OT: Sunday - Two Versions Of "I"m Wishing", Snow White and Morecambe and Wise

From Snow White:



From the popular British comedy due of Morecambe and Wise:



Snow White:
Snow White is a fictional character and the protagonist from Disney's 1937 animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, as well as an official Disney Princess.

Morecambe and Wise:
Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise, usually referred to as Morecambe and Wise, or Eric and Ernie, were a British comic double act, working in variety, radio, film and most successfully in television. Their partnership lasted from 1941 until Morecambe's death in 1984. They have been described as "the most illustrious, and the best-loved, double-act that Britain has ever produced". In a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes drawn up by the British Film Institute in 2000, voted for by industry professionals, The Morecambe and Wise Show was placed 14th. In September 2006, they were voted by the general public as number 2 in a poll of TV's Greatest Stars.

Remembering Memorial Day

I take the liberty of sharing this article from YahooNews: Remembering Memorial Day
by Mike Krumboltz

For many, Memorial Day brings to mind images of parades and picnics, of barbecues and baseball games. What's sometimes forgotten are the reasons for the holiday: The sacrifices made by American soldiers in times of conflict.

As the United States' death toll passes 1,000 in Afghanistan, Memorial Day takes on an especially poignant meaning this year. Here's a brief look at how the holiday got its start, and how people are searching for ways to honor the brave men and women who have lost their lives.

The first holiday
Originally, the holiday was known as "Decoration Day." It was started by a Civil War general named Gen. John Logan, who was the Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic. General Logan sought a way to help the country come back together after the horrors and divide of the Civil War.

The holiday was first observed on May 30, 1868, and Gen. Logan chose that date for two very important reasons: First, the day did not mark the anniversary of a Civil War battle, and second "flowers would likely be in bloom all over the United States." Indeed, many took flowers to Arlington National Cemetery, an activity that still occurs every year.

More on Gen. John Logan
General John A. Logan has a tremendous legacy that goes well beyond his efforts to honor fallen soldiers. According to a museum dedicated to his memory, Gen. Logan led an inspired life and enjoyed a tremendous career. At different points, he was a United States congressman, a senator, and a candidate for the vice presidency. He and his running mate, James G. Blane, lost their bid, but "Logan’s popularity with veterans contributed to the narrowness of the defeat."

An official holiday
This may come as a bit of a surprise, but Memorial Day, despite having been around for over 100 years in one form or another, didn't become an official federal holiday until 1971, when Congress passed the National Holiday Act. This created a three-day weekend at the end of May. Prior to this, different states observed the holiday on different days.

Also worth noting — the "national moment of remembrance." This moment takes place at 3 p.m. local time on Memorial Day and lasts one minute. According to Remember.gov, "the Moment does not replace traditional Memorial Day events; rather it is an act of national unity in which all Americans, alone or with family and friends, honor those who died for our freedom. It will help to reclaim Memorial Day as the sacred and noble holiday it was meant to be. In this shared remembrance, we connect as Americans."

Quotes
They hover as a cloud of witnesses above this Nation. -Henry Ward Beecher

Who kept the faith and fought the fight; The glory theirs, the duty ours. -Wallace Bruce

A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself. -Joseph Campbell

The patriot's blood is the seed of Freedom's tree. -Thomas Campbell

The legacy of heroes is the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example. - Benjamin Disraeli

Each man is a hero and an oracle to somebody. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

But the freedom that they fought for, and the country grand they wrought for,
Is their monument to-day, and for aye. -Thomas Dunn English

For love of country they accepted death... -James A. Garfield

The greatest glory of a free-born people is to transmit that freedom to their children. -William Havard

The dead soldier's silence sings our national anthem. -Aaron Kilbourn

For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity. -William Penn

On thy grave the rain shall fall from the eyes of a mighty nation! -Thomas William Parsons

The brave die never, though they sleep in dust:
Their courage nerves a thousand living men. -Minot J. Savage

We come, not to mourn our dead soldiers, but to praise them. -Francis A. Walker

And I'm proud to be an American,
where at least I know I'm free.
And I won't forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me. -Lee Greenwood

OT Sunday: Anthony Newley sings Goldfinger

In some ways, I like this version better than Shirley Bassey's.



Anthony George Newley (24 September 1931 – 14 April 1999) was an English actor, singer and songwriter. He enjoyed success as a performer in such diverse fields as rock & roll and stage and screen acting.

Early life
Newley was born in the London working class district of Hackney, the son of Frances Grace Newley and George Kirby, a shipping clerk. He was Jewish on his mother's side. His parents, who had never married, separated during his early childhood, and he was brought up by his single mother. Newley was evacuated during the Luftwaffe bombing of London during the Blitz and was thereby exposed to the performing arts when he was tutored during this time by George Pescud, a former British music hall entertainer.

Although recognised as very bright by his teachers back in London, he was uninterested in school, and by the age of fourteen was working as an office boy for an insurance company when he read an ad in the Daily Telegraph, headed "Boy Actors Urgently Wanted". He applied to the advertisers, the prestigious Italia Conti Stage School, only to discover that the fees were too high. Nevertheless, after a brief audition, he was offered a job as an office boy on a salary of only 30 shillings (£1.50) a week, but also including free tuition at the school. He naturally accepted and his career was to be launched. Whilst serving tea one afternoon he caught the eye of producer Geoffrey de Barkus, who cast Newley as "Dusty" in the children's serial, The Adventures of Dusty Bates.

Career
Newley's first major film role was as Dick Bultitude in Peter Ustinov's Vice Versa (1948) followed by the Artful Dodger in David Lean's Oliver Twist (1948), based on the classic Charles Dickens story. He made a successful transition from child star to contract player in British films of the 1950s (broken up by a short stint in the armed forces), to a top-of-the-pops crooner in the 1960s. During the 1950s he appeared in many British radio programmes and for a time appeared as Cyril in Floggits starring Elsie and Doris Waters. But it was probably the film Idol on Parade that changed his career direction the most. In the film he played a rock singer called up for national service.

He wrote ballads, many with Leslie Bricusse, that became signature hits for Sammy Davis Jr., Shirley Bassey and Tony Bennett. During the 1960s he also added his greatest accomplishments on the London West End theatre and Broadway theatre stage, in Hollywood films and British and American television. In the 1970s he remained active, particularly as a Las Vegas and Catskills Borscht Belt resort performer and talk show guest, but his career had begun to flounder. He had taken risks that eventually led to his downfall in Hollywood. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s he worked to achieve a comeback. He died of kidney cancer at the age of 67, soon after he had become a grandfather.

Music
Newley had a successful pop music career as a vocalist, which started in May 1959 with the song "I've Waited So Long" a number 3 hit in the UK charts thanks largely to the exposure it received as being featured in the film "Idol On Parade". This was quickly followed by his number 6 hit "Personality" and then two number-one hits in early 1960: "Why" (originally a 1959 U.S. hit for Frankie Avalon) and "Do You Mind?" (written by Lionel Bart). As a songwriter, he won the 1963 Grammy Award for Song of the Year for "What Kind of Fool Am I?", but he was also well-known for "Gonna Build a Mountain", "Once in a Lifetime", "On a Wonderful Day Like Today", "The Joker" and comic novelty songs such as "That Noise" and "The Oompa-Loompa Song", and his versions of "Strawberry Fair" and "Pop Goes the Weasel".

He wrote songs that others made hits including "Goldfinger" (the title song of the James Bond film, Goldfinger, music by John Barry), and "Feeling Good", which became a hit for Nina Simone and the rock band Muse. With Leslie Bricusse, he wrote the musical Stop the World - I Want to Get Off in which he also performed, earning a nomination for a Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical. The play was made into a (poorly-received) film version in 1966, but Newley was unable to star in it due to a schedule conflict. The other musicals for which he co-wrote music and lyrics with Bricusse included The Roar of the Greasepaint—the Smell of the Crowd (1965) and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971), based on the children's book by Roald Dahl.

The consensus of critics and fans rates "Pure Imagination", "Ain't It Funny", "Love Is a Now and Then Thing", and "In My Solitude" at the top of the list. Amongst the many compilations now available are Anthony Newley: The Decca Years (1959–1964), Once in a Lifetime: The Anthony Newley Collection (1960–1971), and Anthony Newley's Greatest Hits (Deram).

When he collaborated with Bricusse, they referred to themselves as the team of 'Brickman and Newburg', with Newburg concentrating mainly on the music and Brickman on the lyrics. Ian Frasier often did their arrangements and it has been suggested that his contributions were more extensive than has been acknowledged. For the songs from Hieronymous Merkin, Newley collaborated with Herbert Kretzmer.

The comedy album Fool Brittania, starring Newley, Joan Collins and Peter SellersIn 1963, Newley had a hit comedy album called Fool Britannia!, the result of improvisational satires of the British Profumo scandal of the time by a team of Newley, his then-wife Joan Collins, and Peter Sellers. Newley's contributions to Christmas music are highlighted by his rendition of "The Coventry Carol" which appears on many anthologies. He also wrote and recorded a novelty Christmas song called "Santa Claus is Elvis". And there is a notorious album of spoken poetry which has Newley appearing in the nude on the sleeve with a similarly-attired young model.

