Zoinks! The Spooky Folklore Behind Scooby Doo

 

Scooby Diving

Zoinks! The Spooky 
Folklore Behind Scooby Doo
By Mark Norman
Chin Beard Books and Oak Tree Books
ISBN 9781837916702

Well this was a pretty fantastic Birthday present for me this year, it has to be said. I originally saw it on BlueSky when one of the people I follow, Raskolnik highlighted it in a post and, it turns out Zoinks! The Spooky Folklore Behind Scooby Doo, pretty much does what it says on the tin, written by a leading UK folklore scholar who I will need to look into at some point in the future, for sure. 

The book is split into seven chapters, bookended by an intro and outro from figures behind the scenes of various of the many variants of the show through the years, not to mention a large appendix of episode guide style lists too. Right away from the start, I was hooked in by the author with Chapter One, Colleges and Cannabis - Scooby Doo Legends In The Real World. 

And this one is a little different from most of the other chapters in the book, in that it investigates the myths created by the show itself and its influence on the world around it... before diving into the other chapters which live up, in no uncertain terms, to the title of the book. This chapter was extremely illuminating for this particular reader, as I haven’t seen many iterations of the show over the years, it has to be said. For example I discovered that, while Scooby-Doo is written... well,  as I just wrote it... in the majority of TV and film properties of the brand, the original first two seasons from the 1960s and 70s correctly write it as Scooby Doo. This is because Doo is actually Scooby’s family name, with Scooby itself being a shortening of his real name, one Scoobert Doo.

Also, although she’s had occasional relationships with men in the series, it would seem that Velma is actually written as a lesbian. And did you know that the term ‘jinkies’ comes from a historical and less blasphemous version of ‘By Jove’? And, furthermore, ‘Zoinks!’ might well have derived from ‘gadzooks’, or rather ‘God’s hooks’. The writer also discusses how much of the folklore of various areas and times was either fuelled by... and in some instances completely created from thin air... various smugglers over the years, in order to keep upstanding citizens, or possibly just some ‘meddling kids’, away from their areas of operation, by scaring people off with the imagery and ‘cosplay’ of said myth. 
 
Chapter Two, Landscape And The Gothic looks at the visual tropes of the ‘state of being gothic’ such as run down crumbling architecture and the appearance of the full moon. Indeed, it even shows how a crescent moon on the show set in one night will suddenly become a full moon for events taking place on the next night, purely to fulfil that gothic vision and tone of the show, flying in the face of continuity. 

Chapter Three, Gh-gh-gh-gh-gh-ghosts is an interesting chapter also, with many stereotypes of ghosts from various literary wells explained, especially as to how they are visually depicted. For instance, in the mid fifteenth to eighteenth century, it was common for the recently deceased to be wrapped in a winding cloth or shroud and be placed in the ground wrapped in that... because only the wealthy could afford such luxury items as a coffin. Hence the depiction of ghosts as being seen as sheet wearing spirits. Reports of a ghost in Hammersmith in 1803 further fuelled this depiction. Also covered in this chapter... which I won’t go into too much here... are the origins of the visual variant of some ghosts being depicted bound in chains and also the variant of an empty, animated suit of armour. As well as such phenomena as mirror ghosts, curses, Crystallomancy, seances, psychics, spirit boards, Knockers in mines and Civil War ghosts.

Chapter Four, Snips and Snails, Witches in Scooby Doo, looks at such things as Tasseomancy and the derivation of the term hag coming from ‘Hægtesse’, which means witch in Middle English. While Chapter Five, Indigenous, Ancient and Non-Western Cultures looks at cryptids such as the abominable snowman, big foot, Japanese dragons, Chinese dragons, Jinn and even at places like Shangri La or communities such as the Mayan and Aztec Civilisations.

Chapter Six, Urban Legends and Folklore Motifs looks at exactly that, with such star performers as Spring Heeled Jack from Victorian times. It also accredits Richard Dorson as the person who first came up with the term ‘urban legend’ in 1968. Very interestingly, it looks at how familiar and reinvented modern legends are, in fact, not modern inventions at all but ones which have echoed down through history over the years. So the myth of alligators living and growing in the sewers saw its predecessor in Roman times, where it was believed that there were octopuses living in the sewers. 

The seventh and final chapter, Thoroughly Modern Scooby gets very up to date with stuff such as the recent rise of the fear of clowns and the, perhaps not so modern, alien abduction phenomenon. Not to mention entering the somewhat dodgy realms of AI. 

And it’s an absolute joy to read, rendered in an entertaining writing style with lots of fun, informative facts. My one criticism would be in reference to the Scooby Snack. While noting that capsules made from psychedelic mushroom psilocybe cubensis are nick-named Scooby Snacks in the real life drug community, after the show, the writer informs us that said treat was not in the show until the 1980s... a relatively modern phenomena. However, this didn’t quite ring true to me and it glitched in my brain... so I went back to my CD recording of the original theme song from 1969 and found the Scooby Snack is definitely mentioned in the lyrics. Perhaps in a more general sense of a plethora of snacks in the show but, nonetheless, it’s right there. 

But it’s a minor criticism and, all in all, I’d have to say I was completely blown away by Zoinks! The Spooky Folklore Behind Scooby Doo and it’s a hard recommend for me. I might have to track down the original show I remember growing up with in the early seventies as repeats on the BBC if I can find a decent Blu Ray at some point. Although I have bad memories of canned laughter plaguing the show too. But, however that pans out, this is a truly excellent book by a very entertaining writer and shouldn’t be missed, if this is the kind of thing you are interested in. 

True Detective - Night Country

Native Tongue

True Detective - 
Night Country
Season 4
HBO 2024
6 episodes

Warning: Some spoilers

After a strong opening with a supernatural atmosphere where a herd of deer are startled, True Detective - Night Country, shows itself as being more of a reboot than a continuation at first, although there are some marked references going back to the characters in the first season of the show (reviewed by me here). The opening also has strong similarities to John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing (reviewed here) as the whole thing is set in the fictional town of Ennis in Alaska, when a research team all go suddenly missing, after a big fright glimpsed at the start of the story. Also, to lend itself to the definite supernatural shenanigans going on, the whole thing is set from mid December through to early January, in the part of the year where the whole town is forever night. So, yeah, you won’t be seeing much daylight in this show other than the occasional flashback. 

And that’s another thing which marks this show out from the predecessors… it’s not being told in a fractured time narrative in any way, although there is a sense of looking back to a prior case. 

Enter Police Detective Liz Danvers played by Jodie Foster. When she finds the tongue of an old murder victim in the research station while everyone is missing, she realises it links up with a case with her old partner, now working for a different branch. That doesn’t stop that ex-partner, Evangeline Navarro, played by Kali Reis, from joining the investigation to try and help figure out how the two cases are related. Helping Danvers is her newish young sidekick Detective Peter Prior, played by Finn Bennett. Also among the cast are two actors who feel like they’ve been a bit wasted here. The great Christopher Eccleston plays an outranking superior officer who is not really on board with Danvers investigation but, it’s more like a series of cameos (he doesn’t even appear in the last, slightly extended episode).

And then there’s also Fiona Shaw as a native to the area, Rose Aguineau. Now I think this actress is great, especially after seeing her as the authority figure in Killing Eve (reviewed here, here,  here and here) but, again she’s more of a cameo, ‘five minutes and you’re done’, presence in each episode. That being said, her character, who knows the history and folklore of the area, is at least a more significant person and is even the one who, at the end of the first episode… and with the help of the spirit of her dead husband… finds the frozen bodies of the dead scientists, half mutilated and naked in the snow. 

Well, not all dead because, when the cops are trying to remove the bodies from the ice, one of the guy’s arms cracks off and that’s when we find out there was one survivor… when he starts screaming at this. And asides from the occasional goriness (head shot squibs are getting much better), there is much more an emphasis on the supernatural as accepted by the majority of the population there (except Danvers, naturally, who has to be confronted by it several times before she starts to accept things), giving this season a very different, horror movie vibe. But it’s also shot through with, often black, humour… for instance, after a retort is made to Peter about the way he does everything for Danvers, he finds himself asking, “Who’s Mrs. Robinson?”

