GoodReads meta-data is 364 pages, rated 4.19 by 17465 litizens.
Genre: Chick Lit.
Verdict: Flip, flip go the pages.
The narrative arch is a mystery that keeps interest for a while, but the litany of drunks, hangovers, casual sex, and more of the aforementioned soon wore thin. Knit one, purl one, repeat. Fascinating. Not.
The locale offered some interest but on the page it always took second place to the drink and sex.
Our heroine is given a shop in picturesque Cockleberry by an anonymous benefactor. That is the overarching mystery. Who is the giver and why? The shop has been derelict five years (and that gap is never explained within my attention span). What will our hapless heroine make of it? (Since we know it is the first of a series, success of some kind is guaranteed.)
Without a shred of self-discipline, numeracy, or much else Heroine makes the shop a success and discovers some true(r) love. She also discovers who her benefactor is. My discovery was why some chick lit is not for me.
Nicola May
It is the first (and for me last) in a series set in picturesque Devon. The author published this first volume herself and has since made quite a success of the series. So be it.
I seem to recall I went down that way once by train to a PSA conference in Exeter in 1980. The Veil of Ignorance is drawn over any details.
GoodReads meta-data is 208 pages (it seemed like a lot more), rated 3.96 by 120 relatives of the publisher.
Genre: krimi.
Verdict: slow and steady and slow.
Romanian public intellectual journalist muses on life, and death when late one afternoon with a colossal hangover he finds a dead body has disordered the books in his study – the library of the title. He vaguely recognised the victim as a passing acquaintance. What to do?
In his befuddled state he concludes that hiding the body in the cellar of the apartment building makes more sense than calling the militia (police). Sure he is a 98-pound weakling intellectual, lugging around a deadman in the dark of night is the safer option in a ruthless totalitarian state governed by a demon in a necktie.
Does it have to be said? None of that goes well.
He sets out then to resolve the mystery to make sure he is innocent, because all that pálinka the night before has undermined his confidence. The fraternity brothers have ordered a case of the stuff to see if it beats Romulean blue ale.
He romances a duchess who lives in a deuce palace with her father who disapproves of this slovenly journalist. She and he have enough misunderstandings to quality the title as Chick Lit.
After a while this hack realises someone is systematically plotting to bring him to ruin. He consults the list of people who hate him compiled in the telephone book, and settles on a likely prospect, a chicken farmer whom the journalist tried in the court of pubic opinion some years ago.
He gathers the principals in a room, and…..
Nit picking note: the dead man was not killed in the library, ergo there was no attack in the library. And as noted above a study with bookshelves does not a library make. A library has to have librarians, as well as books.
While it is set in Red Bucharest it is largely bleached of references either to communism or the regime. How such an all enveloping miasma can be filtered out is itself a wonder. After all, it was published in Romania by a regime that left nothing to chance. By the way, the femme fatale is not in fact a duchess but she lives like one and that is why he calls her that. Indeed how did anyone live like that in Romania in 1983?
George Arion with pipe.
This is the first in a series involving our hero, one Mladin, Andrei. In 2018 Arion was still publishing a book a year. Strength to his arm, but no more for me.
IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 2 minutes, rated 5.9 by 290 cinematizens.
Genre: krimi
Verdict: Woof!
The dogs have been replaced by the design of a warplane, but much else is word-for-word of The Kennel Murder Case (1933). In recognition of its original two dogs feature in this version.
After twice-over befuddling the inept secret police of an unnamed foreign power Philo (autocorrect insists that he is ‘Photo,’ regrettably we know better), Philo returns to the Big Apple to thwart the nation’s Republican enemies on home soil.
While in the European power’s inner sanctum he had learned that the plans of a top hush Yankee warplane were already on file there. How did they get there? Can we close the barn door now that Pegasus has bolted? ‘Do we care,’ chorussed the fraternity brothers on the way to the beer refrigerator in a well-worn path?
This rather brash and energetic incarnation of Philo inserts himself into the household of the aircraft owner and designer only to find him dead – three times over. He was clubbed, stabbed, and shot. This is a man with enemies. Was he a dean?
Suspicion falls with a thud on the victim’s errant brother who is nowhere to be found until, thanks to one of the dogs, someone opens the hall closet. Thump. Body number two.
Not to worry, Philo sorts through it all. The jilted girlfriend, the grasping sister, the fiancée, the ever-present butler, the next door neighbour and her dog, his own dog, his buffoon sidekick who is stuck with some terrible lines but mans-up for them, and others now forgotten.