In his later years as a mature singer Newley recorded songs from Fiddler on the Roof and Scrooge. He enjoyed his final popular success onstage when he starred in the latter musical which showed in London and toured UK cities including Liverpool, Birmingham and Manchester, in the 1990s. At the time of his death he had been working on a musical of Shakespeare's Richard III.

In May 2010 Stage Door Records released a compilation of unreleased Newley recordings entitled 'Newley Discovered'. The album produced with the Anthony Newley Society and Newley's family contains the concept recordings for Newley's self-penned movie musicals 'Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?', 'Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory' and 'Mr. Quilp'.

In recognition of his creative skills and body of work, Newley was elected to the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1989.

Acting
The short-lived 1960 ATV series, The Strange World of Gurney Slade, in which Newley starred and also featured Bernie Winters, continues to have a cult following owing to its postmodern premise that the Newley character is trapped inside a television programme. Apart from a repeat of one episode on Channel 4 in 1992, it has not been seen in the UK in recent years. The show's theme tune by composer Max Harris, which was later utilised in the "animated clock" segments on the BBC children's show Vision On, may be better known today than the series itself. The piano figure prominent in the recording was lifted (unacknowledged) from Mose Allison's song "Parchman Farm".

Newley played Matthew Mugg in the original Doctor Dolittle and the repressed English businessman opposite Sandy Dennis in the original Sweet November. He also hosted Lucille Ball on a whirlwind tour of mod London in the Lucy TV special "Lucy in London." He performed in the autobiographical, Fellini-esque and X-rated Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?, which he also directed and co-wrote with Herman Raucher. He performed in 'Quilp' (based on Dickens's 'The Old Curiosity Shop'), for which he composed some songs ('Love Has the Longest Memory of All'). His last feature role in the cast of the long-running British TV soap opera EastEnders was to have been a regular role, but Newley had to withdraw after a few months when his health began to fail.

Personal life
Newley was married to Ann Lynn from 1956 to 1963, but the marriage ended in divorce. A son, Simon, was born to them but died in infancy from a congenital infirmity. He then was married to the actress Joan Collins from 1963 to 1971. The couple had two children, Tara Newley and Sacha Newley. Tara became a broadcaster in England and Sacha is a renowned portrait artist based in New York and represented by four paintings in the National Portrait Gallery (United States) in Washington, D.C.. Newley's third wife was former air hostess Dareth Rich, and they also had two children, Shelby and Christopher. In an episode of Angela and Friends (Sky One) Tara Newley also mentioned another sister, a third living daughter of Newley's.

Newley had been raised by his mother Grace, and, from the age of eight onward, by his stepfather, Ronald Gardner. Gardner wound up in Beverly Hills working as a chauffeur but soon ran off with another woman. Newley searched, with the help of a detective, for his biological father, George Kirby, and effected a reunion. Newley bought his father a house in Beverly Hills, in the hope that he would reunite with Grace, but this did not happen.

Newley died on 14 April 1999, in Jensen Beach, Florida, from renal cancer at the age of 67. He was said to have died in the arms of his companion, the designer Gina Fratini.[10] He was survived by his five children, a granddaughter Miel, and his mother Grace, then aged 96, who has subsequently died. Since then two more grandchildren have been born: Weston (Tara's second child) and Ava Grace (Sacha's first, with his wife Angela Tassoni).

Newley's life is the subject of a biography by Garth Bardsley called Stop the World (London: Oberon, 2003). Although Newley alluded to some degree of bisexual activity in 1960s in his epic autobiographical film, Merkin, the allegation in the Bardsley biography that he had been "kept" by an older man while he struggled to restart his career in the 1950s was a shock to his fans. In 2007 the actress Anneke Wills published a memoir that details her involvement with Newley just before he took up with Collins, producing a daughter named Polly who perished in a car accident.

OT Saturday: Matt Munro Sings Born Free

(I know that my Kindle readers can't view videos, but I'll just share videos on Saturdays and Sundays, all other days it's business as usual.

Matt Monro (1 December 1930 – 7 February 1985) was an English singer who became one of the most popular entertainers on the international music scene during the 1960s. Throughout his 30-year career, he filled cabarets, nightclubs, music halls, and stadiums in Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and Hong Kong to Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas. He sold more than 100 million records during his lifetime.

Early career
He was born Terence Edward Parsons in Shoreditch, London and attended Duncombe School in Islington. Affectionately nicknamed "the singing bus driver" (because one of his many occupations prior to achieving fame was driving the Number 27 bus from Highgate to Teddington), he got his first break in 1956 when he became a featured vocalist with the BBC Show Band. An important influence on his early career was the pianist Winifred Atwell, who became his mentor, provided him with his stage name, and helped him sign with Decca Records.

In 1957 Monro released Blue and Sentimental, a collection of standards. Despite the album's critical acclaim, Monro languished among the young male singers trying to break through at the end of the 1950s, many of them emulating Frankie Vaughan by recording cover versions of American hits. (Monro even recorded a version of Vaughan's "Garden of Eden" during this period.) A short recording contract with Fontana Records followed.

By the end of the 1950s, Monro's mid-decade fame had evaporated, and he returned to relative obscurity. He and his wife Mickie lived from her wages as a song plugger and his royalties from a TV advertising jingle for Camay soap. In 1959 he recorded a country pastiche song, "Bound for Texas", for The Chaplin Revue, a feature-length compilation of Charlie Chaplin shorts. It would be the first of many Monro soundtrack themes.

International success
Prior to producing the Peter Sellers album Songs For Swinging Sellers in 1960, George Martin asked Monro to record a satirical ditty to help the comedian imitate the song with a Frank Sinatra-type styling. When Sellers heard the recording he decided to use it to open the record rather than record his own version. However, Sellers billed Monro as "Fred Flange," and though it was a demoralizing experience at the time, the incident developed into a lifelong friendship with Martin, who subsequently asked Monro to begin recording with him for EMI's Parlophone record label. Their second single, "Portrait of My Love," reached number three in the UK Singles Chart.

By the following year, he had been named Top International Act by Billboard magazine, and his follow-up hits included "My Kind of Girl" (1961), "Softly as I Leave You" (1962) and the song from the James Bond film From Russia with Love (1963). For the latter, his vocals were not used in the opening titles, as became the standard for the series; they were heard on a radio during the film and over the final credits. At the 1964 Eurovision Song Contest, singing "I Love the Little Things," he finished second behind Italy's 16-year-old Gigliola Cinquetti, despite an "excellent performance of the only English language song of the night." The Austrian entry "Warum Nur Warum?", sung by Udo Jürgens, caught Monro's ear, despite its sixth-place finish, and he recorded an English version titled "Walk Away" (with lyrics by Monro's manager Don Black), earning him another hit single late in 1964. He also had a hit with the The Beatles' "Yesterday" in 1965, releasing the first single of the most recorded song of all time, predating even the Beatles' own. The following year, Monro sang the Oscar winning title song for the film, Born Free, which became his signature tune. The opening scene for the film The Italian Job featured Monro singing "On Days Like These." These two movie themes featured lyrics also written by Don Black, who started his career as a renowned songwriter when Monro challenged him to pen the English lyric that became "Walk Away." On December 31, 1976, Monro performed Walk Away on BBC1's A Jubilee Of Music, celebrating British pop music for Queen Elizabeth II's impending Silver jubilee.

Monro achieved fame in the United States when "My Kind of Girl" (1961) and "Walk Away" (1964) hit the Top 40. In 1966, following the death of Nat King Cole, EMI moved Monro from Parlophone to Capitol. After relocating to California and recording several albums with American arrangers, Monro returned to the UK and began appearing on EMI's Columbia label, his final U.S. album release being Close To You in 1970. This LP contained the uncharted (in the US) but widely played "We're Gonna Change The World", a semi-satirical song about women's liberation.

He continued touring and recording until just before his death, releasing a single and promoting it throughout the UK and Australia in 1984. In one of his final appearances he praised Boy George, noting the importance of quality recordings in all musical genres.

Death and legacy
Monro died from liver cancer in 1985 at the Cromwell Hospital, Kensington, London, leaving a widow, Mickie, and three children: Mitchell, Michele, and Matthew. Mitchell, a professional pilot, also died of cancer in 2004. A Memorial was held in Harrow.

The twentieth anniversary of Monro's passing spotlighted the continuing interest in his music, with a Top 10 tribute compilation CD (UK), a No. 1 concert DVD (UK), a BBC TV documentary, and an official website all appearing in 2005. A 2007 compilation CD entitled From Matt With Love reached the Top 40 of the UK Albums Chart during its first week of release.

In Autumn 2005 Matt Monro Jr. toured the United Kingdom with a tribute concert commemorating the anniversary. Also, EMI re-released Matt Sings Monro, a 1995 duet album that combined his voice with the senior Monro's. Another posthumous Matt Monro duet, with Cliff Richard, appeared on Richard's duets CD, Two's Company, in 2007.