So there’s a slow creeping dread going on throughout the entire show and, juxtaposed with the more realistic procedural story which the characters are wrapped up in, it makes for an interesting mix. And it’s well acted, especially by Kali Reis but also, of course, by Foster. In fact, Danvers is a deliberately unlikeable character and so it took me a while before I could start warming to her, as Foster brings out the person beneath the surface as the story continues 

That being said, all of the detectives on the case seem to be missing the one obvious question, filled with mystery, which I picked up on from a screen saver at the research centre early on in the first episode. If this place is supposed to have a highly advanced research team, why the heck are they watching films on a DVD player rather than a Blu Ray player? It makes no sense!

The ending is… ambiguous. A, mostly, human intervention reason for the deaths of all the scientists is given but there’s also room left for unexplained elements which could have… and probably did… contribute to the deaths. Even the final fate of Evangeline Navarro is left open to interpretation… is she in the final shot with Danvers or did she kill herself and then rejoined Danvers as her spirit (as seems to happen a lot in Ennis, it seems… the dead rarely seem to be resting). And, yeah, overall I liked this season, written and directed by a new show runner. I think Night Country and the first season rank the highest in my experience of True Detective, for sure. 

But, of course, like everyone else, I’m wondering when the next cast will be coming along for a sixth season. Well… rumours are I’m going to have to wait ’til 2027 to see the next story so, yeah, I’ll keep my eye on that, for sure.

The Christmas Cracker Killer

 

Merry Fishmas 

The Christmas Cracker Killer 
by Alexandra Benedict 
Simon and Schuster
ISBN 9781398532212

The Christmas Cracker Killer is the newest and, by my reckoning, fourth of Alexandra Benedict’s Christmas murder mysteries. I was getting worried last year when no new Christmas tome was forthcoming from her but, here’s the latest installment and, with no shame at all, I’d have to say that, yes, it’s a bit of a cracker. 

Like the previous volumes by Benedict, it starts off with a section detailing the games of hidden things in the book. These include a ‘prize’ for the first person to find the anagram within the chapter heading letters, ten of the central character’s (and author’s) favourite punk songs hidden in the text, the anagrams of Christmas movies hidden in the wordage, the hidden favourite books set in hotels and, lastly, ten of the BBC ghost story titles from over the years. 

Also like the three previous tomes, which comprised The Christmas Murder Game (reviewed here), Murder On The Christmas Express (reviewed here) and The Christmas Jigsaw Murders (reviewed here), the book references back to at least one of the other novels in this shared universe. So in this case we have a call back to Murder On The Christmas Express fairly early on. Also, though, this is the first of her Christmas novels to bring back the main protagonist and a couple of accompanying characters from a previous book to fulfil the same function here. So we have the crossword puzzle setting, 80 plus year old Edie, star of The Christmas Jigsaw Murders, her 90 plus year old lesbian lover Riga and her nephew/adopted son, Sean, the police inspector. 

This is also the second novel I’ve read this year (which includes the Wild Cards mosaic novel House Rules, reviewed here) to be set in a large house with guests stranded on an island... in this case a newly opening hotel. Riga has won a prize of a Christmas holiday there, along with Edie and Sean, as part of a press/blog/publicity event to open the hotel. And. of course, once everyone is settled there and the various other characters are set up… that’s when the murders start happening. The time frame of the entire book, bar the epilogue, takes place on the 24th and 25th of December and, of course, inclement weather and other acts of sabotage scupper any way of getting off the island again. So it’s up to Edie, with the help of Sean (who seems to have mellowed to her crime solving machinations… as circumstances would require) to try and unmask the murderer by solving various clues and trying to find out just what makes said ‘envoy of death’ tick.

And, I have to say (and I always seem to say this every time I read a novel by this writer), this is my favourite of her Christmas novels yet. It’s so well written and it feels like a real progression over the others in the way its put together too. I mean, it takes over a hundred pages before the first murder is committed… because the various characters are being built up so well that the reader can just lose themselves in the scenario. But once the murders start happening…. well, like I said, it’s all compressed into a short time frame so they come thick and fast. As do some of the ‘almost murders’ but, yeah, I’m not spoiling that here. 

Like a good old giallo, there are so many valid suspects as the author whittles down the various guests and staff that it’s almost impossible to figure out the real identity of the killer (and Benedict’s pronoun game is once again strong and annoying but effective in this respect). I will only say I got it ‘half right’ and so, of course, I’m delighted that I didn’t see the full picture until the timely reveal. Even with joyful clues and hints such as… “No one was reliable these days. Not staff, not friends, not family and certainly not narrators.” The prose has a poetic bent to it which sits just right with the subject matter and flows into the consciousness without getting in the way of the intent of the novel. 

And it also has... fortune fishes!  

It’s funny, I haven’t had a fortune fish in a Christmas Cracker in a long time but this year... well, every year I design my own Christmas cards and this year I bought over a hundred fortune fish to stick onto the special section I put on the back of each card. But they’re also part of the killer’s modus operandi in this novel too so… that made me happy. I thought people had forgotten all about them. 

So that’s me done with The Christmas Cracker Killer, I think. Once again, the new Alexandra Benedict Christmas novel is also the best thing I’ve read from her… which is a pretty good batting average as far as I’m concerned. A wonderful read for the month of December and an absolute joy from cover to cover. A strong recommendation from me here. 

The Christmas Murder Game

Murder Mansion

The Christmas Murder Game
by Alexandra Benedict
Bonnier books
ISBN: 9781838775384

The Christmas Murder Game is the first of what I shall, at present, call a trilogy of unconnected Christmas murder mysteries by writer Alexandra Benedict. I read the second and third ones, Murder On The Christmas Express (reviewed here) and The Christmas Jigsaw Murders (reviewed here) last year, not knowing that she’d actually written a trio of books three years running, starting with this one. Alas, there’s no new Christmas mystery by her this year but I live in hope that another one will be forthcoming at some point.

This one starts as the others, with a brief set of rules telling the reader how to play various games hidden within the text of the book. This one has two hidden games in it (plus an acknowledgements word search at the end)... the first being various anagrams of the gifts of the twelve days of Christmas hidden within the text of the relevant chapter and a second game being the titles of 12 of Benedict’s favourite mansion/manor house/family get together style mysteries hidden in the prose.

This book tells the story of main protagonist Lily, who returns after some years estranged from her adopted family to Endgame Manor in Yorkshire, taking the trip up from London near the start of the book. Her mother, who she found dead as a child in the big maze on the grounds of the house was the catalyst for her Aunt Liliana adopting her and taking her away from the manor at a young age. However, now Liliana is dead and her written voice from beyond the grave beckons Lily back to take part in the last of her annual Christmas games against other members of the family... the prize primarily being inheriting the house and grounds but, in the letter sent to Lily, the main stake is to uncover the equally cryptic hidden clues to find that her mum didn’t slash her own wrists as had been reported... but that she was, in fact, murdered.

And it’s just as good as the other two Christmas themed books I mentioned above... in fact, I think this one might just be my favourite of the bunch. Naturally for these kinds of books, the story focusses a lot on the various family characters, their history with the main protagonist and the secrets about various people, including Lily, as the plot goes on. And, also like a lot of these kinds of books, sometimes you can’t see those twists coming and... yeah... other times you do. But I certainly didn’t see an early complication for the central character coming before it’s revealed a few chapters into the novel, so I was pleased and pleasantly surprised by that.

