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Archive for the ‘Sherlock Holmes’ Category

Arthur Conan Doyle–“A Case of Identity” [The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes] (1891)

Posted in Adventure, Arthur Conan Doyle, Marriage Trouble, Mystery, Sexism, Sherlock Holmes, Short Story, Yuck! on February 5, 2024| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: February 4, 2024] “A Case of Identity”

Many years ago I was on a bit of a Sherlock Holmes kick.  I read the first two novels and then couldn’t get a copy of this collection, so I guess I forgot about the detective.  Since i have recently listened to a couple of Sherlock Holmesian books I decided to track down the next book to read.

And I was quite surprised to realize that while Arthur Conan Doyle did write a lot of Sherlock stories, most of them were short stories, not novels (See the list below).

So since these were short stories I decided to give a crack at them.

This second story in the book is remarkably… inconsequential?  Holmes has a habit of saying that big mysteries often disguise simple crimes–if it’s a huge deal, then the plotting must be simple.  He also likes that life is far ore bizarre than fiction (amusing in a short story).  But even by those standards, this is a pretty small story.  It also feels not very hard to figure out–I have also realized that much of Holmes’ success comes from not letting on some things that he has figured out (thereby not letting the readers in on it either).

So Mary Sutherland has come to see Holmes about a personal matter.  There is some excellent moments of Holmes reading the woman from outside and telling what her concern is just by the way she is standing.  I also realized that so many of the story really do depend on British mannerisms and behaviors–things that wouldn’t come across as well today.  Like cuffs being mended and ink stains on fingers.

At any rate, Holmes figures she has a story of woe about a romance.  And so she does. (more…)

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Arthur Conan Doyle–“A Scandal in Bohemia” [The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes] (1891)

Posted in Adventure, Arthur Conan Doyle, Drugs, Mystery, Sexism, Sherlock Holmes, Short Story on February 4, 2024| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: February 4, 2024] “A Scandal in Bohemia”

Many years ago I was on a bit of a Sherlock Holmes kick.  I read the first two novels and then couldn’t get a copy of this collection, so I guess I forgot about the detective.  Since i have recently listened to a couple of Sherlock Holmesisn books I decided to track down the next book to read.

And I was quite surprised to realize that while Arthur Conan Doyle did write a lot of Sherlock stories, most of them were short stories, not novels (See the list below).

So since these were short stories I decided to give a crack at them.

This first one “A Scandal in Bohemia” is quite well-known as it introduces HER–the woman–Irene Adler.  In this first story Adler befuddles the genius who is Sherlock Holmes.

The story is remarkably tame–even Watson says so as he writes of the case.

The King of Bohemia is meant to be married.  But Irene Adler has a photo of the two of them together that she is using to blackmail him.  She threatens to have the photo get out to the public ass soon as he announces his marriage.

The King is a mildly comical character because he is quite smitten with Miss Adler (who is from New Jersey!).  But she is not of his class so he cannot pursue anything with her.

He has tried several different ways of getting the photo back (legal and decided illegal), but has had no luck. (more…)

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Anthony Horowitz–The House of Silk : A Sherlock Holmes Novel (2011) [audiobook 2011]

Posted in Adventure, Anthony Horowitz, Arthur Conan Doyle, Audiobooks, Death, Derek Jacobi, Morality, Murder, Mystery, Pedophilia, Religion, Sherlock Holmes, Violence on January 8, 2024| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: January 2024] The House of Silk

I’ve been really enjoying some various Anthony Horowitz adult books.  I particularly enjoyed his Hawthorne and Horowitz books.

I had noticed that House of Silk seemed to be a really Big, Important book for hi, but I didn’t really know why.  When it went on sale at my audiobook supplier, I grabbed it.  That’s when I discovered it was a Sherlock Holmes story.

I went through a brief phase where I was reading as many Holmes stories as a I could.  But it has been a while since I read one.