Monro never recorded a "live" concert album, preferring the technical purity of the recording studio and wanting his public performances to retain an element of uniqueness. However, in the past few years, commercially-released concert albums have emerged following meticulous remastering of radio and television shows, private recordings he commissioned. These include an intimate 1967 cabaret performance from his first tour of Australia; a 1967 BBC concert with Nelson Riddle; a 1966 arena concert before 24,000 fans in Manila; and one of his final concerts, recorded on the last night of his fourteenth and final Australian tour in 1984.

In recent years, many singers riding the resurging wave of retro-pop have cited Matt Monro as a strong influence, including Michael Bublé, Monica Mancini, and Rick Astley. Musicians' biographies regularly note his stylistic influence on their subjects, including Cass Elliot and Karen Carpenter. He continues to feature prominently on radio stations and CD compilations featuring popular easy-listening vocalists.

After a near fatal accident some time ago, daughter Michele decided that she must leave something so that her son would know all about his grandfather and spent 3 years writing a biography of her famous father. The Singer's Singer: The Life and Music of Matt Monro. 656 pages, was released on 29 January 2010 by Titan Books Ltd.

His music
Most of Monro's recordings were produced or overseen by George Martin. Unlike his contemporaries, Monro recorded very few Tin Pan Alley standards during his career. (The exception was Matt Monro sings Hoagy Carmichael, one of his most highly-regarded albums.) Instead, he and Martin searched for material written by promising newcomers and commissioned English lyrics for dramatic melodies written by European composers. He also covered many of the most popular stage and screen songs of the 1950s and 1960s. Over the years, his recordings featured arrangements by Johnnie Spence, Sid Feller, Billy May, John Barry, Buddy Bregman, Kenny Clayton, Colin Keyes, and Martin himself. Monro also teamed up with Nelson Riddle and Billy May for concerts broadcast by the BBC.

In 1973 Monro released a vocal version of the popular Van der Valk TV-series theme titled "And You Smiled". It was his final hit. In 1977 he recorded "If I Never Sing Another Song", which became a latter-day standard among his contemporaries, its lyrics referring to the "heyday" of fan mail, awards, and other trappings of celebrity that had faded for them.

Dated Death in Dr. Thorndyke, Pt 2

The doctor, Jervis, is approached by a coachman, who wants to take him to a patient. But he mustn't know where that patient is.

"Am I to be led to the house blindfolded, like the visitor to the bandit's cave?"

Truth to tell, I'm assuming this is a reference to a popular story pre-1912, but I can't find out what it is. I thought it might be Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves...

"With a muttered anathema on the unknown Mr. Graves and the unrestful life of a locum tenens, I stepped into the uninviting vehicle."

anathema (un-eth-a-muh) : a person or thing detested or loathed: That subject is anathema to him.
Origin:
1520–30; < L < Gk: a thing accursed, devoted to evil, orig. devoted, equiv. to ana(ti)thé(nai) to set up + -ma n. suffix

locum tenens: Locum, short for the Latin phrase locum tenens (lit. "place-holder," akin to the French lieutenant), is a person who temporarily fulfills the duties of another. For example, a Locum doctor is a doctor who works in the place of the regular doctor when that doctor is absent, or when a hospital/practice is short-staffed. These professionals are still governed by their respective regulatory bodies, despite the transient nature of their positions.

The abbreviated form "locum" is common in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom; unlike in Latin its plural is locums. In the United States, the full length "locum tenens" (plural: locum tenentes) is preferred, though for some particular roles, alternative expressions (e.g. "substitute teacher") may be more commonly used.

Dated Death in Dr. Thorndyke, pt 1

There are many free books available for the Kindle, and I downloaded one of them, entitled The Mystery of 31 New Inn, by R. Austin Freeman (1862-1943). This novel was published in 1912, and so it is loaded with "Dated Death."

The name "New Inn" does not refer to an inn as a rooming house, but rather an "inn of Chancery."
The Inns of Chancery or Hospida Cancellarie were a group of buildings and legal institutions in London initially attached to the Inns of Court and used as offices for the clerks of chancery, from which they drew their name. Existing from at least 1344, the Inns gradually changed their purpose, and became both the offices and accommodation for solicitors (as the Inns of Court were to barristers) and a place of initial training for barristers. The practice of training barristers at the Inns of Chancery had died out by 1642, and the Inns instead became dedicated associations and offices for solicitors. With the founding of the Society of Gentlemen Practisers in 1739 and the Law Society of England and Wales in 1825, a single unified professional association for solicitors, the purpose of the Inns died out, and after a long period of decline the last one (Clement's Inn) was sold in 1903 and demolished in 1934.

The narrator of the story begins by saying that "A couple of framed diplomas on the wall, a card of Snellen's test-types and a stethoscope lying on the writing-table, proclaim it a doctor's consulting room.

A Snellen chart is an eye chart used by eye care professionals and others to measure visual acuity. Snellen charts are named after the Dutch ophthalmologist Herman Snellen who developed the chart during 1862. (Anyone who goes to get glasses takes a test using a Snellen chart, with large letters at the top, gradually getting smaller until only 20-20 viewers can see the tiny letters at the bottom.)

The narrator goes on to say that a "bottle-boy" sticks his head in the door of the room and announces, "Gentleman." As in, a gentleman to see you.

"Sweeps, labourers, milkmen, costermongers - all were impartially, invested by the democratic bottle-boy with the rank and title of armigeri.

Armigeri is a Latin term, meaning, entitled to bear arms. In olden days, only Gentlemen were allowed to carry edged weapons. The weapon for the peasant was a club or long bow. Noble families were armigerous - they had a right to bear arms.

bottle-boy -- Presumably a young lad who separated out the milk bottles to return to the milk man

sweep -- chimney sweep

coster-monger - Costermonger, or simply Coster, is a street seller of fruit (apples, etc.) and vegetables, in London and other British towns. They were ubiquitous in mid-Victorian England, and some are still found in markets. As usual with street-sellers, they would use a loud sing-song cry or chant to attract attention. Their cart might be stationary at a market stall, or mobile (horse-drawn or wheelbarrow).



An explanation of Dr. Thorndyke:

Dr John Evelyn Thorndyke is a fictional detective in a long series of novels and short stories by R. Austin Freeman (1862-1943). Thorndyke was described by his author as a 'medical jurispractitioner': originally a medical doctor, he turned to the bar and became one of the first - in modern parlance - forensic scientists. His solutions were based on his method of collecting all possible data (including dust and pond weed) and making inferences from them before looking at any of the protagonists and motives in the crimes. (Freeman, it is said, conducted all experiments mentioned in the stories himself.) It is this method which gave rise to one of Freeman's most ingenious inventions, the inverted detective story, where the criminal act is described first and the interest lies in Thorndyke's subsequent unravelling of it.

Between 1907 and 1942 Thorndyke appeared in around 60 novels and short stories.

Novels
The Red Thumb Mark (1907)
The Eye of Osiris (1911), published in the USA as The Vanishing Man
The Mystery of 31, New Inn (1912)
A Silent Witness (1914)
Helen Vardon's Confession (1922)
The Cat's Eye (1923)
The Mystery of Angelina Frood (1924)
The Shadow of the Wolf (1925)
The D'Arblay Mystery (1926)
A Certain Dr Thorndyke (1927)
As a Thief in the Night (1928)
Mr Pottermack's Oversight (1930)
Pontifex, Son and Thorndyke (1931)
When Rogues Fall Out (1932), published in the USA as Dr. Thorndyke's Discovery
Dr Thorndyke Intervenes (1933)
For the Defence: Dr Thorndyke (1934)
The Penrose Mystery (1936)
Felo de se? (1937), published in the USA as Death at the Inn
The Stoneware Monkey (1938)
Mr Polton Explains (1940)
Dr. Thorndyke's Crime File (1941) -- omnibus including "Meet Dr. Thorndyke" (essay), The Eye of Osiris (novel), "The Art of the Detective Story" (essay), The Mystery of Angelina Frood (novel), "5A King's Bench Walk" (essay), and Mr. Pottermack's Oversight (novel).
The Jacob Street Mystery (1942), published in the USA as The Unconscious Witness


Short Stories
John Thorndyke's Cases (1909) (published in the United States as Dr. Thorndyke's Cases).
The Singing Bone (1912) (published in the United States as The Adventures of Dr. Thorndyke).
Dr. Thorndyke's Casebook (1923) (published in the United States as The Blue Scarab)
The Puzzle Lock (1925)
The Magic Casket (1927)

Rewind, by Bruce Kimmel (2005)

Rewind, by Bruce Kimmel. Authorhouse. 2005

Jonathan Goldman is a successful producer of Broadway sountracks. For the last three years, he has run his own company, Twyckam Island, but the money to start up the business was provided by two investors, Dick and Deborah Bowman. There are a couple of thorns in his side; his useless secretary, Paula Finkel; his payroll manager, Bob Noone, who keeps wantinng to be given more things to do for the company, and Deborah Bowman, the bipolar (manic-depressive) woman who thinks Twyckam Island belongs to her and keeps referring to Jonathan as her employee.