And the writer is very skilled, not just with the puzzles, anagrams and the general enigma of the main plot but, also with the beautiful, sometimes poetic way she expresses things. For instance, in a brief childhood flashback when a character has the complex house of cards he was building knocked down by his sister, Benedict describes “His tears falling like spades down his cheeks.” And another phrase which impressed me with its vivid evocation of sense memory from earlier in the book was, “Lily yanks her bobble hat down over her ears. She’d forgotten how the Yorkshire wind wants to get to know you…”

And I’m doubly pleased to say that I learned something too from this book. I’d never come across the term before but now I know that prosopagnosia is the term for the neurological disorder known as face blindness. Anytime I learn something like this from a novel, I’m always pleased.

However, other than that, I’ve not got much else to add by way of observations on The Christmas Murder Game. The main reveal of a certain antagonist didn’t exactly blind side me, to be honest but, the old giallo ploy of leaving so many suspects on the loose did at least slow me down a little. I very much enjoyed this one and would recommend it as a December read if you are into mystery novels, for sure.

Fire And Bones

In Fire Straits

Fire And Bones
by Kathy Reichs
Simon And Schuster
ISBN 9781398531178

Okay, another one of my very brisk reviews, this time for what has shifted from being my second ritual Christmas read to, over the last few years, my number one August holiday read. I always start the latest of Kathy Reichs’ Temperance Brennan novels on the first day of my holidays, which usually coincides to roughly when they’re published each year.

This latest adventure for the forensic bones lady is entitled Fire And Bones and involves Tempe being brought in as a side effect of a favour she does for her daughter. Her daughter’s ‘loaded’ best friend is a would be reporter and podcaster who interviews a reluctant Tempe for a new case involving arson. The result being that the people in Washington where a fire killed four people want, as a result of watching that interview, Tempe to help out with her expertise in bodies recovered from said fire.

The other side effect of this is that Tempe gains a new ally and, possibly, a new semi-regular character for the series, I hope... as she ends up staying with the lady who interviewed her in her... well it’s pretty much a mansion.

But with a second fire occurring and other fishy things happening, it’s a case of no arson around when Tempe gets on the case.

So this one, without trying to put in any spoilers, leads back to a long standing feud which started during prohibition between some bootleggers and other unsavoury characters of the time. And aided by her new friend, plus her own ingenuity, Tempe seems to be a little ahead of the police at most turns of the investigation on this one. Once again, though, this puts her very much in harms way.

Now, in terms of the mystery, it’s a bit of a jigsaw of suspects and interested parties and, though I didn’t see part of the solution, certainly the follow up attack after all has supposedly been put to bed, didn’t surprise me in the least. There’s a character who is introduced about a third of the way into the novel who I realised, as soon as I found out that character’s profession, was probably involved (or would be) in the various incidents which come to light. So, yeah, the story does telegraph itself to a certain extent, it has to be said.

That doesn’t matter too much to me though, because once again it hurtles along at a fair lick and is never not entertaining and thrilling. There’s a reason I read these at the start of my holidays... they relax me and I know I’m going to tear through it quickly, setting up the tone for my time away from the office. And once again, Reichs doesn’t disappoint.

Now a couple of things of note... the writer seems to be relying less on the hard cliffhanger/foreshadowing allusion at the end of each chapter as she so often has in the past. I mean, there are a couple of last liners in a more familiar style here such as... “We both knew I’d never make that call. We were both wrong.” but, for the most part, the last lines of each chapter are not promising (and often they used to deliver, so I’m not knocking the practice at all) some kind of hard revelation in the chapter to come. Truth be told, I kinda missed them though. I mean, the novel doesn’t suffer from it in any way, it has to be said but, it’s just the kind of writing I’m used to reading from her.

The other thing I should mention in terms of the story is that Andrew Ryan, Tempe’s long suffering boyfriend, spends most of the book away and unmentioned, for reasons I won’t go into here. But I did miss the banter between the two. Obviously, there’s a little of it here but, yeah, it definitely felt like Reichs was trying to change the way she writes these things somewhat... at least that’s what it felt like to me.

One last thing... and the hobgoblin of little minds like mine, perhaps... is the basic brush with the metatextual that rears its head in the text. In once sentence, Reichs... talking as Tempe, the books are always told from a first person point of view... mentioned that someone in the story binge watched all 12 seasons of Bones on television. Now Bones, of course, is a kind of TV universe of a slightly different version of Temperance Brennan, based on her earlier years and perhaps a little more on the writer herself. But these books, which are stories which I can’t help but feel are grounded in a certain reality, are now suggesting that in the world of Temperance Brennan, there’s a TV show top lining a character called Temperance Brennan, from a different viewpoint, so to speak. Which doesn’t quite sit right with me for some reason but, hey, it’s a nice reference either way.

And that’s me about finished with Fire And Bones, I think. If you’re already an avid reader of Kathy Reichs and love this character as much as me then you really can’t go wrong picking this one up. They’re bright, breezy and informative so, you know, if modern thrillers are your thing, give this (and the series in general) a go. Can’t wait for the next one.

The Christmas Jigsaw Murders

Puzzledunnit

The Christmas
Jigsaw Murders
by Alexandra Benedict
Simon and Schuster
ISBN 9781398525375

Eagle eyed readers of the regular kind will probably notice that this is the second ‘December tome’ that I’ve read this year by Alexandra Benedict. The first was Murder On The Christmas Express (reviewed here a couple of days ago) and I was delighted to find a second Christmas themed novel by her out for this Christmas... The Christmas Jigsaw Murders. However, I got it wrong again. Near the start of this story, the main protagonist mentions that something wasn’t quite sitting right about a murder story in the news...  that murder story being the one detailed in Murder On The Christmas Express. All well and good, a shared universe is a nice thing and means characters can cross over in later novels... but then I remembered that a similar comment was made about a murder in the news by another character in the previous book and, sure enough, when I checked, this is actually the third Christmas murder story that Benedict has written, the train set story being the second. So, next year for my December reading, I’m hoping to still be able to pick up her first in this loose trilogy, The Christmas Murder Game (if there are still hardback editions to be had) and, who knows, perhaps she’ll have written a fourth by then.

This one concentrates on a story concerning main protagonist Edie O’ Sullivan, an 80 year old ex-teacher and crossword setter for a local newspaper. And when I first read this on the synopsis of the book on Amazon, I assumed that this would be the writer’s homage to Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple stories but, no Edie is absolutely nothing like Miss Marple, although she clearly possesses a sharp mind, for sure. If anything, I’d say there’s more than a little of Ebenezer Scrooge in her and, I’m possibly reading too much into it but, I think their are a few vague connections to Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in this one.

That being said, Edie is a completely sympathetic character who just happens to hate Christmas and most people... and there’s nothing wrong with that (although, personally, I started to embrace Christmas myself, when I was older and had enough money in my pockets to be able to buy people presents). The story involves a series of murders in the town of Weymouth, which seem to be personally targeted at Edie from a person in her past. A person who is posting puzzle pieces from murder scenes as clues, in brown envelopes, through her door as a challenge to stop each murder before it happens. A challenge Edie takes seriously since the endgame, if she is figuring out the puzzle pieces properly, seems to be the death of her nephew Sean, a detective in the local constabulary who has warned her off from working the case in her own way and to leave it to the police.

But, of course, if she did that, then there would be no exciting story to read about. Now, I have to say, after the excellent Murder On The Christmas Express, I wasn’t expecting this one to give it much more than a good run for its money in pacing and addictive reading. I mean, murder mysteries set in railway sleeping cars is always a great setting so to expect something even more unputdownable from the writer would be, I felt, an unfair expectation. But, as it happens, The Christmas Jigsaw Murders is actually even better than the prior Christmas flavoured tome and I found myself feeling for the central characters even more than in the last one. And, I actually didn’t figure out who the murderer was either (although in that particular part of the game, I did feel it would have been impossible to do that, once I knew the solution). So it kept me guessing (which is almost impossible these days) and it also had a couple of surprises in terms of what happens to the main character before the novel had finished... which was cool.

