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Post by EdoBosnar on Dec 4, 2021 16:28:57 GMT -5
Murder with MirrorsAgatha Christie, 1952 (published in the UK under the title They Do It with Mirrors)  One of Christie's many Miss Marple mysteries. In this one, Jane Marple is asked by an old American school friend, Ruth, to check up on her sister, Carrie Louise, who lives in England on an estate called Stonygates. The latter is also the location of a charitable institution for delinquent boys run by Carrie Louise's (third) husband, Lewis Serrocold. Miss Marple arrives and indeed finds a strange atmosphere: besides the institution, which houses about 200 wayward boys and its staff, there's also the residents of the main residential mansion - consisting of Carrie Louise and her husband, her now middle-aged daughter from her first marriage, her granddaughter (whose now deceased mother was adopted by Carrie Louise and her first husband) and her American husband, Carrie Louise's two adult step-sons from her second marriage, and the elderly housekeeper who is militantly protective of Carrie Louise. The situation gets even more tense when Christian Gulbrandsen, one of the institution's trustees and also Carrie Louise's step-son from her first marriage, arrives unexpectedly on some urgent matter that concerns Lewis (who's away on business at the time). On the evening when Lewis arrives, he gets into a heated argument in his study with one of the young men from the institution, and not long afterward, Christian is found shot to death in his room. The police are summoned, but eventually it takes the unassuming Miss Marple to unravel the mystery. I found this mildly entertaining, but nothing more. This is only the second book by Christie I've ever read - the other was an espionage novel called Destination Unknown (also written in the early 1950s), which I honestly found pretty middling. This one was a little better, but still nothing that makes me want to go seek out Christie's other books.
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Post by berkley on Dec 5, 2021 0:34:35 GMT -5
Maybe it's just that I read them from when I was a kid through most of my teenage years, but I blazed through all the Agatha Christies I could find back then and still wanted more, so I definitely found them addictive at the time. I still plan to go back an re-read some of them. It probably will be a few years before I get around to doing that, though - I've been re-reading Sherlock Holmes off and on the last couple of years and will probably keep going with the British whodunnit tradition in roughly chronological order, as apart from Conan Doyle and Christie there are a lot of famous UK murder mystery authors I have never tried, e.g. Dorothy Sayers.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Dec 5, 2021 18:32:50 GMT -5
 Charlesgate Confidential by Scott Von DoviakHard Case Crime gives us this decent first novel by Scott Von Doviak. It's an ambitious novel, in that it follows three different timelines with three voices, which ultimately converge into one story. That would be a tough sell for an experienced novelist, and Von Doviak pulls it off quite well. The story centers on the Charlesgate Hotel in Boston, an actual building that had a long history as it went from being a high-end hotel, to a rundown flea-bag, to a college dormitory, to upscale gentrified condos. The Charlesgate is the center around which the story of the robbery of the Isabelle Stewart Gardner Museum. And that is one of the initial issues I have with the book. There was, in fact, a theft at that museum that garnered a Vermeer (The Concert), Rembrandt's only seascape and a number of other paintings and sketches. But that theft was in 1990 and Von Doviak decides to back-date it to 1946. That's kind of a big deal. There's also the issue of the Red Sox. I get it. Von Doviak is a Sox fan. And so are many Bostonians. Neat. But the Red Sox permeate this novel to an almost ridiculous extent, given that it's not about baseball. It was simply too much. Still, this is a good first novel and it read quite fast. Von Doviak did a very good job of making the three separate timelines work and each was reasonably interesting. So it's worth a read. Just, enough with the Red Sox. |
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Post by Rob Allen on Dec 5, 2021 20:45:11 GMT -5
Just, enough with the Red Sox. In 1946 there was another major league team in Boston also; does the book mention them at all? That was one of the questions I got right on Jeopardy!. The "answer" was something like, "The original home of baseball's Braves". The returning champ rang in first and answered, "What is Milwaukee?", then I rang in and said, "What is Boston?". The team moved from Boston to Milwaukee to Atlanta. Last I heard, the Braves' old stadium was still being used by Boston University. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Dec 5, 2021 21:42:40 GMT -5
Just, enough with the Red Sox. In 1946 there was another major league team in Boston also; does the book mention them at all? That was one of the questions I got right on Jeopardy!. The "answer" was something like, "The original home of baseball's Braves". The returning champ rang in first and answered, "What is Milwaukee?", then I rang in and said, "What is Boston?". The team moved from Boston to Milwaukee to Atlanta. Last I heard, the Braves' old stadium was still being used by Boston University. I don’t believe the Braves were ever mentioned. I did know that they started off in Boston. |
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Post by Prince Hal on Dec 6, 2021 9:38:32 GMT -5
Just, enough with the Red Sox. In 1946 there was another major league team in Boston also; does the book mention them at all? That was one of the questions I got right on Jeopardy!. The "answer" was something like, "The original home of baseball's Braves". The returning champ rang in first and answered, "What is Milwaukee?", then I rang in and said, "What is Boston?". The team moved from Boston to Milwaukee to Atlanta. Last I heard, the Braves' old stadium was still being used by Boston University. Glad there's still someone who remembers the Boston Braves, Rob and Slam_Bradley.