In no way can I compare this story to an Arthur Conan Doyle story, nor do I think you are supposed to (even though this is an authorized part of the series).  I can’t quite imagine the pressure that one must feel in Horowitz’ situation.  There is no way he was going to please people by doing this.  I also don’t know anything about his fondness for Holmes.  I assume it must be great, but who knows.

The fun setup for this story is that Watson has written this book but has asked that it not be opened for 100 years because the information contained within is quite damaging to some important people in English society.

And so, although this story is set at some time during Holmes’ tenure as a detective, it’s not his “final” case or anything like that.

The story is fairly convoluted (it is a Holmes story, after all), but it actually has two mysteries intertwined.

It opens with Edmund Carstairs coming to Sherlock for help.  He is an art dealer and when a group of valuable paintings were shipped to America, they were robbed/destroyed  in a train robbery.  The culprits were actually after money on the train, but they still cost the art dealer a fortune.  He hired a man in America to round up the thieves who were known as the flat cap gang.  The Gang is headed by two Irishmen, the O’Donoghue twins.  During the investigation, one of the twins is killed.  Carstairs is convinced that the surviving twin, Keelon O’Donoghue has come to kill him. (more…)

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Anthony Berkeley–Jumping Jenny (1933)

Posted in Anthony Berkeley, Murder, Mysteries, Mystery, Sexism, Sherlock Holmes on July 23, 2023| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: June 6, 2023] Jumping Jenny

I tend to receive unexpected books at work.  The most recent shipment included a couple of “Classic” mysteries.

This book is from a collection called British Library Crime Classics.  I enjoyed the book and thought I’d look for more from this series although I see that there are at least 100 books in the series, so that’s gonna take awhile.

The book opens at a costume party.  The fascinating theme is “famous murderers and their victims.”  Honestly I had to wonder how anyone knew what any of these people looked like.  Can you dress like a murderer?

In celebration of this party, the host, Ronald Stratton, has erected three gallows on the roof of his house.  He has put stuffed dummies in each one.  And if you are wondering about the title:

“In times gone by, a hanged man was sometimes colloquially referred to as a ‘Jumping Jack'” -Martin Edwards in the introduction.

And as such, a hanged woman might be called a Jumping Jenny. (more…)

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A.A. Milne–The Red House Mystery (1922)

Posted in A.A. Milne, Eight Perfect Murders, Guns, Murder, Mysteries, Mystery, Sherlock Holmes on June 6, 2023| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: June 6, 2023] The Red House Mystery

In Peter Swanson’s mystery Eight Perfect Murders, his narrator makes a list of eight perfects murders in fiction–not the best books, just the perfect setup for murder.  These books are:

Agatha Christie’s A. B. C. Murders, Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, Ira Levin’s Death Trap, A. A. Milne’s Red House Mystery, Anthony Berkeley Cox’s Malice Aforethought, James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity, John D. Macdonald’s The Drowner, and Donna Tartt’s A Secret History.

And yes, A.A. Milne, the writer of Winnie the Pooh, is one of those authors.  Swanson’s narrator kind of dismisses the story saying that it’s a quaint mystery and that the murder is perfect (meaning the killer would never get caught), but almost with an asterisk.

What’s all that about?

Well, the story is set in an English country manor, the Red House.  The kind of place where other rich folk would come to stay for a few weeks, drinking, playing gold and generally enjoying themselves as rich English folk apparently did at the turn of the century.  The owner of the house is Mark Ablett.  He is a single man.  However, he informally adopted his younger cousin as an opportunity to pay forward a good deed that was done to him when he was a young lad with limited propsects.   The boy (who is now in his late 20s) is named Cayley and is (now that he has been formally educated) more or less Mark’s right-hand man.  Mark doesn’t seem to do anything without consulting Cayley.

