Opening line: "There was no point in screaming. Philip Cannon was a dead man."
C.G. Barrett, publisher of a Tampa newsmagazine, World of Westchase, has introduced me to his new mystery novel The Odd Fellows Society released last December.
The book has been named a Top Book Pick and given a 5-star review by IndieReader, which specialises in small and independent publishers.
Synopsis
"Santiago Torres, the Jesuit headmaster of a Washington, D.C. high school, knows two truths. First, historian Jasper Willoughs, his closest friend, didn’t toss himself off a dormitory roof. Second, a Georgetown University secret society — a running joke on campus — has blood on its hands. When Torres’s pursuit of the truth triggers a bizarre and deadly scavenger hunt, its clues, scratched out on parchment by his dead friend, lead Santi to risk everything he holds sacred: his job, his life, even the woman he secretly loves."
The thriller explores America's national preoccupation with race and will have readers looking at the US capital, and its monuments’ secrets, in a whole different shade of black and white.
A native of Northeast Pennsylvania, Barrett’s popular novels have included both young adult and adult fiction in the genres of fantasy and mystery. His humour writing about life as a parent has appeared in over a dozen parenting magazines throughout the United States. He lives with his wife, his three daughters, and his two Shetland Sheepdogs in Tampa, Florida.
Readers can learn more about his books at www.cgbarrett.com.
Three decades later, a sequel to the universally popular film Top Gun is ready for takeoff. A curtain raiser for Overlooked Films, Audio and Video at Todd Mason's blog Sweet Freedom.
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| © Paramount Pictures |
The news is more or less confirmed. There will likely be a Top Gun 2, after all. Last week, Jerry Bruckheimer, who co-produced Top Gun in 1986, told Wired he was teaming up with Tom "Maverick" Cruise and David Ellison for a possible sequel. Ellison's Skydance Productions is developing the film. So far, Val Kilmer, who plays his rival in the original, is on board. There have been no further disclosures.
"There is an amazing role for Maverick in the movie and there is no Top Gun without Maverick. It is going to be Maverick playing Maverick. It is, I don’t think, what people are going to expect, and we are very, very hopeful that we get to make the movie very soon," Ellison told Wired in what I thought was a confusing statement. One Maverick too many, perhaps.
The timing couldn't have been better, as Tony Scott's Top Gun completes three decades this May, though it is not known when the sequel will be released.
Apart from Maverick's flying acrobatics in the sky, I remember Top Gun for the adrenaline-pumping and exaggerated masculinity of its fighter pilots and the award-winning song Take My Breath Away, written by Giorgio Moroder and Tom Whitlock and performed by Berlin, and Top Gun Anthem, the instrumental rock-song composed by Harold Faltermeyer, of Beverly Hills Cop fame.
Sequels rarely live up to their originals. I hope this one does. Tom Cruise was only 24 when he played the reckless US Naval Aviator the first time. He is 54 now and I hope not too old for the Tomcat cockpit.
Friday’s Forgotten Books at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase.
Any veteran investigator will tell you that it's very easy to overlook the most significant clue in a murder case.
Erle Stanley Gardner wrote The Case of the Invisible Circle for the July 1956 issue of Mercury Mystery Book-Magazine. It is one of dozens of short stories and novelettes he published over more than four decades. These do not include the series of novels and stories based on his principal character, Perry Mason, and lesser-known protagonists like Cool and Lam, Doug Selby, Terry Clane, and Gramps Wiggins.
The Case of the Invisible Circle differs from his trademark mysteries in that there is a crime that is so perplexing as to baffle the police and pathologists.
The first-person narrator of the story, who I assume is the writer himself, is sent by the city editor of the Denver Post to the capital of Colorado — to investigate and report on the brutal rape and murder of a beautiful college girl, whose body is discovered at the bottom of a snow-covered ravine. He is accompanied by Dr. LeMoyne Snyder, a famous medico-legal specialist and author with a keen eye for homicide cases.
District attorney Hatfield Chilson, who is described as “a shrewd lawyer, a competent investigator and, above all, a fair man,” is in charge of the case. Our storyteller and Dr. Snyder assist him in getting to the bottom of the sex crime that has eluded police officers, forensics experts, and pathologists.
The challenging mystery is eventually solved after the men discover a vital clue in one of the photographs — a circle on the naked right hip of the girl — that everyone had missed the first time.