Once again, the writer’s obvious penchant for puzzle solving has been highlighted in the book in a similar manner to the prior tome. For instance, one challenge she issues is to solve hidden anagrams of Dickens novels, thrown randomly in to the book. Another is to name hidden songs in the text... in the prior volume it was Kate Bush songs and, this time, it’s the turn of Fleetwood Mac (not a band I’m familiar with, in all honesty but, my cousin would love it). Finally, there’s a prize to claim as well, for the first person to unscramble all the letters, one given in a puzzle piece heading for each chapter, to reveal a Christmas song... so that’s nice.

I do have one slight criticism with the book and, I’m more than happy to overlook it as a mistake made by one of the characters as a deliberate character embellishment by the writer, rather than suggest she was at fault herself. In one scene there is a reference to a 1940s film noir one of the characters watched which featured a briefcase with unseen insides which glowed. Now, I can only assume this is a less than veiled reference to the Mickey Spillane movie Kiss Me Deadly. If so, it’s not a forties noir... the movie was released in 1955.

Other than that, though, I would have to say that The Christmas Jigsaw Murders is one of the most enjoyable and pacey December reads I’ve been through in some time and have nothing but good words for anyone wishing to read either this wonderful volume or the prior one. As I said, I intend to return to the Christmas writings of Alexandra Benedict next December, for sure.

Murder On The Christmas Express

Deeper Sleeper

Murder On The
Christmas Express
Written by Alexandra Benedict
Simon and Schuster
ISBN 9781398519824

Regular readers may remember that I don’t always have the best of luck when it comes to choosing December, Christmas themed reads to review on the blog. I usually go for either whodunnits or horror stories and, for some strange reason (since I do love a good ghost story), I usually have much better luck at this time of year with the old school crime stories. This year I’ve hedged my bets by going for, not one but two Christmas themed crime thrillers (by the same writer, too) and one ghost story. Hopefully I can get them all read and reviewed here before December the 25th is upon me.

Okay, so the first tome on the list is Alexandra (aka A. K.) Benedict’s novel Murder On The Christmas Express, which arrived from Amazon as a nice, handsome hardback, signed by the writer herself, no less (I hadn’t realised I was ordering a signed copy so that’s always a nice surprise). A really nice thing about this train bound story of murder is that the sides of the pages on this edition, are coloured red with white train track running through it... so, yeah, I’m a sucker for that kind of attention to graphic design features, for sure. There’s also a map of the main train carriage and the occupants of the various sleeper cabins, in case you need to refer back to it in the text, on the inside front and back covers.

And then the opening notes by the writer really pulled me in. It seems that the lady in question is a lover of all things quiz-like (I wonder how she’d do on my regular Annual Christmas Cryptic Film Quizzes? You can play this year’s edition right here). Case in point, she gives us a list of some of her favourite Christmas prose and poetry and says that all of the titles are hidden as anagrams in the book. Furthermore, she says that there is a pub quiz at the end of the book to reward the reader and, yeah, there are indeed three rounds of Christmas themed questions at the end. And finally... and this one really got me... there was a prize to the first reader to contact her with six of the names of the many Kate Bush songs hidden in the text.

Now, I have to say, I got none of the anagrams (I was too busy concentrating on the story to play along, to be honest) and only a few of the songs from one of my all time favourite pop artists (I mostly listen to film scores... as some of my readers may remember) but it’s a really nice idea and it made me happy that someone with this devious kink in their brain is writing mystery fiction.

The story itself tells of the ‘just retired’ former police inspector, Roz, who is going home for Christmas on the last sleeper train out of London, to be with her daughter in Scotland for the birth of her grand-daughter. Or so she hopes. It’s all caught up in a story of a killer on the train, the death of a social media influencer (I still don’t understand that modern phenomena, I’m obviously very old fashioned) and her horrible boyfriend and.... yeah, so much more, including shadows of Roz’s troubled past (or should that be Roz’ past?) coming back to haunt her as she tries to find the culprit on a train which has derailed in the Scottish wilderness, with no help from the authorities for a good long while that can reach them. Oh... and did I mention that Roz is supposed to look like Kate Bush? Another plus in my book although, due to the various quirks of the human mind, even when presented with that information right from the start, I still imagined Roz as looking somehow quite different. But there you go, that’s just me.

And that’s all I’m saying about the plot but I will say that this Christmas I got really lucky on at least one of my choices... it’s an excellent and enthralling read from start to finish, that’s for sure. It opens like an old 1960s Marvel comic, structurally, in that it starts with one of the key incidents (yeah, always open on a slice of action in the ‘Mighty Marvel Manner’) to grab the reader and pull them in, before flashing back, setting up all the characters and then catching up to that sequence somewhere later ‘down the line’ (no pun intended but now that I’ve written it I’ll just go and flag that one up with inverted commas as a token gesture to the God of serendipity).

From then on it’s a cracking read with some nice turns of phrases, some of them highlighting the writer’s love of film... “If someone had drugged or poisoned the dates, Mary would be their Indiana Jones monkey.” and an obvious love of film scores too. Amongst the various musical references. I was loving the fact that the music Roz’s daughter was listening to in labour included the Goblin scores for Profondo Rosso and Suspiria although, a point deducted for spelling the Italian title of Deep Red wrong (although, maybe it was a deliberate typo and this was one of her cunning anagrams... I should go and check).

So, all in all, my first Christmas book of the year, Murder On The Christmas Express, was a very positive experience for me and lovers of the old ‘cosy whodunnit’ might want to give this one a try. I also learned a couple of new words/phrases too... I now know what Casein is and also what ‘Blood Eagle’ means, although, in the case of the latter, I kinda wish I hadn’t googled that one (although lovers of the movie Midsommer might want to familiarise themselves with this particular form of viking torture)... so maybe not so ‘cosy’ after all. Fantastic read though, couldn’t put it down.. although, I kinda had to otherwise the shower would have made the pages go all soggy on me, for sure.

The Cthulhu Stories of Robert E. Howard

Necro Crom Icon

The Cthulhu Stories
of Robert E. Howard
Edited by Paul Di Filippo
Word Fire Press ISBN:  9781680570984

If you are into H. P. Lovecraft you’ll know that his most famous legacy, a common thread running through many of his stories recalling ancient, tentacle, aggressive God-like creatures known in its various guises as Chtulhu... was not just something that Lovecraft wrote himself. He freely gave friends and correspondents licence to also reference this, sometimes somewhat tenuous thematic tentacle, in their own writings... often published in similar pulp magazines as Lovecraft’s own tales. So you had people like August Derleth and, I believe, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch and Fritz Leiber. One of these writers and pen pals was the late, great Robert E. Howard, who would be best remembered for his tales of his Cimmerian barbarian Conan, not to mention such characters as Solomon Kane and Kull The Conqueror. And it’s some of his stories which feature, rather tenuously I should add, in terms of this selection at least (I hear there are many other examples of his tales with Cthulhu elements) in the volume The Cthulhu Stories of Robert E. Howard, which was published a couple of years ago.

Now, I am mostly only familiar with Howard's Conan and Kane stories so I was very pleased to have this. As it is, there is a lot of stuff in here which I find oblique in terms of accessing even the sometimes hard to pin down Cthulhu element of Lovecraft’s tales and I have to warn you that if you are expecting horror stories full of madness and creeping dread... well, there are a few of those but there are also a lot of other things which are less likely to make you think of one of Lovecraft’s slithering horrors. For instance, I’d read one of the tales in this tome before... a Kull story called The Shadow Kingdom, in an equally unlikely tome for it to be collected in... a complete Conan in Weird Tales collection (reviewed here). The most this and, a fair amount of the other twelve tales joining it in this collection, has in common with the spirit of Cthulhu is maybe a brief reference to an ancient alien race, perhaps originating from the stars. Some of the stories will make more pointed references to Lovecraft creations such as Dagon and the demonic book known as The Necronomicon and, yeah, others have almost no tenuous grip on the subject at hand, it seemed to me. There are, however, a few tales which are absolutely fitting  in with the spirit and atmosphere of the tales and, as you would expect, Howard has his own way of doing things...