In the great tradition, the least likely suspect did it as revealed in a final punch-up.
Among the cognoscenti there are those that claim to prefer the 1933 original in which Philo was played by William Powell, who finally learned his lesson and never did that again. Me, I am agnostic on this important question, at least until I can watch The Kennel Murder Case (1933) again. N.B. I tried reading it and found it so mannered, laboured, forced, and fey that I stopped when the Kindle sample ended, leaving me a wiser and happier man.
IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 4 minutes run time, rated 5.8 by 150 cinematizens,
Gerne: ODH
Verdict: Lee!
After superb opening credits with an animated, silhouetted nurse in white casting the light of a torch around an Old Dark House, Lee Patrick comes to the rescue as the nurse. It seems that in the ODH the heir apparent has had his brains blown out: suicide, accident, or murder?
The deceased was a caddish wastrel unloved and unmissed, but a mess there on the floor. While there was no money to inherit from his bed-ridden mother there is a whopper of an insurance policy on Cad himself, which will not be paid for suicide! So the household preference is for accident. He shot himself in the back of the head while cleaning his finger nails. Sure.
Bernie Olds is too smart to fall for that old dodge and he insinuates into the household his squeeze, the one and only Lee Patrick to nurse the bedridden mother. She takes the lead from there on in. A steam roller she keeps at it despite roadblocks, disincentives, threats, assault, and another assault. It is her picture and the better for it.
Skulduggery abounds. Who can be trusted? The peeping butler? Cad’s jilted girlfriend? The girlfriend’s paramour de jour? The secret wife of Cad? The gloomy doctor? Assorted retainers? The ever so correct lawyer?
No prizes for guessing. When everyone else is eliminated that leaves the ever so correct least suspicious one as the cape-wearing shadow. Though it is hard to picture this geriatric villain carrying around a roof ladder.
It was released on 21 May 1941 when theatrical newsreels featured the German victories in Crete and Libya. While secretly in Moscow, the Soviet head of military intelligence argued that Germany was preparing to invade Russia. Stalin rejected the assessment and when the intelligence officer insisted, Stalin had him arrested and shot. When will that happen in DC now that the Thief-in-Chief has unlimited power.
GoodReads meta-data is 320 pages, rated 4.00 by 37,381 litizens.
Genre: Chick Lit.
Verdict: Ignite!
Introverted, harassed, unloved, acned, beset teenage girl dreams of the stars while her wicked stepmother and cruel step sisters torment her in a tag team. If and when she finally snaps they will get the inheritance from the deceased father and be rid of her once and for all to live unhappily ever after. (It’s pretty clear these people do not have the happiness gene.)
The evil step mother is certainly decanal material. No argument, no loyalty, no evidence, no reason, no services rendered, no compassion sways her from the KPI of seeing off Introv. That way lies promotion. Sending Introv up on the roof in a thunderstorm to fix a leak is all in a day’s meanness for her. Nothing special. Overdrawn just a tad, one might say. On the other hand, speaking of deans….[some stories are not fit to print].
Introv works in a food truck with Stud Girl, a reference to the many piercings the latter sports. They communicate in grunts. Don’t underestimate this Newtown wannabe.
Long ago and far away Introv had parents who loved her and took her (metaphorically) to the stars, as founding fans of StarField, a brief television series that subsequently won a following in syndication.The odes to the dead parents and the stars are humbling, moving, and spectacular to read. If this is Chick Lit, let there be more of it.
Meanwhile, in another world the StarField franchise is getting a re-boot these years later with a teenage Jason Bieber in the lead.* Yuck! Nothing could be more wrong which Introv boldly declares on her blog which gets taken up far and wide simply because by some quirk of time zones she was the first to voice this opinion.
We learn that despite appearances and expectations, this teen idol has a soul, one that yearns to be free of being Jason Bieber 24/7. The iron cage of celebrity is very nicely realised in these pages. Though again perhaps a tiny bit overdrawn just for fun. Still I liked the ever distracted manager and monosyllabic bodyguard. Likewise the co-star who tells the boy wonder that if he doesn’t stand up for himself now, he never will.
He wants out so bad he calls an old number he found for help to wiggle out of a commitment without a confrontation, which old number once belonged to Introv’s deceased dad, and so he makes unintended contact with her. Through this mischance they communicate, and find that they can communicate more, and more easily with texts to a stranger than with anyone around them. He is surrounded by cannibalistic fans and hangers-on; she by the equally ravenous evil step family.