Mark is generally liked (he is no snob), but he can go on a bit.  As the book opens, Mark is hosting some people: Major Rumbold, a retired soldier; Bill Beverley, a youngish man about town.  There was also Ruth Norris, an actress “who took herself seriously as an actress and, on her holidays, seriously as a golfer.”  Finally there was Betty Calladine (18 and eligible) and her widowed mother (keen to get her settled).  (more…)

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Lucy Ellmann–Things are Against Us (2021)

Posted in Absolutely Fabulous, Agatha Christie, Alfred Hitchcock, E.L. Doctorow, Essays, Femicide, Feminism, Greta Thunberg, Guns, Jane Austen, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Lucy Ellmann, Mary Ellmann, Murder, Pizza, Raymond Chandler, Sex, Sexism, Sherlock Holmes, Violence, Virginia Woolf on March 15, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[READ: March 10, 2021] Things Are Against Us

I loved Ellmann’s book Ducks, Newburyport so much that I had intended to read all of her books.

So I’ve gone back and read some of her previous novels.  Which I found to be…okay.  They were mildly amusing with some very personal diatribes thrown in to put some passion into these otherwise comic novels.

Then I saw that she had a recent collection of essays, which I thought might be really interesting.

I agree about 95% with everything Ellmann says in this book.  And yet I hated this book more than almost anything I’ve read recently.  And I think I’m not going to bother reading the other novels that I haven’t read yet, since the other two weren’t that great anyhow.

Ellmann’s style in these essays is so unpleasant, so superior and self-righteous, so… (and I hate to use this word because of the anti-feminist implications of it but it is definitionally accurate) strident, that I almost didn’t finish most of the essays (I forced my way through to the end of all of them).  Strident, btw: “presenting a point of view, especially a controversial one, in an excessively and unpleasantly forceful way.  I mean, that is this book to a T.”

In the past, strident women have been very important to many movements.  But hen your arguments are so scattershot, it’s hard for your stridency to be a positive force.

“Things Are Against Us”
In this essay Ellmann all caps the word THINGS every time she writes it.  On the first page (which is half a page not including the title), THINGS appears over 30 times.  The tone is kind of amusing–about how things get in our way and cause us trouble: Things slip out of your hand; things trip you, things break.  Then each following paragraph gets more specific.  Clothes tear, socks don’t stay up.  Matches won’t light, water bottles spill. Then she gets into the body.  In her novel Doctors & Nurses she lists 12 pages of bodily ailments.  So there’s not much new here.  And there’s no real point.  It doesn’t end with any grand idea.  It just stops. (more…)

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John Kendrick Bangs–“Over the Plum-Pudding” [The 2020 Short Story Advent Calendar #1] (1901)

Posted in Amnesia, Andrew Lang, Arthur Conan Doyle, Canadian Content, Christmas, Coronavirus, Dragons, Drinking, Funny (ha ha), George Meredith, Gracie and Rachel, Hall Caine, Hingston & Olsen, John Kendrick Bangs, Meta, Quarantine, Richard Harding Davis, Rudyard Kipling, Sherlock Holmes, Short Story, The Short Story Advent Calendar, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert on December 1, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: GRACIE AND RACHEL-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #98 (October 19, 2020).

I only know Gracie and Rachel from a previous Tiny Desk Concert.  I was entranced by that performance and am similarly entranced by this one.

Gracie and Rachel are perfect musical mates. Their styles conjure contrast, with Gracie Coates’ more pop-leaning keyboard melodies alongside Rachel Ruggles’ classical background. They’ve been honing their orchestral pop sound since high school. These days they share space in a NYC apartment and are grateful to be able to “commute from their bedrooms” at a time when so many collaborators can’t be together.

They open with “Strangers.”  Gracie plays the keyboards and sings lead with a wonderfully breathy voice.  Rachel plays the violin and then starts adding in percussion and singing higher (sometime haunting) backing vocals.

They’ve just released their second album, Hello Weakness, You Make Me Strong. The title of the album reflects their positive attitude despite angst.  The duo made much of this music in the past year and a half, in the very room they’re performing this Tiny Desk (home) concert

On “Ideas,” they sing together a classical melody with a tinge of autotune.  Then the song shifts to the delicacy of Gracie’s keys and Rachel’s pizzicato violin.

The lyrics to “Ideas” highlights that attitude by encouraging us to dig inside ourselves and discover our creative spirit” “So take your little ideas / Make them a little bit stronger / Throw out the ones you can’t / You don’t need them any longer.”

