] as a packing partner, and the two of us were assigned to the back corridor, where we packed unsigned collectible hardcovers. Pulling the books off the shelves was like assembling a syllabus for Crime Fiction 101; what struck both of us, though, was how many of these authors had faded into oblivion after a couple of bestsellers, or a single heavily-promoted, critically acclaimed title.

"Like PAPERBACK THRILLER," Susan said. "That was a wonderful book, came out years ago. The author was a woman named Lynn Meyer. I loved that book. I wonder what happened to it."

As these things often go, I walked outside on my lunch break to see what was for sale on the bargain paperbacks table -- and found a used paperback copy of PAPERBACK THRILLER. Originally published as a Random House hardcover in 1975, it was a main selection of The Mystery Guild, and reprinted as an Avon paperback the following year.

PAPERBACK THRILLER is the story of Dr. Sarah Chayce, a Boston psychiatrist with a tantalizingly under-narrated backstory. She's vegetarian, divorced, childless and apparently the survivor of some long-buried trauma we never get the details of; she's also having affairs with two different men, one of whom is still married. None of these things seems to bother her; in fact, as she tells us her story, she is aggressively sane and well-adjusted, or at least she wants us to think so.

Returning from a medical conference (an excuse for a rendezvous with the married lover), she picks up a paperback thriller in the airport bookstore. It's nothing special; its author, "Greg Pitman," is obviously a pen name. What startles Sarah is the description of a psychiatrist's office that the hero breaks into: it's hers, right down to the powder-blue filing cabinets and the lapis lazuli horse.

Her first, natural assumption is that "Greg Pitman" is one of her patients, but she soon realizes that can't be true. She identifies him as a struggling literary novelist named Charles Elfinstone, with whom she has no apparent connection. He insists he's never seen her office, and says that his description must be a coincidence. But Sarah, for reasons that are not entirely clear to her and are even less clear to us, can't let the question go. She follows it through a tangled, risky web of secrets and shame, to the highest levels of Boston society.

PAPERBACK THRILLER is a fascinating time capsule of mid-1970s New England, as acute a social commentary in its way as Updike or Mailer. Sarah Chayce is a truly modern woman, someone who would be an iconoclast even by today's standards. It's fascinating to spend a few hours in her company. (At 188 pages, PAPERBACK THRILLER wastes neither words nor time.)

I haven't been able to find any evidence that Lynn Meyer wrote another book, which is a shame. I'd love to know more about her, and about the origins of this novel.

James Reasoner

Terrie F. Moran

Bill Crider

George Kelley

Todd Mason

Paul Bishop

Randy Johnson

R.T.

Kerrie Smith

Cullen Gallagher

Jack

B.V. Lawson

Kieran Shea

Michael Carlson

Anita O' Day: Best jazz singer ever?

FIRST WEDNESDAY BOOKCLUB-THE DRAMATIST, Ken Bruen

I have read several of Ken Bruen's wonderful Jack Taylor novels, They all are imbued with great dialogue, poetry, action, angst, Ireland, literary and musical references, quirky characters.

In a word, they are special. But THE DRAMATIST is my favorite.

Jack Taylor is newly sober in this entry in the series and finding it a chore. Bruen turns the heat up by placing Jack in harm's way in a number of ways. Taylor finds it especially hard to keep things on an even keel when his ex-drug-dealer, now in jail, asks him to find the murderer of his daughter. He also becomes involved with an old lover and her scary husband, a vigilante group, and the usual assortment of Bruen characters and temptations.

Bruen's books are outstanding because of the fully-realized life he invests Taylor with. Oh, and the plots are great, too. But he generously allows you to enter into Jack Taylor's world in a way few authors pull off. You know him. You root for him. I am a sucker for Tommy Gavin on RESCUE ME and Jack Taylor does it for me too.

The end of this book will send you over the edge. I guarantee it. I am not much for crying but this one made me bawl.

Check out other First Wednesday books here.