Abruptly, however, Jonathan's world goes to hell in a handbasket. Paula quits, after sending him an email in which she accuses him of malfeasance and of inappropriate behavior toward her, and Dick and Deborah Bowman fire him, after finagling the business papers so that his name is no longer listed as an owner of Twyckam Island, but simply as that employee that Deborah had always claimed he was.

His life spirallig out of control - even if he sues the Bowman's he'll lose, as they're wealthy and can afford to keep the suit dragging on in the courts until he's bankrupt - Jonathan decides there's only one way out. He drives his car over a cliff.

Then....the people who caused him such misery begin to die...

Here are the first several paras of the opening chapter:

It was excruciating. She was on her fifth take; her pitchy singing and her interpretation of the song was, to put it in the nicest possible way, putrid. Suddenly, she stopped singing.

"Sorry, I need more me. Is that possible?" she asked, adjusting her headphones for the umpteenth time.

I looked over at my long-time engineer, Marty. My long-time engineer Marty was staring at the console, looking like he was about to throw up the cannelloni he'd had for lunch.

"She needs more her," I said.

Marty looked at me with his usual Marty look - the look of someone who was troubled with constant constipation (he wasn't - it was just his look). "I can give her more her until her ears bleed-it ain't gonna help."

I pressed the talkback button. "More you coming up," I said, with as much niceness as I could muster.

Marty turned a knob on the console, rewound the tape and started the track up again. The voice of Teddy, the conductor, came over the speakers, counting off -- "One, two, three," and, a beat later, the band played a four-bar intro. Callie dove into the song. Unfortunately, it wasn't a song you should dive into; it was a gentle song, a sweet song, a tender song, and she was singing it as if she was Olivia de Havilland in The Snake Pit. The vocal quality was laden with heaviness and darkness and weirdness, not tomention too much volume.It was stultifying, and it had been stultifying since take one. She stopped again.

Bruce Kimmel certainly is in his milieu in Rewind. A former actor (he had guest-starring roles in several sitcoms during the 1970s) Kimmel is also a singer (recording under the name Guy Haines) and a successful record - and now CD - producer. He produeced a hundred or so Broadway albums for Varese Sarabande, then, after they closed their division, he started his own label, Fynsworth Alley, usng start up money from a wealthy couple who were his investors...just like in Rewind.

Indeed, Rewind is semi-autobiographical, as Kimmel relates exactly what happened to him and Fynsworth Alley. His investors forced him out of his own label, they filed a lawsuit against him which almost bankrupted him, and after he was out of the picture they drove the label into the ground with their ineptness. He was driven to despair and felt like killing himself and them... but of course never did so, except in print. (Would that more people would take such a therapeutic step - write their murders instead of commit them.)

Kimmel writes relatively well, though he does have an annoying affectation -- all of his characters repeat themselves. (As for example in the example above, when Jonathan Goldman is talking about his sound engineer:

I looked over at my long-time engineer, Marty. My long-time engineer Marty was staring at the console, looking like he was about to throw up the cannelloni he'd had for lunch.

It would be okay if just one character did it - as for example Jonathan Goldman - as an example of his affectations, but every character does it. (Goldman narrates the first half of the book, but after he drives his car off a cliff, subsequent chapters are narrated by other people...using a technique derived (successfully) from Sunset Boulevard. ) And every character who takes up the narration thereafter does it, too.

For example, here's Brian Levitt:

A week after the funeral I got a call from James Bedford telling me the Bowmans were dropping the lawsuit. If I was willing to drop the countersuit, we could all just sign off and be done with it. While I would sincerely have loved to take that bitch to court, we all signed off and were done with it.

The book is certainly fascinating in what it reveals about the music business. But, knowing that he's written it based on true events, the characters are somewhat irritating. Useless secretary Paula Finkel, for example. If she was so useless, why didn't he fire her long ago, instead of letting her stick around being useless? Indeed, that would have made more sense. He fires her, and that's what prompts her to send him and the Bowmans the email in which she accuses him of stealing from the company and acting inappropriately with her. But instead, it's her choice to quit, and she writes the email out of sheer vindictiveness.

Bob Noone is simply an inherently dishonest individual. The name "Noone" must be a dig at the real-lfe payroll guy (no one, a nobody) who took over Goldman's company but wasn't any good at the producing end and thus everyone ended up hating him.

But the characters of Dick and Deborah Bowman? Deborah is a racist (he's Jewish) and she's homophobic (his sound engineer is gay) and yet he puts up with her regular stream of abuse instead of telling her to buy him out, or offering to buy them out? Doesn't say much for Goldman's character.

Kimmel has written another mystery for mature readers - Writer's Block, and two mysteries for kids featuring the character Adriana Hoffstetter. He publishes them all himself, through AuthorHouse, although this must not be held against him. The books are professionally edited, and while Kimmel's affectations and his ego can get a little wearing, the mysteries themselves are well-written. I think its simply Kimmel's desire to have complete control over his work that makes him publish the books himself, not that they're unworthy of being purchased by a "real" publisher - although said publisher might have given him an editor who could have gotten him to tone down his repetition schtick.

Unfortunately the prices for the boois are a bit high.... I'd be willing to read the Hofstetter books if I could get them for $6 a piece, but not for $15!

Evan Help Us, by Rhys Bowen

Evan Help Us, by Rhys Bowen, is a Constable Evan Evans mystery.

The novel takes place in the village of Llanfair, Wales where Evans is stationed. It is a "policeman as detective" story, rather than a police procedural.

Here's the description from Amazon:

In the ineffably quaint and impossibly charming village of Llanfair in North Wales, Evan Evans is into his second year as local constable: his landlady spoils him, the buxom barmaid flirts with him, and the golden-haired schoolteacher with the cornflower-blue eyes helps clear his mind but muddles his heart. Two murders in quick succession stun the town: an elderly retired colonel whom everyone liked and a returning local, who announces plans for a haunted slate-mine theme park (!) just before being dispatched. Evans-the-Law (to distinguish him from Evans-the-Meat, the butcher, and Evans-the-Milk, the dairyman) is sure there is a connection, and it may have to do with the colonel's discovery of some possibly ancient ruins or the strong feelings that run for and against the tourists that Morgan's plans would bring to Llanfair.

While the book is well-written, I'm afraid I couldn't get into the character of Evan Evans, in particular because of the love triangle. He's in love with a woman named Bronwen, but is too shy to make his feelings known, and vice versa. And one of the susupects is a beatiful woman...

Murder in the Queen's Armes, by Aaron Elkins

In this, the third installment in the Gideon Oliver series, Gideon and his new bride, Julia Tendler (whom he had met and fallen in love with in The Dark Place), are on their honeymoon in England. Dorchester, to be precise.



In the prologue, Gideon visits a small museum, the Greater Dorchester Museum of History and Archaeology, to see their famous "Poundbury Man" - a thirty-thousand year old parieto-occipital calvareal fragment. But it has been stolen.

Next, Gideon wants to visit an old friend, Nathan Marcus, an American archaelogist who has riled British archaeologists with his brash manner. He has found a site which he believes will revolutionize the history of stone-age man, but dark deeds are afoot.... is Nate a con-man, or are his rival archaeologists out to get him?

The series
Fellowship of Fear (1982)
The Dark Place (1983)
Murder in the Queen's Armes (1985)
Old Bones (1987)
Curses! (1989)
Icy Clutches (1990)
Make No Bones (1991)
Dead Men's Hearts (1994)
Twenty Blue Devils (1997)
Skeleton Dance (2000)
Good Blood (2004)
Where There's a Will (2005)
Unnatural Selection (2006)
Little Tiny Teeth (2007)
Uneasy Relations (2008)
Skull Duggery (2009)

Nevermore, by Harold Schechter

Harold Schechter, who has written several true-crime books regarding serial killers, has written four novels featuring Edgar Allan Poe as narrator and detective (along with the help of other historic personages.) Considering Schechter's penchant for documenting serial killers, you can rest assured that each of the Poe books will have some gruesome deaths...

I have only read the first book, Nevermore, and while I liked 90% of it, the graphic descriptions of the murders did put me off. Of course, anyone who reads books in which the coroner is the detective will be used to that kind of gore and not mind it!

Schechter's contention is that some of the events that happened real-life to Poe he then used for his short stories, like "The Fall of the House of Usher." Poe is a sympathetic character (as he was in real life, apparently. After his death, his "executor" turned out to be a man who really, really disliked him, and set about besmirching his name while profiting from his writing!)

At the beginning of this story, EA Poe is living in Baltimore with his 13-year old cousin and his cousin's mother. (Yes, Poe marries his cousin, but it must be remembered that back then, girls did get married very, very young. [Today, they just have sex very, very young.]]