We just know that somehow these two worlds are going to meet, perhaps with a jolt, and that only these two can save each other.
Along the way they learn (as do some others) that they are not alone. Introv also learns that she does have friends and does not have to push the rock up the hill everyday alone. Bieber learns to act like the hero he plays in film, just a little bit, and discovers he likes it and it works.
Did I mention the food truck that specialised in pumpkin fries with a giant pumpkin painted on the side. Did I mention that? Shoulda. Did I mention Stud Girl’s cry at the gate: ‘Today we fight!’ Shoulda.
Loved it.
First is a series of Geek Girl books.
*No it is not really Justin Bieber but I wanted name from the popular culture and so little do I know that I took this one to represent the ephemera, vacuity, and fatuousness thereof. While I am sure many others fill that bill, Jason is a good fit.
IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 22 minutes of run time, rated 5.7 by 470 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy
Verdict: Bland leading the bland.
The chic fashions of Eastern Europe1972 abound, whence space flight is routine as far out as the Third Ring. (I took that to be a reference to Asteroids, but I’ll never know.) Then a number of space ships bound for a space station disappear. (The actors say ‘acht‘ but the subtitles say ‘ten.’) No distress calls, no nothing. Well, a lot of nothing. Then the space station itself goes dark.
Back on Earth high command ponders in a plenary session where Asians and Africans are conspicuously numbered among the socialist siblings. On the one side is Belle who wants to stop all flights and send a rescue mission. On the other is Tubby who prefers to continue as usual and wait and see. She prevails. Stress that: the head of operations is a woman and in 1972 she prevails against a male colleague.
The rescue mission sets off with Belle on board. By luck en route they encounter one the missing ships and try to board it, but it rockets off; apparently it is not a ghost ship. They continue on to the vast space station, part refinery, part parking garage, part YM/WSA (Young Men’s/Women’s Socialist Association), part science lab. It is about the size of the IKEA store in Tempe, vast and largely uncharted.
They find only starving laboratory animals, but then half of the station is sealed off, that is, the parking garage. Belle and the rescue crew show no interest in what is behind that green door.
There occurs a comic interlude with a tin man that is completely superfluous and annoying.
There has been a sidebar with a bored space miner on asteroid who misses Belle. (Who wouldn’t.). Many flashback to the good old days on Earth. Many. Too many.
Among the flash backs are some with Tubby who muses about Eolomena, which is the name acolytes have given to a point of light that appears every twenty-four years in the starry night sky. Is it a signal? He wishfully thinks so for no discernible reason. Why that name and rather than, say, Light in Sky was not explained within my attention span.
Now back to the space station for the denouement replete with SPOILERS. Tubby has by unknown means convinced the ten missing space ship crews and all the space station personnel to take one-way tickets to Eolomea. They have been sanding the wheels on their space ship wagons in the garage getting ready to blast off, while their ostensible rescuers wander about in Space Station IKEA. When the bored miner is offered a one-way ticket, he forsakes Belle and goes along. (‘What an idijit,’ cried the fraternity brothers! ). So the numerous, lengthy flashbacks to their courtship come to naught. End.
It is mercifully free of any AgitProp, beyond that implied by the composition of the plenary session where the Third World members sit quietly waiting for the assistant director’s cue to vote for Belle.
Points of interest…are two. In 1972 it portrays two things unusual for the time. First and foremost is that Belle is in charge and stays that way. There are no demeaning asides from the chaps as there were in innumerable 1972 films. Nor is she riven by self doubts – scientist versus woman – that mar so much Hollywood and Pinewood tosh from the day. Full Ost Marks for that.
Der Boss.
Second, asteroid mining is dreary, dull, and boring blue collar work. There is no glamour in space. When Ridley Scott made space flight industrial in Alien (1979) he hailed himself a genius, but it was old news.
But overall, there is zero tension in Eolomea. There are no equipment failures, but then there were probably no low-bid contractors in the script, to generate some tension. Meteors seem to have taken the day off because there are none of them either. The debate between Belle and Tubby is oh-hum. That Tubby has suborned all those people into a one-way mission is taken as Red without explanation. Bland is the word.
GoodReads meta-data is 304 pages rated 3.51 by 9272 litizens.
Genre: krimi, pastiche.
Verdict: Bromance.
Confession: I gulped it down a day.
In retirement Joe Biden is restless and bored, and more than a little miffed that his through-thick-and-thin buddy Barry has cut him loose. Then one night out walking with the dog, Joe sees a dark figure in the gloaming. That’s Barry, who is always dark!