Click icon for more
book review blogs
@Barrie Summy

"Author Megan Abbott is the Duchess of Dark Novels"

http://www.detnews.com/article/20090804/LIFESTYLE/908040301/1005/rss32

Antique Stores

Gina reading on a piano.

Every once in a while, I'll come across some cool-looking vintage books in an antique or used bookstore, not recognize the names and let them go by.

For instance, last week I saw a book by a Lawrence Blockman, RECIPE FOR MURDER. I let it pass.

Is there a handy-sized book I could carry with me that would identify most crime fiction writers so I'd know if they are worth my time (and money)?

And, oh boy, you western fans. This store had a great collection of westerns. I almost picked up a bunch to send off to you all but again at $5 a piece, it seemed too chancy.

Also a nice collection of science fiction and fantasy mags. Do you ever hunt books down in antique stores? Sometimes you can find some doozies there.

MY TOWN MONDAY, August 3, 2009-Worsley, England

Todd's childhood library in Enfield, CT.

K.A. Laity is with me on sitting in pubs.


Dorte's church in Denmark-her place of solace.









Charles place to roam is the woods near Abita Springs.




Our cottage was the middle one.






For a year of my life, I lived in Worsley, England, a small town outside Salford and near Manchester. My husband was teaching at the University of Salford.

This is really not about Worsley because I've spoken of it before. How much I loved the old (1600s) cottage we lived in, the woods, the town green.

What it is about is how much I miss the pub there. I am not that much of a drinker, but I love pubs. Especially English ones. You could hang around forever and feel quite cozy on a winter's night, quite familial on a Sunday afternoon, sit outside in summer and enjoy the gardens. For two sometimes lonely Americans it was heaven. I've never quite replaced it here. Bars seem like places for twenty-somethings and restaurants aren't the same thing.

Do you have a place like this? Doesn't have to be a pub-just a place you like to go and feel like yourself. A place away from home that's like it.

More My Town Monday posts can be found here.

Hint Fiction Anthology Submissions Open

Here's where to find out all about it. http://www.robertswartwood.com/?page_id=8

And here's where to send your two tries. Good luck!
hint.fiction@gmail.com.

Esther Meaney in Beat to a Pulp

On a good day you dance at a wedding and have a story appear in Beat to a Pulp. Thanks to David and Elaine.

Meryl Streep

BB reading.

My husband and I debate regularly whether Meryl Streep's ability to mimic any accent is to her detriment or to her strength. Certainly her Polish accent in SOPHIE'S CHOICE was a strength. But at other times, according to my husband, her accent shapes the whole role. She is so busy with how she sounds in her part that she creates a caricature rather than a character.

She hides behind the accent.

If you look at a list of all of her parts, she's chosen more international characters than most actors. But still the majority of of her parts do not rely on accents. The trailers have put my husband off seeing Julia and Julie. But Julia Child's voice was in itself a parody. Should M.S. ignore it? He thinks she should underplay the voice--not draw your attention too much to just one aspect of a character. But is that true to Julia Child? Was she defined by her voice? What do you think?

THE SUMMING UP, Friday, July 31, 2009

Esther Williams out of the pool and reading.





The Summing Up, Friday, July 31, 2009

Patti Abbott, Spies, Michael Frayn
Michael Carlson, Whaleboat House, Mark Mills
Bill Crider, They Thirst, Robert McCammon
Martin Edwards, THE LIST OF ADRIAN MESSENGER by Philip Macdonald
Craig Johnson, Doctor Dogbody's Legs, James Norman Hill
Randy Johnson, Time and Again, Jack Finney
George Kelley, A Twist of Sand, Geoffrey Jenkins
Todd Mason, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1973, ed.Edward Ferman
Clayton Moore, Fuel-Injected Dreams & Boy Wonder, James Robert Baker
Donna Moore, Shadow Boxer, Eddie Muller
Terrie F. Moran, Naked Comes the Manatee, Carl Hiassen
Scott Parker, The Tar-Aryam Krang, Alan Dean Foster
J, Kingston Pierce, The Eighth Circle, Stanley Ellin
James Reasoner, Love Me and Die, Day Keene and Gil Brewer
Kieran Shea, Memoirs of a Caddy, David Noonan
Kerrie Smith, Doon to Death, Ruth Rendell
R.T., The Investigation, Dorothy Uhnak

Friday's Forgotten Books, July 31, 2009

Harpo Marx reading.