He has written a review of Davy Crockett's autobiography, and that gentleman is so upset by it that he calls upon Poe and wants to have a public duel. Poe agrees. Before they can fight, however, they stumble across a murder....the first of several. Poe, the creator of Auguste Dupin, sees some clues that the police miss. This so impresses Crockett that he forgets the duel, and they team up to solve the crimes.

A few sample paragraphs:
"Where is Virginia?" I inquired after planting a filial kiss upon my aunt's ruddy cheek.

"Still abed."

"She sleeps like the dead." I remarked with a heartfelt sigh. "It is the repose of the innocent."

Muddy's broad broaw wrinkled as she inspected my countenance. "My gracious, Eddie, but you do look peaked. Another bad night?"

I acknowledged the accuracy of her observation with a melancholy nod. "Slumber - that blessed but fickle benefactress-withheld her sweet nepenthe from my soul."

She regarded me for a long moment before inquiring, "Do I take that to mean 'yes'?"

"That is, indeed, the significance I intended."

She patted my cheek. "Poor troubled boy," she commiserated. "I cannot help but believe that you would sleep more soundly if you spent less time locked up in that stuffy room, brooding on death and premature burial and whatnot. Perhapos you should try writing something...cheerier. Why, look at that delightful poem by Mr. Longfello, "The Village Smithy." Surely you could compose something equally charming if you would only put your miond ti it."

The earnest, if misguided, simplicity of my dear, well-meaning Muddy elicited from my lips a soft, indulgent laugh-whosde tone, however, was not untinged with a rueful awareness that the man of creative genius must ever be misunderstood, even by those most sympathetic to his strivings.

"Oh, Muddy!" I exclaimed. "Can I not make you see? The true artist must endeavour to give shape to the teeming phantasmagoria of the soul-to those swirling shapes and shrouded forms that spring, like a hideous throng of netherworld demonds, from the dark inner reaches of his own harrowed heart and anguished brain!"

The humor in the book comes from dialog such as this, where Poe's takes in two paragraphs what a simple person would say in two words. Usually, the dialog is between Davey Crockett, an intelligent man who neverthless speaks with a rustic accent, and Poe. However, these are not so frequently placed to be annoying, and overall Poe proves himself to be a man of rare courage. (The definition of courage being someone who feels the fear and does it anyway. This Poe is a man who feels the terror and does it anyway.)

Nevermore - Edgar Allan Poe joins Davy Crockett to solve a series of shocking murders in Baltimore in 1835.
The Hum Bug (2001) - Poe teams with Showman PT Barnum to solve a series of murders in New York.
Mask of the Red Death (2004) - Poe joins forces with Kit Carson to track down a liver-eating murderer. This also takes place in New York.
The Tell-Tale Corpse - Poe meets author Louisa May Alcott while in Massachusetts and they team up to solve a murder.

Dead March, by Ann McMillan

Here's the description from Amazon:

Narcissa Powers, a young Virginia widow consigned to a dismal existence in the country home of her sister-in-law, receives an urgent summons from family friends of her beloved brother, Charley.

Shortly after she rushes to his side, he dies of a disease that should have caused only a minor infection. The mystery of his death is compounded when Narcissa finds a fragment of a half-burned letter from Charley that someone has hidden in her Bible. Wanting to do right by her brother and avoid returning to the doldrums of her country existence, Narcissa plunges into the turmoil of Richmond in the days between Fort Sumter and the first great battle of the Civil War.

A colorful collection of plausible characters gather in the parlors and back alleys of Richmond--a British journalist, a dashing but arrogant young doctor, a cruel overseer, and Judah Daniel, a freedwoman who is also the local herbalist and "conjure woman." Each will be a part of the eventual unraveling of the mystery.

Sample paragraphs

"Mrs. Powers, I am so glad that you have come. Your dear brother...I hope that he will know you...I pray that your visit will do him some good." Mrs. Hughes seemed to be near tears. Narcissa felt the shock of her words and leaned for a moment on her supporting arm.

They went in through the open door. Narcissa had a vague impression of the inside of the house as elegant, formal, with dark, polished wood and rich, red-toned brocades. Mrs. Hughes and her maidservant were thoughtful, quickly and quietly helping Narcissa remove her traveling clothes and seeing to her luggage. She was led into the other half of the double house, then down a hallway tiled with squares of rose and gray stone, uncarpeted. They passed a book-lined office, then came to a door that stood ajar.

Rachel Hughes stopped. Rather than rudely pull away from the woman's grasp on her arm, Narcissa halted as well, though she wanted nothing save to get through that door to Charley.

"I can hardly bear to tell you..." Rachel Hughes spoke hesitantly. "They thought it best to amputate his left arm. My husband can tell you more; I will send at once to let him know you are here."

Narcissa could not take in the meaning of her words. She could see in her mind's eye Charley's hands, strong to rein in a runaway horse, gentle to bandage a hurt kitten. He was going to be a doctor; he would need both his hands.

Ann McMillan has written three Civil War era mysteries featuring white American Narcissa Powers, black American Judah Daniel, and British correspondent Brit Wallace.

Dead March - first in series
Angel Trumpet
Civil Blood
Chickahominy Fever
Castle Thunder (Kindle edition)

Track of the Cat, by Nevada Barr

Track of the Cat, by Nevada Barr, is the first in a series of park ranger Anna Pigeon mysteries. In many ways, Barr is the Dick Francis of the American mystery novel. All of Francis' books had something to do with horses, and all of them had a hero who, the final chapter, was invariably beat up or had to fight for his life against overwhelming odds before coming out triumphant.

Such is the case with Anna Pigeon. No pampered city woman, detecting from her bed and breakfast, antique gallery, or catering firm. No, she's an outdoorswoman, who strides confidently in her milieu, with the strength of body and of will to defeat the powerful villains who commit murder in a National Park anywhere near her.

In Track of the Cat, we first get to know Anna. She prefers animals and the outdoors to people and civilization. She drinks too much, to dull the pain from the loss of her husband, who had died in a traffic accident years before. She also has a sister, whom we only ever hear on the phone, who is also a psychiatrist. But mostly there's Anna...and why she hasn't been given a TV series of her own sometime in the last 20 years boggles the mind!

In Track of the Cat, the park service is attempting to introduce the endangered mountain lion back into the park. However, the program is jeopardized when Anna finds the body of a fellow park ranger, ostensibly killed by a mountain lion. As hunters fan out to get the man-eater, Anna tries desperately to prove that the villain they're looking for is a two-legged one.

Sample paragraphs:

Anna fished teo of the soggy lemon slices from her water bottle, mashed them to a pulp, and rubbed the pulp into her wet handkerchief. Tying it over her mouth and nose, she fervently hoped it would cut the stench of death down to a tolerable level.

Next she took the camera she'd been using on the lion transect and hung it around her neck. Switching on the headlamp, though it was not yet dark enough to do her much good, she waded into the saw grass.

The camera helped. It gave her distance. Through its lens she was able to see more clearly. Sheila Drury was parcelled out into photographic units. As sheclicked, Anna made mental notes: no scrapes, no bruises, no twisted limbs. Drury probably hadn't fallen.

Track of the Cat --Guadalupe Mountains National Park (1993)
A Superior Death --Isle Royale National Park (1994)
Ill Wind --Mesa Verde National Park (1995)
Firestorm --Lassen Volcanic National Park (1996)
Endangered Species --Cumberland Island National Seashore (1997)
Blind Descent --Carlsbad Caverns National Park (1998)
Liberty Falling --Statue of Liberty National Monument (1999)
Deep South --Natchez Trace Parkway (2000)
Blood Lure --Glacier National Park (2001)
Hunting Season --Natchez Trace Parkway February (2002)
Flashback --Dry Tortugas National Park February (2003)
High Country --Yosemite National Park February (2004)
Hard Truth --Rocky Mountain National Park March (2005)
Winter Study --Isle Royale National Park April (2008)
Borderline --Big Bend National Park April (2009)

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Nevada Barr:

Nevada Barr (born March 1, 1952, Yerington, Nevada) is an American author best known for her Anna Pigeon series of mystery novels set in national parks in the United States. Barr won an Agatha Award and Anthony Award for best first novel for Track of the Cat. She lives in New Orleans.

Although Barr was born in Nevada, she was named not after her state of birth but after a character in one of her father’s favorite books.[Interestingly, neither Wikipedia nor the source from which they got this information bothers to give the title of the book. Wouldn't they think fans of Barr would want to knwo that, also?]

She grew up in Johnstonville, California, and finished college at the University of California, Irvine. With a masters degree in drama, she pursued a career in theater,TV, films, commercials and voice work for almost two decades. When her then-director husband changed careers and became interested in the environmental movement she began working as a seasonal park ranger in the summer.

Barr created the Anna Pigeon series while working at her second seasonal job in Guadalupe Mountains National Park,Texas. Pigeon is a law enforcement ranger with the United States National Park Service. The books in the series take place in various national parks, where Pigeon solves murders that are often related to natural resource issues.

Barr's first permanent Park Ranger job was on the Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi. She resigned to focus on writing when her books began to achieve commercial success.