Barack has broken his long silence to deliver in person some bad news. Gulp.
Aside, Joe Biden’s only claim to fame is that he rode the Amtrak back and forth to DC from Wilmington Delaware most days for thirty-six years while has was a US Senator. Joe knows Amtrak, and all who work the early and late trains he used to take. Turns out one of those workers is dead, a conductor who always had a good word, and in his pocket was a print from online telephone book of Joe’s home address. Was that the start of a call for help?
The emotional, impulsive Joe is a whirlpool of reactions. He is glad to see his BFF Barry and pissed off he hasn’t seen him a lot sooner and in better circumstances. He is stunned by the death of his nodding acquaintance and perplexed, even more than usual, as he acknowledges, by the address.
A good Irish Catholic Union man is dead in strange circumstances, and Joe does what Joe always does – the instincts of a democratic politician run deep – he dusts off the black suit and goes to the funeral. Brief discussions there with mourners and family compound the mystery.
Joe does what Joe always does and plunges ahead…into trouble and more trouble. However, before it gets too deep that black man in black reappears with his pet Secret Service agent to bail Joe out. By now Joe is in too deep to get out and Barry, well Barry, is curious about what is going on, and Joe always stood by him when the going got tough, so he joins in, albeit on his own inscrutable terms. Yoda is a transparent blabber mouth compared to this guy.
What follows is a rollicking ride involving the DEA, corrupt men in blue (good Italian Catholics though they may be), incorruptible and uncommunicative cops, mad and bad bikers, Little Beast, Navy Seal Team 4 (sorta), Steve the unflappable one-man Secret Service detail grudgingly allowed by the Thief-in-Chief, a largely absent but still influential Jill, Champ the wonder dog, a wily insurance investigator, and assorted First Staters.
The plotting is ingenious and slowly ties everything up. Maybe the tying is more attenuated than some readers might like but it is complete (down to the wig [whew!]) and there is after all no rush to the finish line.
While Joe does what Joe does and rushes about, well, as a senior citizen he hobbles about mostly, without a plan, Barry is the chess player who is seldom seen but always ten moves ahead of the game. The characterisations of these two is nicely done by the author, a journalist, who had the chance to observe them for years and did so, rather than simply react the way most mediaistas do. Biden wears his heart on his sleeve, while Obama is detached and analytic. Biden is obvious and a terrible liar. Obama is aloof and distant.
There is a lot about Wilmington and Amtrak and amid all the hurly-burly a certain amount of unexpected but effective pathos, too.
Andrew Shaffer in disguise.
Needless to say, Pox News has attacked the book with blazing incoherence.
I could not deny myself the pleasure of reading some of troll droppings on GoodReads. My, my how the anger grows out of nothing. Lear had that wrong. Well, I assume it is anger but that is guessing from the incoherent tweeting. Though there were some letters from the alphabet.
IMDb meta-data is six episodes of 50 minutes each, rated 7.2 by 2459 cinematizens.
Genre: krimi.
Verdict: Leaden.
Bucharest in Romania 1983 that most communist of the satellite states, where Red is best. A typical cop show with an imagination-deprived screenplay saturated by tropes seen scores of times before. Our unkempt and odiferous hero is a man’s man and has the snarl to prove it. He and his partner set out against orders to make a big bust, spouting Communist slogans as they go. They will be worker-heroes, again. Parody, I know, but — news flash! — that does not make it funny.
Yes, the Fraternity Brothers anticipated it.
This time Macho and macho are the fall guys and his partner — aka as ‘Little Macho’ — is murdered before his very eyes, though strangely both the CIA drugs imported to sap the Red Will of the people and the American dollar payoff Monopoly money are left behind. Even stranger the villain wears a Ronald Reagan mask and ascended from two stories out of a window by means unknown, but not before he leaves a hand written message which must have been prepared in advance for his hirsute hipster pursuer. Sure.
Aside, in effecting escape this Reagan neatly and gratuitously shot dead an old babuška in an apartment he ran through but no one gives this victim a second thought. It is all about the partner.
Needless to say Snarly feels guilty about the partner, not the babuška, and takes it out on his new partner with whom first has a macho fistfight and then he promptly engages in an unsanctioned investigation into the murder of dead Old What’s Name. Psst, Little Macho was his name.
Time to reveal the obvious. It was made in 2017 as though it were a cop show made in 1983. Hence the rich array of clichés, like the unity of the fist. Fists were much used in Romanian law enforcement it would seem. Few things change.