August 21st. How about "Forgotten Movies?" This is Dick Adler's idea and a good one and to give credit where it is due Steve Allan suggested this a few years ago too.

Dick Adler wrote this week about Chinatown. Not forgotten exactly, but perhaps a movie that needs to be seen again. Crank up your DVD players and tell us what we all need to watch. Again or for the first time. August 21st. Let me know if you have a movie review to post on my blog or one on yours.
Come on-you know you have one.

Clayton Moore is the crime and mystery columnist for Bookslut.com and reviews fiction and nonfiction for Kirkus Reviews, The Denver Post and other media outlets. His work has also appeared in Paste Magazine, Atomic Magazine and The Rocky Mountain News.

Fuel-Injected Dreams and Boy Wonder by James Robert Baker

Every time I go in a used bookstore, I still buy books by James Robert Baker because they’re so hard to find, and I tend to give them away to the deserving (and those I think have the temperament to appreciate them). He was a truly gifted satirical writer, cult filmmaker, anarchist, left-wing iconoclast and activist, who was well ahead of his time but also deeply troubled, and ultimately committed suicide in 1997. Over the course of a half-dozen novels, he left behind two unconventional beauties that are, shockingly, his most mainstream work.

The first, Fuel-Injected Dreams, was thankfully re-released in 2003 by Thunder’s Mouth Press. It was so full of delightfully lewd turns of phrase that when I first ran across it in 1986, I couldn’t believe anyone would actually let you write like this, and it was one of the books that convinced me to start writing in the first place. A thinly-veiled (and as it turns out, somewhat prescient) portrait of the psychotic architect of the Wall of Sound, Phil Spector it celebrates low-brow language, the madness of rock n’ roll, and the visceral weirdness of sweltering Los Angeles. Just read the fantastic, five-page monologue that opens Fuel-Injected Dreams, a spinning, malevolent diatribe by DJ Scott Cochrane, and try not to revel in the joy of its retro-radio-inflected patois.

After being unchained from his booth, Cochrane gets embroiled with Dennis Contrelle, the fictionalized record producer, delving deeper and deeper into the man’s disturbing obsession with one of the bee-hived honeys in 1960’s girl-group The Stingrays. It’s a little dated in places and is embedded with a macabre twist in its denouement but otherwise holds up very well as an offbeat, sharply written pop-culture mystery referencing the maddening obsession of record collectors in those heady days before the music died.

Even darker is Baker’s own crack at a Hollywood that tempted and scorned him, the satiric out-of-print epic that is Boy Wonder(1988). It’s a exceptionally original idea for its time, a fictional oral history that portrays the life story of Shark Trager, a director broken by film school who turns into the producing wunderkind of the movie industry, through the memories of his friends, enemies, lovers and family. Fans of movie trivia will love it from Shark’s birth when his dad bumps some punk in a Porsche off the road in 1955 to his final drug-addled moments plowing through a theater full of filmgoers to the sounds of The Thrill of It All by Roxy Music.

In-between, Baker ravages every aspect of the golden age of movie making, skewering Close Encounters, Sam Peckinpah, Bonnie & Clyde, Touch of Evil and dozens of other celluloid moments. It has exploding suburbs, incestuous twins, chainsaw massacres and another romantic obsession as big as Shark’s drug-addled irises. It is, like Fuel-Injected Dreams, an acquired taste. But it’s also a shame that a writer as talented as Baker, who obviously loved the medium of film and the language of literature (even if the business didn’t always love him back)didn’t get the attention in his lifetime that he deserved. James Robert Baker is gone, but no, he shouldn’t be forgotten.