When the drums come in they are deep and heavy and there’s a very cool bass slide (triggered by Rachel on the SPD-SX sampling pad).  I love the highs and lows of this song.

“Sidelines” features Rachel playing the drums live (on the sampling pad with mallets) while Gracie sings and plays the keyboard melody.  For the bridge, their voices intertwine in a lovely way, weaving in and out of each others melodies.  Then Rachel picks up the violin and adds some more lovely pizzicato to the song.  When she adds her soaring backing vocals its really quite angelic.

“Underneath” is a song about getting underneath ourselves. Rachel plays squeaky, haunting violin melodies to accompany the keys.  There are several parts to this song and I love the way they sound so different–from the strummed violin in the bridge to the rising vocal line of the chorus.

These songs are definitely poppy but they have an unusual sensibility that must come from Rachel’s classical ideas.  The songs are really wonderful and I’m curious what they sound like when fully fleshed out on record.

[READ: December 1, 2020] “Over the Plum-Pudding”

This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar.  This is my fifth time reading the Calendar.  I didn’t know about the first one until it was long out of print (sigh), but each year since has been very enjoyable.  Here’s what they say this year

You know the drill by now. The 2020 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories from some of the best writers in North America.

This year’s slipcase is a thing of beauty, too, with electric-yellow lining and spot-glossed lettering. It also comes wrapped in two rubber bands to keep those booklets snug in their beds.

As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check back here to read an exclusive interview with the author.

It’s December 1. To officially kick off the 2020 Short Story Advent Calendar, here’s a story about truth, fiction, and characters who can’t tell the difference from the late author and humourist John Kendrick Bangs.  [Click the link to the H&O extras for the story].

This story contains some parodies of other writers and uses them as an excuse for why the editor’s own Christmas collection did not get published on time.

It opens with a note from Horace Wilkinson, the editor at Hawkins, Wilkes & Speedway Publishing.  He sets out to explain why the advertised Christmas book “Over the Plum-Pudding or, Tales Told Under the Mistletoe, by Sundry Tattlers” was never published.  He has been getting questions from the authors who were supposed to be paid for their work when the collection was published.  He wants to publicly set the record straight.

Right off the bat, he places the blame entirely on the shoulders of Rudyard Kipling.  This made me chuckle. (more…)

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Anne Martinetti, Guillaume Lebeau, Alexandre Franc–Agatha: The Real Life of Agatha Christie (2014} [translated 2016]

Posted in Adventure, Africa, Agatha Christie, Alexandre Franc, Anne Martinetti, Biography, Books about writers, Daredevils, Death, Edward Gauvin, Graphic Novel, Guillaume Lebeau, Marriage Trouble, Paleontologists, Parenting, Revenge, Sherlock Holmes, Tiny Desk Concert, Translation, Valerie June on May 19, 2017| Leave a Comment »

agathaSOUNDTRACK: VALERIE JUNE-Tiny Desk Concert #310 (October 12, 2013).

I enjoyed Valerie June’s —I found her voice to be unusual but enjoyable.   But I find her sound here to be kind of flat and disappointing.  Her guitar choice feels too quiet or something and her voice sounds too tinny—almost childlike.  I have a love hate relationship with singers with this kind of voice, and I’m afraid she comes down on the bad side.

But maybe it was something with the location, because the blurb says I’m wrong.

Valerie June is a singular performer with an array of singing styles. Sometimes she’s channeling an old male voice; at other times, she channels a younger woman or even a child. Her music is steeped in tradition. The striking Tennessee singer — on its own, her hair could pass for sculpture — can sing the blues or gospel or country or a blend that sounds like nothing else. She learned how to sing during 18 years of church, but the “old man’s voice” comes from deep inside in unexpected ways. Prepare to be surprised, and to become Valerie June’s newest fan.