BU bought Braves Field the year after the Braves left for Milwaukee, though they never played baseball there. It was used primarily for football, including for the Patriots, who played the first AFL game there in 1960 and the Breakers of the USFL.
BU ended football in the late '90s, but the field is used for soccer and lacrosse. The original entrance and ticket office to Braves Field, obviously modified and updated, is still used as the entrance to Nickerson Field:
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Post by Deleted on Dec 6, 2021 14:53:12 GMT -5
Charlesgate Confidential by Scott Von DoviakHard Case Crime gives us this decent first novel by Scott Von Doviak. It's an ambitious novel, in that it follows three different timelines with three voices, which ultimately converge into one story. That would be a tough sell for an experienced novelist, and Von Doviak pulls it off quite well. The story centers on the Charlesgate Hotel in Boston, an actual building that had a long history as it went from being a high-end hotel, to a rundown flea-bag, to a college dormitory, to upscale gentrified condos. The Charlesgate is the center around which the story of the robbery of the Isabelle Stewart Gardner Museum. And that is one of the initial issues I have with the book. There was, in fact, a theft at that museum that garnered a Vermeer (The Concert), Rembrandt's only seascape and a number of other paintings and sketches. But that theft was in 1990 and Von Doviak decides to back-date it to 1946. That's kind of a big deal. There's also the issue of the Red Sox. I get it. Von Doviak is a Sox fan. And so are many Bostonians. Neat. But the Red Sox permeate this novel to an almost ridiculous extent, given that it's not about baseball. It was simply too much. Still, this is a good first novel and it read quite fast. Von Doviak did a very good job of making the three separate timelines work and each was reasonably interesting. So it's worth a read. Just, enough with the Red Sox. Now I may have to track this down and read it... -M |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 6, 2021 22:43:19 GMT -5
 Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosely After seeing mentioned here several times and thinking, this is easily in my wheelhouse, I picked up a copy of Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosely last time I was at HPB and read it this past week, finishing it earlier this evening. Quite liked it (no I won't start buying covers featuring women in blue dresses now), and after I finish a backlog of books in my to read ile form other series will likely seek out more in the Easy Rawlins series if I can find them. -M |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 7, 2021 1:34:59 GMT -5
Man, TCM aired the movie version of Devil with a Blue Dress featuring Denzel Washington as Easy. and I recorded it to watch after I finished the book. Well I watched it this evening. It's not a bad movie in and of itself, and I do like Denzel's portrayal of Easy though its nothing like I imagined he would look, carry himself, but man, did they butcher the book.
-M
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Post by berkley on Dec 7, 2021 2:44:12 GMT -5
Man, TCM aired the movie version of Devil with a Blue Dress featuring Denzel Washington as Easy. and I recorded it to watch after I finished the book. Well I watched it this evening. It's not a bad movie in and of itself, and I do like Denzel's portrayal of Easy though its nothing like I imagined he would look, carry himself, but man, did they butcher the book. -M
Ever since I saw the Man Who Would be King, I've felt that the proper literary source for one-off movies is the short story. Novels should be a series of movies or a limited tv series - there's simply too much material, too much plot, too much character development, too much everything in even a medium-length novel to fit into a 90-120 minute feature film. |
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Post by EdoBosnar on Dec 8, 2021 15:38:30 GMT -5
A Case of NeedMichael Crichton, 1968 (originally published under the pseudonym Jeffery Hudson)  Broke one of my cardinal rules, as I re-read this one recently while I have tons (and tons) of as-yet unread books on my shelf. However, there were several reasons for doing so in this case: 1. this book is one of those rare ones that I passed along to friends with no expectation that I'd ever see it again and it actually made its way back to me; 2. when I first read it back in the mid-1990s, when I was going through a big Michael Crichton phase and reading everything I could find by him, this was one I recall thinking was among the best, so I wanted to see if it held up in my mind, 3. its subject matter is now again quite topical in the US, given certain recent troubling rumblings from the Supreme Court. The basic story is this: a young woman, the daughter of a wealthy and well-known and respected surgeon in Boston is brought to an emergency ward in the early hours of the morning with severe bleeding - the result of a botched abortion. She dies before anything can be done to help her. Soon afterward, an obstetrician named Arthur Lee is arrested for her death, as it's well-known in medical circles in the city that he performs what were at the time illegal abortions. His good friend, a hospital pathologist named John Berry, takes it upon himself to clear Lee's name because he knows Lee was not incompetent and reckless enough to do something like that. Berry believes Lee is being set up to save someone else's bacon, and he's also certain that Lee is a convenient scapegoat because of his Chinese ancestry. In just a few days, Berry indeed gets to the bottom of it, but takes some lumps - both figuratively and literally - in the process. This is quite a gripping read and I stand by my opinion that this is possibly one of the best books Crichton had ever written. One thing I find fascinating is his ability - at least in his earlier writings - to effortlessly incorporate information dumps into his narrative without making them seem clunky, out of place or tedious.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Dec 8, 2021 18:39:25 GMT -5
That sounds really interesting, and another Boston book!