Patti Abbott, SPIES, Michael Frayn

An elderly man returns to the scene of his childhood and remembers the games he played with a friend during the World War II. This book follows HEADS UP by Frayn, a brilliant novel about art forgery and the delicious play COPENHAGEN. I have a weakness for books where children get it all wrong, perhaps because I always did. And this book concerns two boys, overly caught up in the war, and inventing a role for one's mother during wartime England-spying on her and coming to the wrong conclusions. . One boy convinces the other that his mother is a German spy and they are both to ready to accept this, following her, taking notes, making this pursuit their preoccupation. The plot eventually turns everything they believe on its ear. Frayn perfectly captures the voice of children of that time: their ability to focus on behavior that is perhaps lost to modern kids. I wonder if kids today would bother to put down their cellphones and Ipods. I also wonder if adults have lost their allure. It did remind me of THE GO-BETWEEN, another wonderful British book by L.P. Hartley. You can't go wrong with either of these choices.

Craig Johnson is the author of Penguin’s Sheriff Walt Longmire series, The Cold Dish, Death Without Company, Kindness Goes Unpunished, Another Man’s Moccasins and The Dark Horse.

Doctor Dogbody’s Leg, by James Norman Hall

This almost unheard of book is one of my all-time favorites. As a land-locked cowboy, when my mind is troubled, I go down to the sea. The more romantic side of my nature has been lured by a few authors who saw fit to swash their buckles with a scalpel along with a sword, including C. S. Forrester, Patrick O’Brian, and Gabriel Sabatini. I suppose when they decided to make their heroes doctors, they wanted an erudite narrator who would be capable of uttering more comprehensible statements than “Argh… Shiver me timbers.” Whatever that means. I have to tell you, though that Doctor Dogbody’s Leg is the best.

I stumbled across this slim volume by James Hall, half of the Nordoff/Hall duo famous for the historic Bounty trilogy, in a used bookstore in Boston. The story of the author is as interesting as his novels. Hall, an American, fought in the trenches in World War I before the U.S. joined the war, then as an American fighter pilot—and was the commanding officer of the Hat-In-The-Ring Squadron with such luminaries as Eddie Rickenbacker. Hall explored the Pacific, island hopping on his own, finally settling in Fiji.

I suppose after producing some of the greatest sea-faring literature of our time, James Norman Hall decided to have a little fun later in life, and Doctor Dogbody’s Leg has made me laugh since I read the first chapter where the doc loses his ‘larboard’ leg to an American Indian’s cutlass. . . Then in another where he loses it to a French guillotine. . . And then again when he sacrifices it to the wolves in Russia in the service of Catherine the Great. . . Hmm, that would be three legs, wouldn’t it? Maybe I should explain—in ten chapters, Doctor F. Dogbody loses a leg a chapter, which probably qualifies the naval surgeon as either a human caterpillar or one of the great liars of all time. But after a night in mist-shrouded Plymouth and Will Tunn’s Cheerful Tortoise, repaired with a few old acquaintances from the Royal Naval, Dogbody (Imagine Baron Munchhausen, Harry Flashman and Horatio Hornblower all rolled into one) holds forth and it doesn’t matter if the stories are true or not, they’re just so good; like a bottle of good grog, you’ll find yourself metering each chapter out so that they last.

Terrie F. Moran

James Reasoner

Bill Crider

George Kelley

Scott Parker

Kerrie Smith

Randy Johnson

J. Kingston Pierce

Todd Mason

Martin Edwards

R.T.

Kieran Shea

Donna Moore

Michael Carlson

On the Road Again with Craig Johnson

It’s always a roll of the dice at events you haven’t done before; you never know if anybody’s going to show up. Judy and I were whistling down the I-5 in the San Joaquin Valley, and the temperature was burnishing the golden hills at a hundred and thirteen degrees.

I was fortunate to be selected by the Autry National Center to kick off their book club at the Western Heritage Museum in Los Angeles—it was to be the swan song of The Dark Horse tour. “It’s the debut of the program, so there might not be very many people…”

I glanced at her. “Yep, I know.”

If you haven’t ever been, the Autry is my favorite museum in the world, and one of the few where you can ride your horse on the equine trails of Griffith Park, tie off to the hitching rails at the museum, and go in. Try that at the Guggenheim.