There is not a single dialogue in the story. The narrative is plain but engaging. I think Gardner deliberately wrote it that way. Instead, he offers the reader a structured investigation and police procedural that helps to nail the murderer in the end.
Interestingly, the author makes a strong case for the high character of district attorneys and lawyers in the country. He wants the public to know what these people are capable of and how they measure up to their responsibilities while investigating homicide cases.
If you are a fan of Erle Stanley Gardner, you will enjoy this story.
Opening line: “There is no mystery to happiness.”
My daughter Nyrica has eclectic taste in books. She borrowed The Interpretation of Murder, 2006, by American writer Jed Rubenfeld, from the library. The minute I read the back of the book, I had to write about it even if I’m unlikely to read it soon owing to other book commitments.
This is what her 529-page Headline Review paperback says:
“On the morning after Sigmund Freud arrives in New York on his first—and only—visit to the United States, a stunning debutante is found bound and strangled in her penthouse apartment, high above Broadway. The following night, another beautiful heiress, Nora Acton, is discovered tied to a chandelier in her parents’ home, viciously wounded and unable to speak or to recall her ordeal. Soon Freud and his American disciple, Stratham Younger, are enlisted to help Miss Acton recover her memory, and to piece together the killer’s identity. It is a riddle that will test their skills to the limit, and lead them on a thrilling journey—into the darkest places of the city, and of the human mind.”
It’s the most intriguing book synopsis I have read this year. Freud plays detective along with his fictitious disciple, Younger, and his real-life acolyte Carl Jung. In 1909, the two renowned psychoanalysts actually visited the United States to deliver a series of lectures on psychoanalysis at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. It might have formed the basis for the novel.
Jed Rubenfeld, Professor of Law at Yale Law School, has written one other novel, The Death Instinct, 2010, a mystery-thriller set around the 1920 Wall Street bombing. This should be equally interesting.
He has also written books on constitutional law and co-authored The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America, 2014, with his wife Amy Chua.
Author's picture sourced from www.amazon.co.uk.
Love is all you need is the tag line of I Am Sam. I offer a review of the film for Tuesday’s Overlooked Films, Audio and Video over at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom.
Lucy (Dakota Fanning): Why are men bald?
Sam (Sean Penn): Sometimes they're bald because their head is shiny and they don't have hair on it. So their head is just more of their face.
Whether as a producer, director or writer, Jessie Nelson seems to be pleasantly obsessed with issues of coping and bonding, which form the underlying structure of many of her films. This is evident in her directorial ventures, Corrina, Corrina (1994), I Am Sam (2002), and Love the Coopers (2015), where she explores the complexities of love and relationships.
Sam Dawson (Sean Penn), a mentally-challenged man, raises his daughter Lucy Diamond (Dakota Fanning) after her mother abandons her at birth. He has named her after The Beatles song ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.’ He works at Starbucks and is equally obsessed with brewing coffee. Sam adores his daughter in his own childlike way and Lucy loves him no less. At times she is forced to play the role of parent, but she won't let on that her intellectual capacity is superior to his.
When she turns seven, the authorities take away the precocious child, ostensibly, for her own good. Father and daughter meet under supervision and hate every bit of it. Sam struggles to find a lawyer who will help him get his little girl back. He finds Rita Harrison Williams (Michelle Pfeiffer), a self-centered, high-society lawyer, who takes up his case pro bono, only to prove a point to her snickering colleagues. Does she win the courtroom battle?
Rita (Michelle Pfeiffer): I just don't know what to call you: retarded, mentally retarded, mentally handicapped, mentally disabled, intellectually handicapped, intellectually disabled, developmentally disabled...
Sam (Penn): You can call me Sam.
Jessie Nelson has handled the subject of a retarded parent, who is crazy about his daughter, with a great deal of sensitivity, and dignified humour. The camerawork is respectful of the delicate subject. The various scenes are well-crafted. While exploring the beautiful, and often poignant, relationship between Sam and Lucy, she also offers a glimpse into another—obsessed with her career, Rita, a single parent, learns to bond with her neglected young son and finds new meaning in her life. She owes it to Sam.