Beginning With A Bash, by Phoebe Atwood Taylor

Beginning With A Bash is the first Leonidas Witherall novel, for all that it didn't appear in the United States until 1972.

It started life as a novella, "The Problem of Volume 4" in the first issue of a short-lived mystery magazine edited by by Ellery Queen (Manfred Lee and Frederic Dannay), Mystery League Magazine, in November 1931. In 1936 Taylor wrote to her publisher asking if it could not be published as a novel, as she desperately needed the money. (This was the height of the Depression, and even though her Asey Mayo novels were selling well, taxes on her property were going up.)

Her publisher advised against it. If she had two books coming out in the same year, her audience might believe she was sacrificing quality for quantity. Also, since it had already appeared in print previously, "the Federal Trade Commission" might get involved.

So, although Beginning With a Bash was published in England in 1937, it was not published in the States until 1972. (Taylor would die four years later, at the age of 67.) Phoebe Atwood Taylor wrote at least a book a year from 1931 (her first Asey Mayo mystery) to 1947, with a final novel appearing in 1951.

I prefer Taylor's Leonidas Witherall mysteries (written under the ALice TIlton pseudonym) to her Asey Mayo books. Here's how a writer at Wikipedia describes them:

Leonidas Witherall ("the man who looks like Shakespeare"), once an instructor at a private boys' school, has lost all of his money due to the Wall Street crash of 1929, and takes to anonymously writing books and, later, a radio show about the adventures of "Lieutenant Hazeltine" as a means of survival, while solving murders as a sideline. In the eight novels chronicling his adventures, Witherall is confronted with a corpse under unusual and maximally embarrassing circumstances that suggest his own guilt, requiring him to enlist a motley crew of assistants, use disguise and impersonation to escape discovery, and engage in at least one scavenger-hunt-like chase before solving the crime. Once in every novel, Witherall references the radio program's constant repetition of "Cannae" -- an ancient battle from which Hazeltine draws inspiration so that his smaller force defeats his larger mass of enemies. This mention of Cannae means that Witherall is about to marshal his assistants as part of a clever scheme to deliver the murderer to justice. Hazeltine is also subject to the machinations of the "octopus of fate", by which an incredible coincidence is explained at least once in every Witherall novel. In 1944, the character was adapted into a Mutual radio mystery program, The Adventures of Leonidas Witherall.

Mystery critic Dilys Winn had this to say about the Witherall novels: "These books don't make all that much sense, but they go a long way in proving that making sense is immaterial -- a guffaw is more vital. Tilton books are so busy, so complicated, so Marx Brothers ... that makes them sound as if they might have a plot, doesn't it? Bad assumption. They drift from incident to incident with the style of the crash 'em cars at a carnival."[1] Mystery writer and critic H. R. F. Keating wrote, in an introduction to a 1987 reissue of the first Witherall novel, "If a writer can keep in play an interest in a crime of some sort, preferably indeed murder, and at the same time induce the reader to take the hither-and-thither balloon flight of farce, then the entertainment provided will be not doubled but tripled. But it is difficult. I suspect that the only recipe for success is sheer deftness in writing, coupled perhaps with establishing a firm basis in fact before the hilarious fantasy is allowed to take off. Both these elements Alice Tilton has at her disposal.

Although Witherall looks like Bill Shakespeare in this first installment, the rest of the familiar trappings have not been introduced. It is not until The Cut Direct that Witherall has started writing the Haseltine books, and using the Cannae solution to solve every problem.

For that reason, Beginning With A Bash is my least favorite Witherall novel, but still a fun book. The solution is a bit... unbelievable...but if you suspend your disbelief, you'll enjoy it.

A few paragraphs:

Leonidas twirled his pince-nez on their broad black ribbon, and Dot, with terror in her eyes, watched Martin's drawn face.

Martin cleared his throat. "I didn't do it. He--he was dead when I went back there!"

"Are you quite sure the man is dead, Martin?"

"Positive, sir. I looked at him. And I've spent hours--well, it seemed like hours though I s'pose it was only a few minutes--wondering whether to bolt or not. But I decided it would only make matters worse."

"Why should you bolt?" Dot demanded.

"Why? My God, why? I didn't think that anything more could happen, but here it is. Bill Shakespeare, what'll I do? I've fussed around and cursed North and talked about bashing him ever since I was first arrested. Now--whoops! Grand larceny, vagrancy, theft---and now murder! I didn't do any of 'em! I didn't do this. But no one'll ever believe me!"

"But who could have done it?" Dot looked dazedly around the store as though she expected to find the murderer on the ceiling or between the pages of a book.

The Secret Adversary, by Agatha Christie

There are many "firsts" in my life that I don't remember. I have always regretted not keeping a journal from the time I was young, keeping track of the first time I met people, the first time I read this book or saw that movie, first time I got a job, and so on.

There are two firsts that I do remember.

The very first play I ever saw was Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap. I was about 11 years old. It was 1971, and there was a draught in Zambia or some other African country. The cargo firm for which my father worked was hired to fly food from Botswana to Zamia. THe job was to last for at least a year. My dad decided to take advantage of the tax breaks offered to those whose whole families lived overseas for a year, so he took my mom and two siblings with him, and we moved to Johannesburg, South Africa. The flight took us via London, England, and while there, we went to see The Mousetrap. First play, first mystery play, first crush on an actor. (I liked the guy who played Detective Sargeant Trotter.)

In Johannesburg, we rented a furnished house from a couple, and on their bookshelves was The Secret Adversary. I might not have picked it up if I'd never seen The Mousetrap, but I was familiar with the name Agatha Christie, so I did, and loved it. It was the first "grown up" book I ever read, the first "grown up" mystery, and the first book of Agatha Christie's that I ever read.

I have been a fan of Agatha Christie's ever since. Of course, even though there's a special place in my heart for Christie, I am not blind to her faults. And I don't care for the last few books she wrote, they definitely suffer in quality. But when she was in her prime....

Agatha Christie's books can be divided into two main sections - her detective novels, featuring Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple, and her adventure thrillers, featuring, usually, independent heroines or young couples.

The Secret Adversary, published in 1922, was Christie's second book published, after The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which was a detective story featuring Hercule Poirot.

Tommy Beresford served in the Army and was demobbed (demobilized) with few prospects. Tuppence Beresford served as a nurse during the war, and is also at a loose end. They meet accidently, rekindle their friendship, and discuss their difficulties in finding work. They decide to form their own business - Young Adventurers Ltd, and put an ad in the newspaper seeking informaton on someone called Jane Finn. Tuppence had overhead two other people talking about someone with that name, and wondering where she was. So she and Tommy decide to be proactive in what they hope will be their first case.

But they get more than they bargain for. Jane Finn disappeared after the sinking of the Lusitania, entrusted with a treaty that at the time - during WWI - made since, but now if its terms were known could cause another war, but not with Germany, and the British government and various nefarious parties have been searching for her, and that treaty, ever since.

The Secret Adversary is, to put it plainly, just a lot of fun. It's hardly dated at all, for all that' its over 80 years old. Secret treaties with terms that can backfire are certainly plausible, the characters are engaging, and the mystery fast moving. There are of course no computers, no cellphones, no TVs, in that it's a simpler time.

That's another reason why I like to read these early books of Agatha Christie. The author is at the height of her powers, but we also get insights into how people lived (at least, a certain social segment of it) way back in the 1920s.

Christie used the Tommy and Tuppence characters several more times. I also recommend Partners in Crime, which is an anthology of short stories, in which Tommy, with Tuppence's assistance, solves various mysteries using methods of other top detectives of the day (the 1920s day) such as Holmes, Reggie Fortune, the Thinkng Machine, and so on. N or M, which takes place during World War II, is also well done.

After that, the series falls off, in my opinion. Unlike Poiror and Miss Marple, who never age in the 60 years of their existence, Tommy and Tuppence do, and by By the Pricking of My Thumbs (written 20 years after N or M?) they are old, Tuppence is matronly, Albert's (their young, intelligent servant) brains have atrophied (he is now more comic relief than anything) and the fun has rather gone out of the series.

But, they had a good run.

As for purchasing details, the book is still in print and can be purchased via Amazon.com if not in your local bookstore. If Amazon.com is to be believed, you can also get it for free from Kindle.

Dangerous Depths, by Kathy Brandt

As an aspiring scuba diver, I wanted to find a book that dealt with mysteries and scuba diving. One series I found was that featuring police diver Hanna Sampson, who appears in:

1. Swimming with the Dead (2003)
2. Dark Water Dive (2004)
3. Dangerous Depths (2005)
4. Under Pressure (2006)

Dangerous Depths takes place in the British Virgin Islands.

From Wikipedia: The British Virgin Islands consist of the main islands of Tortola, Virgin Gorda, Anegada and Jost Van Dyke, along with over fifty other smaller islands and cays. Approximately fifteen of the islands are inhabited. The capital, Road Town, is situated on Tortola, the largest island which is approximately 20 km (12 mi) long and 5 km (3 mi) wide. The islands have a total population of about 22,000, of whom approximately 18,000 live on Tortola.

