Month: October 2015

Book Review: The Moonstone

Published more than a decade before A Study in Scarlet, The Moonstone was the first detective novel, although two decades after Edgar Allen Poe’s Dupin stories. In it, a young woman receives a fabulous Indian diamond (believed to be cursed and hunted by fanatical Hindu priests travelling incognito.) at her birthday party at her family’s country house. The diamond is stolen and the reactions of its owner and many other people are quite bizarre and mysterious.

There’s a lot to commend the story. The character of Gabriel Betteredge, the family is delightful, a character who is fiercely loyal to the family serves, old fashioned, is quirky, and opinionated, while also being very kind and decent. The two fifths of the book where he serves as narrator had me fully engaged with his love of Robinson Crusoe and his homespun philosophy. Sergeant Cuff, the independent detective called in to consult the case, really is a well-drawn early picture of that sort of consulting detective who’d taken the world by storm by the end of the 19th.

The mystery itself was interesting and had some fairly good twists.  It’d be easy for many modern readers to view the novel as cliched, but it was all original back in 1868. The book is worth reading for its historic value as it provides key insights into the development of one the most popular forms of fiction ever devised.

In terms of how the book held up after nearly 150 years, I have mixed feelings. Collins was a good writer and most of the chapters were quite interesting, but he lacks that timeless quality of the best writers in that great era of British literature. The Moonstone uses multiple first-person narrators, each offering their own account of various events in the story. Some are there for scores of pages, some only one or two.  The problem I had is  I didn’t find many of these narrators compelling, and many I didn’t care about at all.

The Miss Clack chapters were the most tedious reading I had in a long time as Mr. Collins seemed to have gone off on a very long tangent about religious hypocrisy that seemed really unrelated to the story. The book really does seem to lose focus in the middle, and there’s way too much melodrama. The book could have easily been 100 pages shorter and been better for it.

Still, there’s no denying that the book was a groundbreaking work and that every fan of  detective fiction owes a debt to Collins. As a mystery itself, there’s so much to commend the story even if it’s hurt by a few (by modern standards) questionable narrative decisions. Still, I found it more interesting as a historical artifact than as leisure reading.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.0

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EP1718: Dragnet: The Big Grandma

Jack Webb

Friday and Romero investigate a check forger who held the police at bay for nearly a decade and got away with thousands of dollars. Her description? A sweet-looking little old lady.

Original Air Date: October 19, 1950

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Mail a donation to: Adam Graham, PO Box 15913, Boise, Idaho 83715
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EP1717: Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Wayward Killer Matter

Bob Bailey
Johnny is called to New York City to protect a witness to a murder only to find an attempt has been made on his life already.

Original Air Date: July 27, 1958

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EP1716: Nick Carter: The Case of the Great Impersonation

Lon Clark
Nick agrees to help an old friend in a small town expose a counterfeiter, but finds the friend killed.

Original Air Date: September 12, 1948

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EP1715: Philip Marlowe: The Gold Cobra

Gerald Mohr

Marlowe is hired to deliver a gold cobra statue to Chicago, but finds him caught in a web of lies and murder.

Original Air Date: June 21, 1950

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EP1714: Crime Files of Flamond: Case of the Twenty-Four Bottles

Five people are poisoned but the cook wasn’t and ate the same food.

Original Air Date: April 25, 1944

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EP1713: Michael Shayne: Pirates in San Francisco Bay

Wally Maher

A wealthy professor’s wife reports her husband kidnapped by pirates in San Francisco bay.

Original Air Date: April 30, 1945

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DVD Review: Pie in the Sky, Series One

Pie in the Sky  is a British TV show that aired for five  series between 1994-97 and chronicles the adventure of Detective Inspector Henry Crabbe (Richard Griffiths) who would like nothing more than to retire and run his restaurant with the help of his account wife Margaret (Maggie Steed). Instead, while he opens his restaurant and serves as its chef, he’s subject to constant recall by his boss Assistant Chief Constable Freddy Fisher (Malcolm Sinclair.) This set collects the ten hour long episodes in the First Series.

The pilot episode is included, and  it was the worst episode of the first series. In fact, it tempted me to take the whole box set back to the library and be done with it. I’m glad I stuck with the series but the first episode was a hurdle to get over.

The writers had to get the concept of the series written, and it’s that Crabbe wants to retire after twenty-five years to open his own restaurant. However, things go awry on his last case.  He’s framed for taking a bribe from an escaped criminal. Fisher knows Crabbe’s really innocent but there’s no proof and Fisher instead proposed to hold an inquiry into the bogus charges over Crabbe’s head like a sword of Damocles. If he continues to be “on leave” and available at Fisher’s whims, Crabbe can run his restaurant most of the time. If on the other hand, Crabbe decides he’d rather not, then he can prepared to get accustomed to the joys of jailhouse food.

The plot was fine, but the episode got bogged down in giving us way too many details about everything. The lighting was terrible, and the character’s motivations were somewhat unclear.

However, once Pie in the Sky got past its first episode, it took off and became quite enjoyable.  The big change were the characters.