Finish up my Hitchhiker's re-read... I found the further I went along, the less I remembered... to the point that I'm not entirely sure I've ever actually finished the last book before. Adams is a real treasure when it comes to alot of things, but trying to have a plot in his Magnum Opus is not one of them...it really just sort of falls apart in alot of ways. Still glad to have re-read it though, and I still plan to make it a point to re-read more things... might be Foundation next.. or maybe Dune.. we'll see.
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Post by berkley on Dec 8, 2021 23:38:49 GMT -5
That sounds really interesting, and another Boston book! Finish up my Hitchhiker's re-read... I found the further I went along, the less I remembered... to the point that I'm not entirely sure I've ever actually finished the last book before. Adams is a real treasure when it comes to alot of things, but trying to have a plot in his Magnum Opus is not one of them...it really just sort of falls apart in alot of ways. Still glad to have re-read it though, and I still plan to make it a point to re-read more things... might be Foundation next.. or maybe Dune.. we'll see. I've been thinking about re-reading the Foundation trilogy as well, as a friend of mine was telling me that he thought the tv show was pretty good, though not a strictly faithful adaptation of the books. And I do plan to re-read Dune, but not for a while yet, as I still have some 1950s SF I want to read for the first time - which is why I'm not 100% decided to read Foundation again. Decisions, decisions ... |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Dec 14, 2021 21:14:27 GMT -5
Project Hail Mary
by Andy Weir
Book club encouraged me to finally grab this... I loved the Martian, and was very curious as to what this one would be like.
Turns out... VERY similar. Ryland Grace could easily have been Mark Watney... I guess the excuse of being a middle school science teacher was why he knew alot about, well, everything. It borders on comic 'scientists' where if you're any sort of scientist you know all about everything.
That doesn't mean it was bad... on the contrary, it takes the Martian, and turns it up to 11 with a world -saving mission to deep space. The format is the same though.. . the main character talking to himself (but really the reader) for alot of it. In the Martian, the excuse was a journal... here it was amnesia, but had the same purpose. That, of course, in interspersed with flashbacks on how thing got to where they were.
I REALLY hate that every writer feels that linear story telling is passe. I think it could have really helped here... there were some bits of the story that were just not a big deal because you don't care about them until after you know how they turn out. It's funny, in a world where people get so upset about spoilers, many writers go ahead and spoil their own story.
That said, this really good hard sci-fi, with a good, logical plot and reasonable science once you take the Astrophage as existing. It's internally consistent and makes sense. The pages definitely turn quickly, especially once Ryland gets going on his mission.
Two things I didn't like.... one had to do with Ryland himself (which I won't describe as not to spoil it, but it's so silly, you can't miss it) and the 2nd was the ending... we don' t REALLY know what happened, we're left to guess, and I HATE that. If needed an epilogue badly. Even with it's faults though, its nice to see someone writing hard sci-fi in such an understandable, relatable way.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Dec 15, 2021 11:54:46 GMT -5
 The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry HarrisonIn a far future where genetic manipulation and social engineering have made crime obsolete James Bolivar DiGriz (aka The Stainless Steel Rat) is one of a handful of anomalies, in that he is an unrepentant criminal. He's a charming rogue who never pulls the same scam or crime the same way twice. However, he meets his match in both a cop who wants him to join the fold and a female criminal who may be more than his match. This is a fun romp that I'd somehow never gotten around to reading over the years (there is still some classic SF I've not read). That said, it's not without faults. From a plot point there really seems to be a lot of police and a very organized anti-crime structure for a society which has gotten rid of crime almost entirely. From a reading point, this book is 60 years old and parts of it can definitely be seen as sexist, if not misogynistic. For me, that's just part and parcel of a work of that age, but others may have a harder time. It also suffers a tad from being a fix-up novel with the first half of it being made up of two previous novelettes. Still, a super fun book and I'll be getting to the next book shortly. |
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