I include this information because it isn't given in the book. A few of Brandt's characters speak with an island accent, but other than that the reader doesn't really get the feel of being in the British Virgin Islands, for all that there's plenty of investigating underwater going on.

Hannah Sampson is a police diver who comes to the British Virgin Islands to escape from her life in Denver:

I'd first come to the islands on a special assignment, investigating the death of the Denver police commissioner's son, a scientist doing research in the BVI. He'd disappeared while out diving only to be found seventy feet under the water, just off the coast of Tortola, trapped inside a wreck, dive tank empty. The commissionwer had been devastated wanted one of his own people in the Denver PD and an experienced diver checking things out. He'd sent me.

After I'd apprehended the killers, John Dunn, the chief of Tortola police, had asked me to stay and offered me a job, and I'd decided to give it a try. He needed a diver and underwater investigator on his team, and I needed to get away.

Hannah lives on a boat called the Sea Bird. At midnight, she is waked by an explosion and runs on deck to see her friend, Elyse Henry's boat, on fire. Hannah dives into the water to save her friend, who later ends up in hospital in critical condition.

Her police captain believes the explosion was an accident - Elyse must have had a faulty stove on board - but Hannah believes it was attempted murder, and she sets out to investigate Elyse's movements in the last few weeks, to see if someone has a motive for her death.

And she finds one, in men who dislike Elyse's environmental work to save the endangered green sea turtle. But does their dislike extend to murder?

Truth to tell, I'm ambivalent about the book. The mystery is excellent, but it is hard to wade through the writing. (No pun intended.)

Many authors write so well that one loses oneself in the book, eventually unaware one is even reading. Others don't do so well - among them Clive Cussler and Kathy Brandt (although Brandt's grasp of the language is better than Cussler's!) But so much detail is given that it takes one right out of the story.

Here are a few paragraphs:

"Yeah. I'll tell you what though - it's a much nicer job in the crystal waters of the tropics. Back in the States I was retrieving bodies from icy lakes and brown polluted water. Mostly, diving blond. I'll take this any day."

We were quiet for the rest of the ride and I found myself thinking about the diving I had done in the States. And I thought about losing Jake. He'd been the team leader. It had been a frigid January morning, and we'd been on assignment, diving for a body in an alpine lake.

We'd bagged the body and taken it to the surface, then returned to examine and collect evidence. We were on our way back to the surface when I turned to make sure Jake was behind me. He wasn't. I went back, frantic, searching for him in the dark, icy water. By the time I got to the surface, I was hypothermic and out of air. The team found his body the next day.

Jake and I had lived together for over a year and had finally decided to make the big commitment. The wedding was to be that weekend. Instead, I'd ended up standing in the cemetery, watching the snow falling on his casket. I hadn't heard what the minister said that day. I made a promise back then never to get that close again. It hurt way too much.

and here's an underwater description:

We descended slowly. Every few feet, I pinched my nose [one can do this with masks that leave the nose free] and blew to equalize the pressure in my ears. Carr was doing the same. Visibility was about twenty feet, with a slight current. The deeper we got, the darker it became/ At fifty feet, I could see the outline of the wreck. The boat was completely intact and lying on its right side at the edge of a precipice that dropped into nothingness. There was no indication from this vantage that there had been a fire.

I stopped and shot photos [Cussler at this point would have told you what camera and filmn she was using! So would Ian Fleming, admittedly.] Then we continued to the bottom. I checked my depth-gauge: seventy-six feet. Both Carr and I spent a second adjusting the air in our buoyancy compensator vests, just enough so that we were hovering above the bottom. Then we headed for the wreck, our lights on. As we moved in, I shot pictures from every angle, making sure to place the boat in context. Then we moved in closer. We would not touch anything on this first dive, just to get an idea of what we were up against. Carr knew that he would stay behind me and follow my lead.

Check this book out from the library, and it's worth a read. I wouldn't buy a copy though.

The Red House Mystery, by A. A. Milne

I've been reading The Red House Mystery . It was published in 1922 by A.A. Milne, one of the very first full-length mystery novels. (Agatha Christie's The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published in 1920.)

Although I'm enjoyed the mystery, truth to tell I'm not sure what age audience it's aimed at. A. A. Milne is most famous as the author of the Winnie-the-Pooh stories, and occasionally in the book the omniscient narrator addresses the reader in a professorial manner (as JRR Tolkien does in The Hobbit, a book for teens, but not in The Lord of the Rings), aimed at adults.

For example:

At about the time when the Major (for whatever reasons) was fluffing his tee-shot at the sixteenth, and Mark and his cousin were at their business at The Red House, an attractive gentleman of the name of Antony Gillingham was handing up his ticket at Woodham Station and asking the way to the village. Having received directions, he left his bag with the station master and walked off leisurely. He is an important person to this story, so that it is as well we should know something about him before letting him loose in it. Let us stop him at the top of the hill on some excuse, and have a good look at him.

The first thing we realize is that he is doing more of the looking than we are. Above a clean-cut, clean shaven face, of the type usually associated with the Navy, he carries a pair of grey eyes which seem to be absorbing every detail of our person.

Mark Ablett is a wealty man who maintains a household in the country, which he allows his cousin to run. He invites people, much less well-off than himself, down to frequent house parties - he is a sponsor of all the arts. On the day when this novel starts, he receives a letter from his ne'er do well younger brother, Robert, who has been living in Australia for decades. He's coming to call.

In due course, Robert does arrive. He goes into the study with Mark, and all is silent for some time. Then there is a shot. Mark's cousin Cayley bangs on the door to the study, while Antony Gillingham, who has come to the house to pay a call on his friend, Mr. Beverly, whom he knows is staying there, sees him from the front door and offers his assistance. When they enter the room, they find the body of Robert on the floor...and Mark nowhere to be found.

Gillingham enlists his friend Beverly as his Watson, and sets out to solve the mystery, with the accommodating help of the policeman on the case.

The Red House Mystery is very much a "tea cosy" mystery, a puzzle (and one that anyone who has read twenty years of Agatha Christie may solve quickly - but remember this book was written very early on in the career of the mystesry novel.)

It's an easy read, it evokes a time long past (as do Christie's early novels), and its fun.

I'm reading it in the Kindle edition (only 99 cents). The formatting is a little off. Sometimes lines in a paragraph are shifted down, an occasional indentation is missing, but these are very, very minor problems.

Nerve, by Dick Francis

The key element of a Dick Francis book is that it will have something to do with horses and horse-racing. His early books featured mostly jockeys and racing, later books dealt with lead characters in other professions, who were only tangentially connected to the horse racing world.

Another element of a Dick Francis novel is that the hero always - always - will be either beaten up or in some way tortured in the last few chapters of the book, to show how tough they are, presumably.

Truth to tell, Nerve isn't one of my favorites, but it is an interesting psychological story. (My favorite Franis is Reflex, the very first one I read, in which the hero is a jockey and also an amateur photographer, the reflex of the title speaking both of a person's reflexes, and also a reflex lens), followed by In the Frameand then Forfeit.

Interestingly, having just checked Wikipedia, it looks like Nerve was Francis' second novel, written in 1964. I was surprised by that - it is very accomplished, for someone's second novel.

Robb Finn is a beginning jockey, just starting out in his career. Things are starting to look up - he's just been offered steady rides by a trainer, James Axminster. He's ecstatic...he's on his way. Then...things start to go wrong. His horses start to give up on him...is he losing his nerve?

This is a novel of psychological suspense...as several jockeys whom Rob knows are also finding their lives in turmoil...losing their jobs, losing their nerve, nad so on... what is going on?

Here are the first few paragraphs of the book:

Art Mathews shot himself, loudly and messily, in the center of the parade ring at Dunstable races.

I was standing only six feet away from him, but he did it so quickly that had it been only six inches I would not have had time to stop him.

He had walked out of the changing room ahead of me, his narrow shoulders hunched inside the khaki jerkin he had put on over his racing colors, and his head down on his chest as if he were deep in thought. I noticed him stumble slightly down the two stepos from the weighing room to the path; and when someone spoke to him on the short walk to the parade ring, he gave absolutely no sign of having heard. But it was just another walk from the weighing room to the parade ring, just another race like a hundred others. There was nothing to suggest that when he had stood talking for two or three minutes with the owner and the trainer of the horse he was due to ride, he would take off his kerkin, produce from under it as he dropped it to the ground a large automatic pistol, place the barrel against his temple and squeeze the trigger.

If you haven't read Dick Francis before - and he's so popular that you probably have, I'd suggest starting chronologically, from Dead Cert (his first novel, 1962), to Straight. He wrote more after that but they are disappointments (either written by a ghost writer or by his son), without the same flair.