When Gene Autry started the museum, he was adamant that it not be about the glorification of himself but more of a celebration of the entire West. Back in the late eighties, Judy and I were in LA when I started exhibiting symptoms familiar to every wife—I stood by the doors of stores and jingled the truck keys in my pocket and stood on sidewalks (not my natural element) and looked into the distance with my eyes set in a hard squint.

“Why don’t you go to the Gene Autry Museum?”

I’d been to the Roy Rogers Museum in Victorville, California (now having moved to Branson), and though I loved Roy, hadn’t enjoyed the experience. “I don’t think I can stand to see Champion stuffed.”

“It’s not like that.”

I went, and she was right. The Autry National Center of the American West now incorporates the Southwest Museum of the American Indian, the Museum of the American West, and the Institute for the Study of the American West. With a huge plaza area of Mexican tile, the Autry showcases many special exhibitions, multiple galleries of memorabilia, art, and statuary that contain so many treasures of the West that I won’t even try to list them. And they have the Wells Fargo Theatre which regularly has events including Native American Theatre, music of the American West, and this particular weekend… Me.

I spent the morning with my mouth open as we were given a backstage view of the museum and lunch in the boardroom. All I could think was how embarrassing it was going to be if there were only four people there, Judy, myself, Scott Frank, the Senior Manager of Education and Volunteers, who was to be on stage with me to do the interview, and Chrystina Geagan, the Director of Membership and Visitor Services at the Autry. The lovely young lady was hopeful in that a number of people had RSVP’d earlier in the week, but I still wasn’t sold; it was LA, it was a Sunday afternoon, and it was scorching hot—all symptoms of low turnout.

We made our way down the stairs that opened into the lobby where the line went out the door. I turned to Chrystina. “Do you have another event going on this afternoon?”

She smiled. “No, you’re it.”

Standing room only.

After the talk, Scott turned and congratulated me, “Well, it looks like your reputation has preceded you.”

I smiled back but admitted the truth. “I think it was Gene and the Museum’s reputation that preceded us all.”

Adios,

Craig

PS: If you’d like to join the museum, please go to their website www.autrynationalcenter.org or http://autrynationalcenter.org/membership_home.php...You don’t have to live in LA, you just have to want to celebrate the West….

PPS: I’ve got a few events coming up, including a guest blog on www.jungleredwriters.com where I’ll be talking about women and lesser subjects (all subjects after women are lesser) all day on Wednesday, August 5^th.

The Sheridan Library, Sheridan, WY, Thursday, August 6^th at 7:00pm

Barnes & Noble, Littleton, Colorado, August 20^th at 7:00pm.

Jerichow

Harrison Ford reading.




JERICHOW bears many similarities to THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE.
It is set in a part of East Germany that faces the North Atlantic--which strangely makes it seem un-German to my eyes. Germany and the sea? But like everywhere else now, it is multi-cultural in composition, increasing the mistrust between characters. (In the book, of course, the husband was Greek; here's he's Turkish)

Thomas, a former soldier, is on the run from bad debts and death of his mother. Ali is a middle aged Turkish immigrant,who owns a chain of snack bars in central Eastern Germany along with his beautiful, younger wife. So the setup is very familiar although it plays out differently, and in the end, is about paranoia as much as anything. The characters are more enigmatic than in the Cain tale. I never completely understood the motivations of the wife and lover. But that doesn't ruin the film in any way. Mistrust is the central theme.

Christian Petzold writes & directs a film about three characters, each with a dark side to their character. This is grim film, and focused on these three and their dance of death to the point of claustrophobia.

I can't imagine anyone reading this blog wouldn't like it. Acting, directing, look, all great. Give it a chance if it comes your way.

Question: are we ever going to have dubbing of such quality that reading sub-titles becomes old-fashioned? I heard we were headed toward quality dubbing years ago and yet we still read films. It takes much away from our appreciation of its look and ambiance when we are always looking at the bottom of the screen. Luckily this was not a heavily-dialogued film.