Inspector Crabbe became far more clearly defined. The first episode couldn’t quite decide if he had been frustrated by his inability to move up the ranks as Fisher had. Unlike Fisher,  he wasn’t a Machiavellian schemer. Thankfully, the idea of Crabbe acting out of envy for Fisher was dropped which made him more appealing.

Griffiths  does a great job portraying Crabbe as a crusty, wise eccentric with a strong ethical core that leads him into constant conflict with Fisher. At one point in this series, he’s offered retirement if he drops a case, and he takes  a firm ethical stand. Time and time again, he’s shown to be good-hearted and trying to do the right thing.

Mrs. Crabbe grows quite a bit from the series opener, where she was defined as an accountant unimpressed by good cooking.  Steed and Griffiths have an incredible chemistry and she shows herself a smart and well-defined character with a great sense of humor and opinions of her own. She also is tender and supportive of her husband in a way that makes for a sweet relationship.

I should also give some praise to Bella Enaharo who plays Detective Constable Cambridge. At first glance, she’s little more than a respectful, low-ranking officer on the police force. However, she really grows to be an interesting and fully developed character.

The strength of the show is its characters. The stories are mostly solid tales that are good Comedy Dramas with mystery an occasional and less-developed element.. The writers have strong political viewpoints that work their way into the story. Most of the time, it’s not too strident. Indeed, the series is an example of how to soft sell your political ideas. However, sometimes the writers’ political views make the plots more predictable than they otherwise would be.

If you can get past that as well as the pilot,  this is a very enjoyable and pleasant series with great characters, a good premise, and some fairly interesting stories.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.0

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EP1712: Dragnet: The Big Quack

Jack Webb

Joe Friday and Ben Romero searches for a man running a school for phony psychologists.

Original Air Date: October 12, 1950

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EP1711: Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Mojave Red Sequel

Bob Bailey
Convinced that an accidental death near his favorite fishing spot was actually murder, Johnny has to find the killer.

Original Air Date:  July 20, 1958

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EP1710: Nick Carter: The Case of the Quiet Roommate

Lon Clark

A boss wants Nick to intimidate an employee into handing over letters that reveal the identity of an industrial spy.

Original Air Date: September 5, 1948

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EP1709: Philip Marlowe: Face to Forget

Gerald Mohr
Marlowe boards a train to San Francisco in search of a woman’s missing boyfriend.

Original Air Date: June 14, 1950

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Mail a donation to: Adam Graham, PO Box 15913, Boise, Idaho 83715

EP1708: Crime Files of Flamond: The Case of the Squealing Duck

A night club comedian hires Flamond because he believes someone is trying to sabotage his act.

Original Air Date: April 18, 1944

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EP1707: Michael Shayne: Body in the Trunk

Wally Maher

Phyllis comes home to find her friend murdered and in a trunk.

Original Air Date: April 23, 1945

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Book Review: Black Orchids


Note: This week, with a lot on my plate in terms and upcoming releases, we revisit a book review from 2012. 

Nero Wolfe had twice as many novels published as Sherlock Holmes before he ever broke into short fiction. However, author Rex Stout would create some of his most memorable stories in the Wolfe novellas. The first two of these are collected in Black Orchids. 

Black Orchids

The titular story for the collection was originally published as “Death Wears an Orchid.” Archie has found himself assigned to flower show duty to watch a new black orchid bred by Lewis Hewitt to see whether it wilts or not. Wolfe finally makes a trip down in person to see it. But then fate takes a hand. Archie picks up a stick, setting in motion a Rube Goldberg style murder, which is the least practical part of the story.

The stick that served as the trigger belonged to Hewitt. Wolfe offers to solve the case and protect Hewitt in exchange for all three of the black orchid plants, insisting on them in advance.

To hold on to his plants, Wolfe has to not only sift through blackmail and jealousies of orchid growers, but he has to endure not one, but two women living under his roof, all while keeping his client’s name out of the press. Wolfe has a clever and somewhat shocking way of doing this that makes for a great twist ending.

Rating: Satisfactory

Cordially Invited to Meet Death

New York’s Premier party planner, Beth Huddleston, engages Wolfe to stop malicious letters that are threatening to ruin her business.  Wolfe has her entire household under suspicion and sends Archie out to investigate. Archie finds a virtual madhouse with a chimp that blocks his way unless he plays tag with him as well as bears roaming around. Their investigation is cut short when Huddleston dies of a tetanus infection with Wolfe only having learned one key thing: the secret to preparing great corn beef hash.

However, Huddleston’s brother is convinced she was murdered. Archie finds proof that the death was no accident, however Wolfe has little reason to be investigate as he has no client. But when Cramer insults Wolfe by taking a dinner guest downtown for questioning, Wolfe resolves to solve the case and he plans to rub Cramer’s face in it.

Within the story, Archie offers a mystery as to why Wolfe sent some of the rare black orchids to Huddleston’s funeral. The question is left open though Archie offers readers their choice of potential theories. Archie confesses there may even have been some past association between Wolfe and Beth Huddleston, but that much of Wolfe’s past remains a mystery to him.  And the puzzle of the black orchids only adds to Wolfe’s mystery.

Rating: Very Satisfactory

Collection Rating: Very Satisfactory

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