Books by Dick Francis. Note that he has only one "series", that of Sid Halley, and Halley is only in a couple of books.
Dead Cert 1962
Nerve 1964
For Kicks 1965
Odds Against 1965
Flying Finish 1966
Blood Sport 1967
Forfeit 1968
Enquiry 1969
Rat Race 1970
Bonecrack 1971
Smokescreen 1972
Slayride 1973
Knockdown 1974
High Stakes 1975
In the Frame 1976
Risk 1977
Trial Run 1978
Whip Hand 1979
Reflex 1980
Twice Shy 1981
Banker 1982
The Danger 1983
Proof 1984
Break In 1985
Bolt 1986
Hot Money 1987
The Edge 1988
Straight 1989
Longshot 1990
Comeback 1991
Driving Force 1992
Decider 1993
Wild Horses 1994
Come to Grief 1995
To the Hilt 1996
10 LB. Penalty 1997
Second Wind 1999
Shattered 2000
Under Orders 2006
Dead Heat 2007 with Felix Francis
Silks 2008 with Felix Francis
Even Money 2009 with Felix Francis

Smokescreen, by Dick Francis

Edward Lincoln is an actor, and a successful one. But he's the rugged kind, like Clint Eastwood (so he can handle the trials and tribulations that author Dick Francis is about to throw at him!). Before becoming an actor, he had ridden horses for a living, so when a family friend, who is dying, asks him to travel to Australia to discover why her horses aren't running well, he can hardly refuse.
But Lincoln, who likes to maintain a low profile, finds more than he bargained for in Australia, from paperazzi yearning to get some dirt on him (whether or not they have to invent it themselves doesn't matter), to the people behind the poorly-performing race horses, who don't want to see their scheme interfered with.
Francis handles the characters in this book with sureness...we get an insight into the actor's life that is fascinating (in particular the feud with the director/auteur), and of course there are the inevitable racing scenes that are also fun. And then of course there are the trials and tribulations that Francis heroes are known to be subjected to.




Recommended.

On the Slam, by Honor Hartman

On the Slam, by Honor Hartman, is "A Bridge Club Mystery." There are only two books in the series to date, On The Slam in 2007, and The Unkindest Cut, in 2008.

Meet Emma Diamond: novice bridge player, recent widow, and the kind of person who never leaves her grocery cart sitting willy nilly in the parking lot. And now, after a vile woman in her new neighborhood in Houston is poisoned during a bridge game, Emma has a new identity: amateur detective.

I didn't really care for this book, yet another in a series of amateur female detectives who have no career, yet are better detectives than the police. Emma Diamond is a widow, who plays bridge (and the bridge notes at the end of the book are interesting). The woman who was murdered hardly seems vile, and Emma is annoyingly unaffected by her death.

The novel takes place in Houston, Texas, but I didn't get a "sense of place," it could have taken place anywhere.

A few paragraphs

I glanced over at the doorway, and Nate McGreevey sttod watchintg, again looking past me at someone else in the room. I started to speak to him, but Janet came in just then and and picked up a small paper plate. She spooned a large amount of the spinach dip onto it, then added a handful of wheat crackers on the side. At this rate, there might not be spinach dip left for much longer.

Janet caught my expression, and her gaze hardened. "There's plenty of food for everyone," she said.

"Yes, of course," I murmured politely and started to turn away.

She wasn't paying any attention to me. She scooped up a large dollop of spinach dip with a cracker and popped it into her mouth. She smiled as she chewed.

I heard her murmur "yummy" as I headed bck to my table.

Then, suddenly, I heard gasping, choking sounds from behind me.

I turned back and, to my horror, Janet was clutching her throat with both hands. Her plate had dropped to the floor in front of her. She reached out a hand toward me,, but I was rooted to the spot.

A split second later, I recovered my voice. I yelled out, "Gerald! Something's wrong with Janet."

The room went completely still behind me, and for a long moment, no one moved. No one except Janet, that it. She collapsed against the island, hands still clawing at her throat. The platter of crudites went flying as she elbowed it on her way down.

The Dark Place, by Aaron Elkins

The Dark Place, by Aaron Elkins, is the second in the Gideon Oliver series. In Fellowship of Fear, the widowed Oliver meets a woman, however he is alone at the beginning of The Dark Place. However, we are reintroduced to FBI agent John Lau. Mysterious happenings occur in the Olympic National Park, in Olympia, Washington State. Six years ago, two hikers disappeared. A few days ago, a woman has disappeared. When some bones are found, John Lau asks Gideon Oliver, who is working at a dig at Dungeness, to come look at them.

Once at the park, Gideon meets park ranger Julie Tendler, and works with John Lau to solve the mystery of the disappearing hikers.

Sample paragraphs

John held open the door, and Gideon awkwardly bowed Julie through, not at all sure if she would like the gesture. She went through with a pleasant smile, and they stepped out into the town of Quinault. It was a shock. They had entered the hotel building from a spacious, sunny lawn peopled with sunbathers and laughing volleyball players, and with ten square miles of open lake at their backs. When they walked out through the rear entrance, no more than forty feet away, they stepped into a sunless shadowy world of almost solid green, hushed and perceptibly cooler and more moist than the lawn.

The "town," invisible from the air, consisted of several buildings out of the nineteenth century along either side of a narrow road. On the right was an old post office and a weathered, rustic general store - Lake Quinault Merc, the sign said - with a wooden porch complete with an old dog sprawled lazily on it. On the left was the Quinault Ranger Station, a group of small frame houses. Everything was dwarfed and hemmed in by towering walls of cedar and spruce, so tall and close together that the sky was only visible as a narrow slit high above the road. The road itself gave the illusion of being cut off at either end by more tree walls, and the overall effect was like being at the bottom of a sunken corridor, a narrow, gravelike canyon cut deep in the living mass of trees.

Elkins gives the story an excellent sense of place. Makes you long to visit there... see if it still exists as he described. (Aarons and his wife still live in Olympia, Washington.)

The only flaw in the book is that Gideon manages to learn a foreign language in 24 hours...I don't really think that's possible. But if you suspend your disbelief, it's an enjoyable book.

The Gideon Oliver series
Fellowship of Fear (1982)
The Dark Place (1983)
Murder in the Queen's Armes (1985)
Old Bones (1987)
Curses! (1989)
Icy Clutches (1990)
Make No Bones (1991)
Dead Men's Hearts (1994)
Twenty Blue Devils (1997)
Skeleton Dance (2000)
Good Blood (2004)
Where There's a Will (2005)
Unnatural Selection (2006)
Little Tiny Teeth (2007)
Uneasy Relations (2008)
Skull Duggery (2009)

A Nun in the Closet, by Dorothy Gilman

Dorothy Gilman is most famous as the author of the Mrs. Pollifax series, however she wrote some stand-alone novels as well.

In A Nun in the Closet (1975), two unworldly nuns from the Abbey of St. Tabitha are sent out into the world to decide what to do with a large mansion that has been unexpectedly left to the order. Sister John is the practical one - she can mend the Abbey's printing press when it breaks down. Sister Hyacinthe, from impoverished hill country, knows how to make meals from herbs.

When the nuns reach the house, they find it haunted... by a man who has been shot and begs them for sanctuary. The two nuns, and a few friends they gather along the way, protect the man from those who wish to finish the job they had started.

It's 1975, so this book does have some "Dated Death." Brill, Alfie and Naomi are hippies, learning to live off the land. The man they found is an establishment type...and he's the only one with a bullet in him.

Between A Wok and a Hard Place, by Tamar Myers

Between A Wok and a Hard Place, Tamar Myers, 1998

Author Tamar Myers prose begins to grate on me after a while, and I cringe at her pun-laden titles, but her books are certainly popular. I've just checked out her website and learned her biography, which is pretty interesting. Her parents were missionaries in the Belgian Congo, where she was born and grew up for the first 16 years of her life. So when she talks about culture shock (having never driven, never used a phone, never used a vending machine, she knows what she's talking about! She's been in the US since 1964. http://tamarmyers.com/bio.htm

So, to the plot of Between A Wok and A Hard Place:
Ever since her brand new husband flew the coop, Magdalena Yoder, owner of the quaint Penn-Dutch Inn, has had time to kill. And now the local Amish commmunity has a murder in its midst: an Asian tourist found strangled and run over by a horse and buggy. It isn't a crime Police Chief Melvin Stoltzfus can easily handle; after all, he was once kicked in the head by a bull he was trying to milk. But he's smart enough to deputize Magdalena.

Soon Magdalena is off visiting the neatly kept farms of the Plain People, in search of the truth. Although not an outsider, she's about as welcome as a fox in a henhouse. Something dangerous is being concealed behind their dour faces and determination to protect their own. And as for Magdalena, finding a killer may just put her between the rock of faith and a hard place called justice....

Opening paragraph

I was a virgin until I married at age 46. Use it or lose it, my sister Susannah always said. Maybe she was right.

Of course this is none of your business. I am a God-fearing womanvand I certainly do not intend to discuss my sex life with you. It is imperative, however, that you understand that I was still in a state of shock when the events I am about to relate happened. After all, I had been married only a month, and what Mama had only hinted at paled in comparison with the real thing. I was born and raised on a farm and had seen animals-cows and horses-but never a naked man. How was I to know they looked like that? Thanksgiving is forever ruined for me. I can't even look at a turkey neck now without feeling embarrased.