In 1983 Romania was the front line of the Cold War! Not even the Soviets can be trusted with the Red Grail. There is no crime and corruption in Bucharest except that fomented by AMERICAN agents who, there among the dust bunnies, are to be seen under every bed. The film makers add their own prejudice by making the US Ambassador a drawling and drooling southerner who seems to have the run of the city for no other reason than to annoy our Heroes. Yet they do not notice the diplomatic-plated limousine when parked a few meters from a crime scene in a direct line of camera sight. Macho get an eye test from the Red health service!
The parody is supposed to be intriguing and funny I guess but the hand is so heavy even the fraternity brothers pined for the finesse of Rambo. To cite one of many examples. Our Heroes investigate the murder of their colleague by going to the American Embassy often where they yell anti-capitalist slogans. Take that! A police procedural it is not. On each visit in the lobby of the Embassy are two obese men (one wearing a baseball hat) wolfing down an enormous pile of hamburgers. See what I mean about subtle? See what I mean about writer’s own prejudices?
There are non sequitur David Lynch touches as when first meeting the Ambassador they see an elderly woman drinking tea, who does not thereafter figure in the actions. What is it with these babuškas?
It was filmed on location with Romanian actors in some of the roles, and it does offer some travelogue of Bucharest. The slogans on the crumbling walls celebrate the Nicolae Ceaușescu regime — amid the grime, ruin, disappearances, and poverty — for saving the people from clean water, sanitation, and other fiendish Western plots. Why do I think of Comrade Numero Uno in Cuba?
Somewhere I saw discussion questions for parents with children. I guess they could discuss why ‘f***’ is pretty much every fourth word.
Romania’s current efforts to look to the west are many, and this film is probably one example. It pokes fun at Romania’s Red Past, while today earning Euros.
We saw a Rick Steves travelogue about Bucharest the other night that made it seem nice. But the EU doubts the commitment to the rule of law, rather than fists, by the quasi-fascist regime. That did not deter the film makers.
GoodReads meta-data is 146 pages, rated 3.89 by 28 litizens.
Genre: Chick Lit
Verdict: Creaks but fun.
Number One Curmudgeon Avenue is a four-story Victorian house with attic conversion near Manchester in wet England. The house narrates the story of its occupants, namely the sisters Edna and Edith, now in their cantankerous dotages, and assorted relatives, lodgers, neighbours, and the incessant rain that forces things on them, like a roofer.
It is a small world that brings them into contact with many from their past: boyfriends, girlfriends, offspring, and more. Maurice comes a-courting in his white cowboy hat with rat poison in one hand and minties in the other. Layabout son Ricky along with his ex and her sister and mother in tow tries to wheedle mum and auntie out of the house. Then Edith’s lost love, the exotic Genevieve reappears, briefly. The paying lodger is too good to be true, and that is a fact.
First in a series of the Terraced House Diaries. The walls not only have ears, but eyes and a keyboard as well. It ends as ‘To Be Continued.’
Samantha Henthorn
N. B. Copy edited needed. Missing words, often prepositions make it hard to follow at times but worth the effort.
GoodReads meta-data is 260 pages, rated 4.07 by 2934 litizens.
Genre: krimi.
Verdict: Golden Retrievers rule!
Six years after the guilty verdict, lawyer Andy is sure that loser Joey is innocent and by a strange coincidence in which his best friend, Tara the Golden Retriever, figures
Andy finds a way to re-open the case.
Mafia, drugs, arms smuggling, cartels, nut jobs, and frontmen are all involved and the body count increases, believe it or not, past 20,000. Subtle it is not.
Andy is droll, self-deprecating, and frequently wishes he had not gone to law school. He has a lower case a-team to help his investigations, and then there is the one-man army, Marcus of few to no words, a body guard hired by Mrs. Andy to look her investment in Andy. Does he ever.
Tara makes a good listener when Andy tries to work out what is going on. There are some loose ends, like how both the Montana letter and phone call were lost, who was bugging Nicky Fats (both the FBI and Iuoto?), why was Joey so convincing in the first place?
David Rosenfeld
When the mechanical Kindle Turk recommended it I was curious about the bounding dog on the cover and tried a sample, and kept going. It is more violent than my usual fare but the canine element and good humour overcame my doubts. It is the tenth title in a long running series and I expect to read another when I am ready for another Nordic noir blood bath.
![Comrade Detective (2017 [1983?])](https://theory-practice.sydney.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/download-1-2.jpeg)