The editor makes the point, in his introduction, that Howard’s version of this ‘horror brand’ is less likely to result in the descent into madness for his main protagonists... Howard being someone who would have his characters meet the lurking dread in a less passive and more heroic manner. Indeed, by way of an example, there is a ‘round robin’ collaborative story near to the end of this volume which was issued as a challenge to some writers from Fantasy Magazine. The story is called The Challenge From Beyond and it’s started off by C. L. Moore and the writers A. Merritt, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard and Frank Belknap Long all add excerpts of the story as a chain to bring it to a conclusion...

It’s interesting to note that the authors of the piece really don’t do too much to hide their own style and although the story certainly gets from point A to B, the small chapters all seem to have a different energy to them. Once Moore has set things up and Merritt further has the main character’s mind transformed through the power of a well worn, black stone cube... we get to Lovecraft’s section where the whole thing is turned to absolute bleak terror and a fate worse than death for the main protagonist as he finds his mind swapped across the cosmos with an alien creature, with absolutely no hope of returning to his body. But then Howard comes in and suddenly, the hero is pretty happy with his lot because he is in an alien body with a human thinking mind and, taking just a shard of rock, overpowers the various aliens on their own world and becomes their God. So, yeah, not a passive madness but a conquering spirit for sure. What really annoyed me about this story, however, is that the year before I read a book called The Complete Fiction of H. P Lovecraft (reviewed here) and this tale certainly wasn’t included... how the heck is that complete then?

And it’s a hit and miss affair, as you would expect but there are certainly some things of note. For instance, Howard uses a black, monolithic stone to run a common thread between some of his unrelated tales and there’s more than one story in here which has people transformed from his present day in the 1930s and back to ancient times to have an adventure, before returning to their modern day guise. One of these is actually, although people may want to argue with me on this (and I don’t care), a Conan story. People Of The Dark was written a month or so before the first of Howard’s more widely acknowledged Conan tales and tells of a man who, on his way to murder a rival in love with a pistol, gets magically transported back to ancient times at the same location and spins a tale which is a metaphor for the one going on simultaneously in the 1930s. Granted it’s all told from the first person but much if it is told by the barbarian character Conan who also, of course, invokes his God Crom. So, frankly, I don’t know why this isn’t included in collections of the Conan stories just because it’s considered by some a prototype (perhaps even by Howard himself) because it seems pretty plain to me.

And talking of Conan, there’s even reference in another story in here, again set in more contemporary times to when it was written, where the black ring of one Thoth-amon is invoked. So, yeah, there are Conan references in these tales as well as the Lovecraftian mentions.

Now, in the 1970s, I remember there were one or more story collections which were basically tales of different Howard characters that were transformed, by unscrupulous publishers who shall not be named here, by changing the character and location names to ones found in the Conan tales and reprinted as Conan stories. I believe the story in this collection entitled The Gods of Bal-Sagoth may indeed have been a victim of this practice at some point over the decades... and possibly more than one of the tales in this story may have been further transformed, perhaps.

There are some other tales which almost seem like dry runs for Conan stories by Howard here too... as you might expect. More than one story included here is a little close in structure or idea to existing Conan tales which may have come later and, certainly, the tale here entitled Worms Of The Earth, which tells a tale of Bran Mak Morn, the king of the Picts... and his vengeance unleashed on certain agents of the Roman army, seemed to me to bear a striking structural similarity, in a much simpler and less round about form, to Howard’s one and only Conan novel, The Hour Of The Dragon, if I’m not mistaken. I can see where he may have built on the idea at play in this tale.

My favourite story in this collection, however, has little to do with Cthulhu. It’s called Skull Face and it’s obviously been ‘inspired’ by Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu stories, if Fu Manchu was called Skull Face and was a hideous, resurrected Egyptian sorcerer mummy. Starting in the opium dens of Limehouse, the main protagonist actually starts off as a henchman, of sorts, owing the titular character the debt of his life but, soon, the beauty of an oriental girl and the heroism of another character inspire him to attempt to kick his hashish habit and team up against the atrophied but powerful, demonic wizard. It’s one of the longer stories in this volume but certainly the jewel in the crown, as far as I’m concerned. Although, I did find it interesting that, in another story called The Fire Of Asshurbanipal, the two adventurous heroes have to avoid looking at a demonic manifestation causing destruction around them to their enemies, much like the climax of Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

And that’s about it from me on this one. The Cthulhu Stories of Robert E. Howard is a handsome tome with a beautiful cover (on the hardback at least) depicting a Cthulhu terror and, on the wraparound, a man fleeing for his life as it doggedly pursues him. The tales are not all nearly Cthulhu enough, for my liking, for the tome to use such a title but, it doesn’t really matter all that much as it’s a fine collection and Howard is as good a writer when he’s telling tales that don’t involve his famous Cimmerian, as when he’s depicting the Hyborian Age. Definitely worth a read and some space on your bookshelf if you are a Robert E. Howard fan, for sure.

Fishnet

Fishnetscape
Navigator

Fishnet
by Kirstin Innes
Black & White Publishing
ISBN: 9781785302138

Just a quick shout of a review, really, to an interesting book I saw floating by on my Twitter timeline one day and looked interesting enough for me to have a look. Fishnet, by Kirsten Innes, appeared to be a thriller set in the world of sex workers. The reality is a little more complicated than that but it is certainly set in that milieu and, I’m pleased to say, it’s very positive of that particular profession, at least in the light of the respect, intelligence and choices of the women (and men) who work in that industry. It was obvious from the start that Innes had done her homework in bringing the characters in the book to life and portraying their struggles with both authority, in the form of a building company which is scheduled to knock down their sanctuary... where the sympathetic central protagonist of the book, Fiona, works... and, of course, the somehow still in this day and age attitudes of people outside their profession unable to understand it and behaving, often unintentionally but still as damagingly, in a derogatory manner to both the lifestyle and the people who adopt it.

The book is not really a thriller but it does have a mystery at its heart and many of the encounters that make up the story take the form of an amateur investigative procedural to give it a clothes horse, so to speak, to hang the main linen of the story on. Fiona’s sister has been missing for seven years and the last time she saw her was when she showed up at her door with a newborn babe, Beth... and then she ran away in the night, leaving Fiona and her parents to bring up the child without her.

And it’s a very interesting way of doing things as the writer takes six long sections and structures them under repeat mini titles to relocate either time shifts (flashbacks and so forth) or the central character’s dealings, split between her personal life on the investigation and her colleagues at the building company. So, for instance, chapter one will be made up of a repeat cycle of cross cuts between subsections labelled either CITY and VILLAGE, chapter two would be BACK and FORTH, chapter three would be PRIVATE and PUBLIC and so one. Further adding to these, almost John DoS Passos style (if I’m remembering my USA Trilogy correctly), are little bursts of information that interrupt the narrative as Fiona feeds her growing obsession with the girls’ sex worker blogs, her inklings of her own shifting sexuality and her growing sense of camaraderie with the girls and the seduction of the lifestyle in which they work.

And, yeah, I wasn’t sure at first because the lack of ‘hard thriller’ territory from the start kind of threw me but... it didn’t take that long for me to realise, for instance, that the central premise of the missing sister, pursued quite vigorously by the central character herself, was not what the book was about. Even though it also has a mild ‘espionage’ angle to something Fiona is doing at one point. But at the same time, despite my initial reservations, I found myself quite drawn into the world in which Fiona begins to explore. This is despite the main narrative refraining, for the most part, to be specifically sexualised and maintaining a more, solid observational approach to the various women that Fiona encounters on her own personal odyssey.

Now, it has to be said, there are a few clichés explored in the book. For example, I knew exactly where Fiona was going to end up as a person by the end of the novel and there were a few dramatic points in the book that some readers will definitely see coming. However, saying that, because of the unwillingness on the writer’s part to fall into a specific trap of allowing these various plot points to become the raison d'être of the actual scenes in which they turn up... almost in a laid back manner... it kind of doesn’t matter if you see certain story beats coming from afar because, it’s more about the writing, the structure and the attitude to various professions and people which are, in actual fact, the core of the novel. At least that's the way it seems to me.