Sean Penn’s performance—as a kindly man with a mental capacity of a seven-year old and yet of keen perception—is good. I can imagine how much he researched and trained for the role that requires facial contortions and repetition of speech. He is a method actor, I think. He plays the mentally disabled Sam Dawson to near perfection, though not convincingly enough to convert his nominations for ‘Best Actor in a Leading Role’ at the Oscars and SAGA, into awards. Whether he deserved one is open to debate.
Dakota Fanning is a natural-born actress and her remarkable talent shows in this film as well as it does in Man on Fire, War of the Worlds, and Hide and Seek. Michelle Pfeiffer acts well but is clearly overshadowed by Penn. I’d have preferred Susan Sarandon. She and Penn shared a good chemistry in Dead Man Walking (1995). Dianne Wiest, Richard Schiff, and Laura Dern put in more or less guest appearances.
The underlying message of I Am Sam is that, the mentally challenged are nearly as normal as anyone else, certainly more so where matters of the heart are concerned. It's a nice film and I liked it, partly because of Sean Penn's affecting screen presence.
Rita (Pfeiffer): Sam, I worry. I worry sometimes.
Sam (Penn): Yeah... do you worry that you did something wrong?
Rita: No. I worry that I've gotten more out of this relationship than you.
I bought the ebook edition of The Wailing Frail—the 12th in the popular 40-plus Shell Scott Detective Mystery series by Richard S. Prather—thinking I’d review it for Friday’s Forgotten Books over at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase. Unfortunately, I couldn’t finish reading it in time.
Patti is hosting a Richard S. Prather special today and had I finished the book, it’d have been my first by the American mystery novelist who has a cult following among fans of the genre.
I’m a little more than halfway into this hardboiled racy novel and I already like Prather’s style, particularly his use of short sentences that are as crisp as a fried South Indian papad, lines like “Beasley's mouth was working, but he didn't say anything.” He lives much to the reader’s imagination.
I also liked the opening lines a lot. I have a feeling that’s how most of his novels open, with more than just a hint of suspense and humour.
She yanked the door open with a crash and said, "Gran — "but then she stopped and stared at me. She was nude as a noodle.
I stared right back at her.
"Oh!" she squealed. "You're…not Grandma!"
"No," I said, "I'm Shell Scott, and you're not Grandma, either."
She slammed the door in my face.
Yep, I thought, this is the right house.
I will be reviewing The Wailing Frail in coming weeks.
This is my entry for Tuesday’s Overlooked Films, Audio and Video over at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom.
It was a coincidence that just the day before Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet won Golden Globes for The Revenant and Steve Jobs, respectively, I watched the two in Revolutionary Road, an intense and at times depressing family drama that exposes the soft underbelly of “happily” married couples.
In 2008, Winslet won Golden Globes for Best Actress and Actress of the Year, including for The Reader. DiCaprio and director Sam Mendes failed to convert their nominations into what would have been well-deserved awards.
DiCaprio and Winslet play Frank and April Wheeler who live on Revolutionary Road in a Connecticut suburb with their two children. They seem content with their quotidian middle-class existence, he as an ordinary salesman in the company where his father worked for many years and she as a dutiful wife who manages home and the kids.
Mendes doesn’t waste time with the niceties of married life. No sooner the film is underway he tears away the veil of matrimonial bliss, at least in the eyes of their next-door friends Milly Campbell (Kathryn Hahn) and her husband Shep (David Harbour), and their real estate broker Mrs. Givings (Kathy Bates).
At the heart of the story lies April’s plan to migrate to Paris, in search of a new identity and a more fulfilling life as much for herself as for her family, which quickly turns into a nightmare as it conflicts with Frank’s own. From thereon, it’s downhill for the couple who are caught in a tangle of self-deception, frustration, anger, promiscuity, despair, and tragedy.
Sam Mendes (Road to Perdition) has made a powerful film that lays bare the harsh realities of married life, the frailties of ordinary people, and how “happy” couples can be their own worst enemies. Although the director gives equal weightage to the characters of DiCaprio and Winslet, I thought this was actually Alice’s story. Full of zest for life, Alice aspires to become an actress again only to see her dreams crash, after her differences with Frank erupt like a volcano.
Not surprisingly, DiCaprio and Winslet give a splendid performance in Revolutionary Road, particularly in their nasty arguments and fights, their emotions and feelings of guilt, so typical of problems husbands and wives face in the real world. In that sense the film holds a mirror to marriages. DiCaprio deserved an award too.
Recommended.