What this means, in case you were wondering, is that I still found myself thoroughly gripped by the character of Fiona and her relationships with the various people, including her young ‘daughter’, more than anything else in the novel. So, yeah, I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed Fishnet and, well, I’m sorry it’s such a short review this time but thank you so much to the author for portraying the majority of the sex workers here in a positive light... or perhaps, more importantly, in a respectful light (after all, some escorts can also be terrible human beings, as much as the next person). It was just nice to see that profession normalised and written about with a certain amount of knowledge about the subject (see Innes afterword about how she researched this one) and with a sympathetic eye. Glad I bought this one, for sure.

Silver Nitrate

The Spell
Tale Heart

Silver Nitrate
by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Jo Fletcher Books
ISBN: 9781529418040

Silver Nitrate is the latest book by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Now I’d vaguely seen her name connected with a couple of books which floated through my timeline on Twitter, mainly Mexican Gothic and The Daughter Of Dr. Moreau but, it wasn’t until I caught a review of this book by RunAlongWomble in my follow lists that I realised that this was a book which should be right up my alley. And, thankfully, I was totally right to take a chance on someone who, for me, is a ‘new author’ because, yeah, it’s a truly wonderful novel.

The book starts off with a humdinger of an opening quote, from M. R. James’ famous story Casting The Runes, about being cautious how you should manipulate or emulate a cursed media. Now, of course, the character who is the ‘villain’ of that story was slightly based on the real life Aleister Crowley and, while this novel certainly name checks the famous occult figure, a certain character in this book has a slightly different origin in his point of reference (the author cites some of her influences in an afterword).

But let me set the scene for you. Set in three sections... Opening Title Sequence MCMXCIII, Feature Film and Fade To Black, the book, set in 1993 (aka MCMXCIII), deals with a couple of central protagonists. One is a sound editor for hire, Monserrat, who is trapped in a dead end job at the production offices she works in and who is a huge fan of horror movies. And then there’s her lifelong friend Tristran, who is a former, incredibly successful soap opera star who has had a run of bad luck and who currently does voice work at the same production company, living on the embers of his former celebrity. The two have a long history and are inseparable companions but, are also highly critical of each other’s lifestyles... the writer capturing the characters and giving them wonderful collisions of dialogue as she makes them credible people right off the bat.

Then, one day, Tristran moves into an apartment block downstairs from a famous Mexican director, who had a run of good horror movies in the 1950s, along with a rumoured ‘lost film’ which was never completed. Due to Monserrat’s love of Mexican horror, she gets pulled into a three way friendship with the director who reveals that he has a scene still from the cursed, ‘destroyed in mysterious circumstances’, lost film... the part which was intended, through the medium of the silver nitrate stock (silver being a good carrier for magic), to give birth to a powerful spell when shown in cinemas. He proposes that, due to Monserrat’s skills and access to editing and dubbing equipment, the three of them finish the sound to recreate the spell, so they can reverse a curse which has been associated with the film. Before long, though, Monserrat and Tristran find themselves embroiled in a sinister world of black magic cults, murders, magical death traps and counter spells... not to mention human sacrifice and unlikely allies.

And, yeah, it’s a great read. Monserrat especially is a great creation and the writer has imbued her character with a knowledge for all things horror and especially alludes to certain key points in Mexican horror and exploitation cinema along the way (causing me to once more unfold my poor wallet to get what I can in terms of Blu Ray releases I might have otherwise left alone... yeah, thanks lady).

I noticed, in the first section of chapters especially, that the writer has a shifting viewpoint of third person narrative, which focuses on each of the two main protagonists in turn... although this method of delivery, while still holding true, seems to relax a little in its distribution as the book continues. So that’s kinda interesting.

And there are some great shout outs for horror fans, as I said. For instance, Monserrat owns a lot of bootleg horror stuff and lives in an apartment featuring posters of Suspiria and Hasta El Viento Miedo. And, though I’ve never seen the remake of The Blob myself (don’t worry, it’s on my ‘to acquire’  list), it’s obviously Monserrat’s preferred version of that particular gelatinous threat. Also, there’s a lovely moment where she off handedly mentions that she once knew a person who wanted to trade her his pages photocopied from the ‘real’ Necronomicon for her VHS copy of Lucio Fulci’s Zombie, so yeah, there’s a lot of humour in the book too.

By the time of the final reel, so to speak, the book ramps up full tilt on spellcasting and magic battles but, because of the way the writer has grounded her central characters in the earlier parts of the narrative, there’s not too much suspension of disbelief required in the more fantastical... and somewhat deadly... parts of the novel. Which I appreciated... it takes its time and, well, the build up is pretty good foreplay as far as I’m concerned.

And that’s me done with Silver Nitrate, a book that I thoroughly enjoyed from cover to cover and something I’d already recommended to a few people before I’d even finished it. And now, sometime next year I suspect, I will have to start looking and reading through this lady’s back catalogue of novels to see what else she’s done. I’ll let you know as soon as I can.

The Case Of The Velvet Claws

Legal Claws

The Case Of
The Velvet Claws
USA 1936
Directed by William Clemens
Warner Archive DVD Region 1

The Case Of The Velvet Claws is the fourth of the six Perry Mason feature films made by Warner Brothers in the 1930s but it’s also the last one with Warren William playing Mason. Eddie Acuff takes over as Spudsy, the comic relief private detective assistant to Mason on this one but we also welcome back Claire Dodd as Della Street, who played her in the second movie also, The Case Of The Curious Bride (reviewed here).

This one is actually based on the very first Perry Mason novel from 1933 and, I can only hope the meaning of the title is made clear in that book because I’ve got no idea what it has to do with the content of the film, for sure. One thing opens the movie, though, which I’m sure must be a pretty big deviation from the source... that is to say, well, in the books there is often some sexual tension between Mason and his secretary Street. Apparently, in the 2020 TV show, which is still set in the 1930s, they remove that element by making Della Street a lesbian. Here, they come at the issue from another angle. The film starts off with Mason interrupting a legal proceeding and the judge takes a ten minute adjournment in order that she can marry Mason and Street in her chambers. After the two tie the knot, they set off on a honeymoon but, of course, before they have had five minutes of the married life, Mason is taken at gunpoint by a new client, Eva Belter (played by Wini Shaw) and he very quickly gets involved in a case defending her from a murder wrap, with a difference...

In this case, both Eva and the audience think she did it. Mason figures differently but, unfortunately, to save herself, she tells the police she heard Mason get into an argument with the victim at the scene of the crime and throws suspicion on him. So Mason has to try and solve the case while staying ahead of the police who want to arrest him. Of course, by the end of the film, Mason fills everybody in on who the real murderer was... much to the surprise of Eva.

While this one is a little more on the serious side than the screwball antics of the previous two films, there’s still a lot of humour being forced into this one, although it doesn’t seem as well written and falls flat most of the time, it seemed to me. Shenanigans include a running joke where Perry has to keep running out on his new wife, a running joke about him catching and giving everyone a cold and a horrible sequence where Spudsy goes under cover dressed in drag. Yeah, the comedy is not great in this one but it doesn’t distract too much from the plot, it has to be said.

All in all, it’s not a terrible movie although the director did nothing special to push the semiotics of cinema the way one or two of them on this series did. William Clemens also directed the four, quite brilliant 1930s Nancy Drew movies and a couple of The Falcon adventures too. Once again, this was one of a number of films which were promoted on the credits as part of The Clue Club Mysteries, a gimmick Warners were pushing to act as a brand for their mystery movies at the time.

And that’s me done on this one I’m afraid. I’m sorry this is such a short review but I don’t have much more to add. I don’t know if Mason is still married to Della Street in the next film in the series but I’ll let you know sometime soon. Meanwhile, The Case Of The Velvet Claws (whatever that means) is not the best in the series and not one I’d recommend to hook you into these.

Livid

Livid Let Die

Livid
by Patricia Cornwell
Sphere Books
ISBN: 9781408725818

Warning: There will be some spoilers of a plot element which makes itself known fairly early on in the book but, yeah, if you want to go in completely spoiler free then please don’t read this.

Livid is the latest in Patricia Cornwell’s long running series featuring forensic pathologist Dr. Kay Scarpetta and, as regular readers of this blog may remember, it’s also my annual Christmas ritual to start the new Cornwell book on Christmas day.

This one takes place in just a couple of locations and once again, like many of Cornwell’s recent books, it takes place over a very short space of time. This one, for example, is written first person view from Scarpetta’s point of view (as is usually but, not quite always, the case) and takes place over the course of... not quite two days. Maybe around 30 - 35 hours of a time frame done in ‘real time’, or as near to that as you can get with via the written word. This kind of approach seems to suit Cornwell well and makes for a very intense and suspenseful time for the reader. As is sometimes the case on these things, there is one last follow up chapter which takes place a week later and which the writer uses to explain and sum up the various plot threads and address their resolutions.

This one starts off with the end of a day in court where Kay is being picked on and badgered as a witness by the prosecution of a very high profile case, which has transformed the locality of her and her crew into a powder keg of an angry population who could get violent at any time. However, while the case in court is important, it’s what happens away from the court, simultaneous to those events, which bring in the meat and bones of the book. The Judge in the trial is a very old friend of Scarpetta’s and, while this is going on, the Judge’s sister is found murdered in a macabre manner at the family home. It’s up to Kay, pushing against political red tape which means her no good outcome, to investigate as she begins to uncover a weaponised ‘microwave’ gun and stumbles headlong upon yet another corpse in her investigation.

It’s nice that nobody really gets left out in this one in terms of Cornwell’s extended Scarpetta family, either. Chiefly it’s about Kay and her right arm Marino investigating these things but, the plot also involves her niece Lucy (one of the best characters in these books), Kay's criminal behaviour specialist husband Benton Wesley and even her annoying sister Dorothy, who by this point in her adventures is married to Marino. Plus the usual extra cast of colourful and deadly characters who are both aiding and abetting her investigation.

It’s well written and, unlike other brilliant crime writers who end each chapter on a revelation, is fairly straight on with the narrative, allowing the unfolding events to do the work rather than resort to mini cliffhangers to keep the audience engaged (which is, honestly, not a problem for me, I love that kind of writing also but it’s nice to see a master at work who doesn’t feel she needs to do that all the time). It’s also, as I’ve gotten used to with Cornwell lately, quite frightening. Not because of the scenarios she dreams up but because, as well connected and meticulously well researched as Cornwell always is, you know you are looking at something which could indeed happen or, quite probably, has happened. So when you read about a microwave weapon that can take out security cameras and cook your brain at the same time without any normal means of detection... you have to start worrying about the state of weaponised technology we’ve reached now. I mean, the idea of a directed microwave gun is certainly nothing new... I was reading about it in Doc Savage novels of the 1930s where he was faced with such a threat (although I don’t think the character had a modern name for such a weapon until a partial sequel to a particular pulp written in the early 1990s). But the fact that Cornwell is now writing about them as a matter of fact is absolutely terrifying.

Now, I have one nit pick with this one and that’s when Scarpetta uses the phrase ‘reasonable certainty’. My dogmatic brain tells me that you are either certain about something or not. However, it might be that it’s a specific legal term and... oops, I just blundered. Here we have writing as it happens folks. I just did a Google search on the phrase mid sentence and, it’s indeed a legal term and not an error after all. So, yeah, if I’m nit picking anything at all it’s maybe a clarification of that for the less informed reader but... hmm... yeah... running through my own wet paint and moving swiftly on. Forget I said anything. Don’t talk down to the readers, for sure.

Okay... my only other thing worthy of perhaps me mentioning is that I was pretty sure the book was going to have a big set piece of an end game where Scarpetta herself is targetted with the microwave gun and, yeah, it’s a cliché perhaps but that definitely happens and, frankly, I wouldn’t have it any other way. This is a writer giving her audience what they want in terms of the end pay off and Cornwell certainly doesn’t steer away from it here.

And that’s me done for another year on Patricia Cornwell’s latest novel, Livid. It’s a ritual I enjoy going through time and again and one of the bright and comfortable spots of my life, truth be told. Once again the writer delivers a taut, suspenseful and utterly compelling page turner of a mystery which rewards the reader at every twist and turn. And, as usual, I can’t wait ‘til the next one.

The Case Of The Lucky Legs

Leg-ality

The Case Of
The Lucky Legs
USA 1935
Directed by Archie Mayo
Warner Archive DVD Region 1

The Case Of The Lucky Legs is the third of only six Perry Mason movies ever made (that I can find out about, surely some other countries made some?), all within a very short period during the 1930s. This one, however, has none of the experimental and sometimes sophisticated visual language of the former film, which incorporated some interesting camera movements and dissolve fades to drive the visual syntax. So in terms of film-making, this one comes across as pretty pedestrian compared to the previous entry. However, what the studio did do was push the humour they’d brought into the second film and take this fully into, pretty much, ‘screwball comedy’ mode... which is, of course, a very 1930s genre. Director Archie Mayo would, just over a decade on from this movie, direct The Marx Brothers in the final film in which all three appear on screen at the same time, A Night In Casablanca... so it could be said he was a director who had a flair, or at least an aptitude for these kinds of comedy shenanigans. However, even though I don’t know the character that well, it seems to me that trying to ‘comedy up’ a character like Perry Mason is a bad idea.

Once again, Warren William plays Perry Mason and William Jenkins returns as Spudsy Drake. There are a few other returners in terms of actors but, like the last movie, they returned to different but sometimes similar parts. One person who was new again to the series was the actress playing secretary/future spouse Della Street, the third in as many films, performed here by Genevieve Tobin. This time they’ve given her a succession of equally comic, witty lines to match Perry quip for quip so, yeah, most of the time this film rockets along merrily, so fast you feel you should maybe stand back in case the movie takes off from the screen and damages someone.

This time, the film is about the winners of various Lucky Legs contests across America. It’s a scam and the guy who brings the idea to each state takes all the money from each sponsor and, also, he leaves town before each winning lady can collect on the $1000 they won. Patricia Ellis plays one such girl, who is holed up with another former winner and they both get involved with the murder of the swindler, complicated by the presence of two meddling boyfriends and a sponsor who is also in love with one of them. Luckily for them... and their fortunate legs... Perry Mason is on the case. Not only is he almost implicated in the crimes himself but, to make the comedy shenanigans even more uproarious, his doctor has denied him to eat anything but healthily, due to a bizarrely false diagnosis being brought on by Perry sucking on a ice cube to help cure his hangover. So in addition to the sprinkling of hindering husbands and plodding policemen, we have the various comedy routines where he’s drinking milk and pilfering food from clients fridges. Not the Perry Mason I remember from those few brief glimpses of Raymond Burr in the part on the famous TV show.

Once again, the writers eschew having any kind of court scene for the film... something which I’m told was always the big feature the books would lead up to. Instead, Perry has a moving feast of suspects and law enforcers circulating from his office, to his doctor’s and then back to his office as he sums up his case and proves who the real murderer is. It’s all a bit loopy and, while I love this kind of stuff, I don’t think you’d be able to get away with something like this today and, of course, all the drama of the situation is deliberately stifled by the exclusion of the courtroom... so I can see why the writer of the novels, Erle Stanley Gardner, would be none to happy about the way his legendary lawyer was progressing in his screen adventures.

All in all, being as I have no familiarity with the character, I found myself fairly entertained and intrigued by the direction the writers were taking with The Case Of The Lucky Legs... which was mostly to make the lead character appear and act as ridiculously as possible, aided by his equally ridiculous friends but somehow still managing to save the client’s, not to mention his own, neck. Fans of 1930s screwball should have a fairly breezy time with this one, I reckon. Fans of Perry Mason... maybe not so much. Warren William would play the character only one more time after this so, yeah, I’ll watch that one and report back here to sum up my conclusions fairly soon.

The Dark Side Of Christmas

Dark Christmas,
You gave Me Your Heart...

The Dark Side Of Christmas
Written by The Hobeck Team
Hobeck Books Limited
ISBN: 9781913793562

Just a short review of this year’s Christmas reading for the blog, The Dark Side Of Christmas, which I discovered by accident on Amazon... and also by way of a shout out to the publishers, Hobeck Books. The tome in question is subtitled “an anthology of twisted winter tales” and, while I didn’t find any really twisted qualities in the book (maybe I’m getting jaded to such things), I did read some enjoyable short stories. Now, while the batting average with me on Christmas anthologies by multiple writers is notoriously low (see some of my other Christmas book reviews over the years to see what I mean), this one was easily one of the best of the collected Christmas themed tales I’ve read in ages.

So, as you can guess, the stories are all written by writers who are ‘on the books’, as it were, of the small independent press called Hobeck who, I have to say, have won me over with this as all proceeds from the sales of this one go to an organisation called Streetreads, who take stories and books to people affected by homelessness. So, yeah, I didn’t know this when I hit the order button on Amazon but I’m pleased that Hobeck are doing stuff like this.

When the book arrived I realised the title, as reflected by the cover illustration of a beam of light transferred into a rainbow by a prismatic effect via a Christmas tree, was in fact an homage to the Pink Floyd album Dark Side Of The Moon. It’s not a group I’m familiar with though so, I may have missed the odd passing reference to this in one or two of the stories. I dunno.... guess I’m just an average brick in an increasingly bland wall at my age.

Of course, everyone is going to react differently to these kinds of collections and it will always be a hit and miss affair, very much personal to each reader. For me though, there were five stories (albeit three of them chapters of a multi part story used throughout to anchor the book) which more than justified the price of the novel. Firstly, a big shout out to Home Alone, Too by Lewis Hastings. This tells of a copper on the beat, new to a small town and his first meetings with someone in the community perceived as being a ‘miserable old guy’. Some small explanatory text before the stories are unfurled, at the opening of the collection (and given by every contributing author), explains that this is a kind of flashback origin story for the two characters who are already in Hastings’ other novels. This was pretty nice and perfectly showed up the rare, kindly nature of warm blooded human beings, for sure.

Another favourite was Payback by Brian Price. This tells of particularly bad, office bullies within an organisation and what happens when one of the victims of her boss fights back in unusual ways... and the chain of events this causes. It’s well paced and told from the viewpoint of four different characters, crosscutting between various strands of the narrative to allow for a complete picture of events to appear.

And last but, by no means least, my favourite three stories in this collection were A Christmas Susan Part I - The Ghost Of Christmas Pasta, A Christmas Susan Part II - The Ghost Of Christmas Presents and A Christmas Susan Part III - The Ghost Writer Of C. Y. Comb... all by Anthony Dunford and Wendy Turbin. To describe these small tales would not do them justice but, I would say they are very funny and filled with many puns and surprises, such as a moment where a robin... oh, no... no spoilers. A sample of the delights in store for readers of these three anchor stories would be...
“Still, it takes all sorts... Putting thoughts of liquorice aside...” So, yeah, these ones were right up my street. I’m pretty sure one of the characters is from a novel written by Wendy Turbin so, yeah, I think I’ll maybe order that one sometime next year.

Other delights on offer throughout the tome include an accidental murder orchestrated from another time zone (oblivious to the consequences a hundred or so years later), a tale told entirely from the point of view of a bunch of turkeys waiting to find out which one of them will be picked to celebrate Christmas with the humans (including a turkey called Arthur Scarbill... yeah, I’m pretty sure this one’s very much a political satire but, regular readers will know I’m no friend of politics), a Christmas murder club and even a tale which, I’m pretty sure, is a parody of the Joseph Rouletabille mystery stories from France.

Plus many more so, yeah, a varied selection, mostly crime and pretty much no horror... although there is certain story of the five I mentioned above which has more than one ghost in it. All in all though, the book held my attention and, yeah I’d say I got something from even the stories I found the least interesting. So as I said, a short review but a definite recommendation to anyone looking to put The Dark Side Of Christmas on their Christmas reading list. The book can be purchased from Amazon and, presumably, all the usual suppliers including the publishers’ own website, www.hobeck.net where you can find out more about them, download some free books and even listen to their podcast. So, yeah, well worth a quick surf over to their side of internet, I would say.

The Falcon's Alibi

Off The Record

The Falcon's Alibi
USA 1946
Directed by  Ray McCarey
RKO/Warner Archive DVD Region 1

Warning: All the spoilers.

Well there you go. I never knew director Leo McCarey had family in the business but here he is, younger brother Ray, directing the 12th in the series of films based loosely on the character of The Falcon, namely The Falcon’s Alibi.

This one starts at a race track again, just like The Falcon In Hollywood (reviewed here) did but, this one introduces us to a lot of the main cast, aka suspects, during the race track scenes. Then it’s back to a hotel where The Falcon is trying to help a young lady played by Joan Meredith, who has purchased a fake set of jewels so the real, priceless jewels will not disappear if they get stolen, who is in trouble. Because, after a while, both sets are stolen... one of many thefts in a hotel where The Falcon, Tom Lawrence, once again played by Tom Conway, has to solve the mystery, try to work out why people are getting bumped off and come up with an alibi for himself (an alibi who winds up as another corpse and reverting us to the old dynamic of the police suspecting The Falcon of pretty much everything). He also has to foil a bunch of scammers who are claiming insurance for the thefts.

And, there’s not too much mystery in this one, it has to be said. Although this entry in the series has a bona fide superstar in it... co-starring as a DJ who is secretly married to another character, we have the great Elisha Cook Jr playing someone who you suspect right away is behind the killings and the robberies. As soon as I saw the DJ set up I was like... okay, so he puts a recording of his voice on the radio so he can leave the office and steal the various trinkets. And of course he does but, to the credit of the writers, they reveal it straight away and then, when the person defrauding the insurance company in collaboration is revealed to be the husband and wife getting their jewels stolen... well, like I said, it’s pretty obvious what’s going on here, despite a few minor plot twists which don’t exactly throw anyone off the trail.

And it’s a fine romp as these things always are. The police inspector and his sidekick are a new pair again and we have yet another guy, Vince Barnett, having a crack at playing The Falcon’s assistant Goldie Locke. Well, he’s passable but he seems less broadly comic and just a bit too understated to really shine in the role, it has to be said. All the actors are fine, though, especially Conway who really is very good in the role and, of course, the remarkable Elisha Cook Jr, who seems fine at first but then gets that weaselly look in his eyes and get a bit obsessive and disturbed as the film wears on (as you would expect from him in these roles at the time).

Not too much more to say about this one but one of the things I did note is that the score was kinda interesting on this one. The usual Falcon fanfare or signature tune is played at the front end of the movie, as it had been on a fair few of these by now and, as usual the music director is credited as C. Bakaleinikoff. However, this seemed a lot more interesting and there’s some wonderful, very low key timpani towards the end of the movie, when The Falcon is sneaking around various hotel rooms, where the drumbeats replay the opening jingle like bass drum notes. Very effective and it reminded me of some of the things John Barry used to do in his early James Bond scores. So I looked it up and it turns out the score for this film, uncredited and in only his third outing as a composer, was by Ernest Gold, who went on to score such famous films as Exodus, Cross Of Iron and, of course, It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. And, yeah, he does a really good job here, it has to be said.

And that’s me done with this one. The Falcon’s Alibi is a fine, short but sweet entry in the series and Tom Conway would have just one more crack at the character, which I’ll get to as soon as I can.