During “Workin’ Woman Blues” I couldn’t get the melody of Steely Dan’s Do It Again out my head.  It’s something about her vocal delivery–although clearly the music is very different.  It’s unusual that the first line of “Rain Dance” is the same as Bad Company’s “Feel Like Making Love”—intentional I’m sure.  And the way she sings the lyrics very differently than the original also unexpected.  But the whole presentation of her voice and guitar sounds like an old timey black and white cartoon–Popeye or the like.

She’s very chatty before the final song.  She talks about love and then says there’s a lot of cute babies here today.  This is my cute baby: a tiny banjo made in Memphis.  It is a very tiny banjo.

Of the three, “Somebody To Love” is my favorite song, although she does get a little crazy on the chorus.  I’m most intrigued by the electric foot pedal that appears to simply be an electronic drum stomping thing.

[READ: August 15, 2016] Agatha

In high school I had to read And Then There Were None.  I really liked it, but I never read anything else by Agatha Christie.  I’m a snob who doesn’t read mysteries, true.

But I’ve always been intrigued by Christie.  So I was thrilled that I found this graphic novel biography at work.

As many of these graphic novels tend to be, this one was French and recently translated to English (by Edward Gauvin).  I was fairly certain that I had seen the work of the artist in a previous comic, but Alexandre Franc is new to me.  As are the writers Anne Martinetti and Guillaume Lebeau.

This is a great biography–it is told with flair and excitement and throws in a lot of details about the creation of her most famous novels (without spoiling any of them). And, in a very clever conceit she “talks” to Hercule Poirot throughout the book–allowing her to narrate things without it seeming strange or flat.  And, even better, Poirot is a jerk to her–perpetually jealous and unhappy with her.  It’s a great technique. (more…)

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McSweeney’s Mammoth Treaury of Thrilling Tales (2002) [McSweeney’s #10]

Posted in Adia Victoria, Aimee Bender, Big Books, Carol Emschwiller, Cats, Chris Offutt, Circus, Dan Chaon, Daredevils, Dave Eggers, Death, Demons, Dinosaurs, Drinking, Drugs, Dystopia, Elephants, Elmore Leonard, End of the World, Explorers, Fears, Ghosts, Glen David Gold, Greed, Guns, Harlan Ellison, Hitler, Horror, Jim Sheppard, Karen Joy Fowler, Kelly Link, Laurie King, Law, Lies, Marriage (Happy), Marriage Trouble, McSweeney's, Meta, Michael Chabon, Michael Crichton, Michael Moorcock, Military, Monsters, Murder, Native Americans, Nazis, Neil Gaiman, Nick Cave, Nick Hornby, Noir, Old West, Revenge, Rick Moody, Sci-fi, Sex, Sherlock Holmes, Sherman Alexie, Short Story, Stephen King, Threats, Time Travel, Tiny Desk Concert, Unfinished series, Violence, Virginity (Loss of), Yuck! on December 20, 2016| Leave a Comment »

thrilignSOUNDTRACK: ADIA VICTORIA-Tiny Desk Concert #545 (June 30, 2016).

adiaAdia Victoria has a rough, raw voice that goes well with her simple, exposed guitar sound.  The blurb says her music “carries the singular perspective of a Southern black woman with a Seventh Day Adventist upbringing, who never felt like she’d fit in.”

She sings three song, mostly in a great, raspy voice.  For “Stuck in the South” she actually seems to be gritting her teeth as she sings: “I don’t know nothing ’bout Southern belles / but I can tell you something ’bout Southern hell.”  When the first verse ends, and her band kicks in, it adds such interesting textures.  A distorted bass and a lead guitar playing quietly distorted sounds.  This song is really captivating.

“And Then You Die” with its swirling sounds and keyboards has a very distinctly Nick Cave feel–gothic in the Southern sense of the word.  Indeed, the first verse is spoken in a delivery that would make Nick proud. This is no to say she cribbed from Cave but it would work very well as a companion song  I really like the way it builds, but the ending is so abrupt–I could have used some more verses.

After the second song the band heads away and Bob says “They’re all leaving you.”  She looks at them and growls, “Get off the stage!” to much laughter.

She sings the final song “Heathen” with just her on acoustic guitar.  It is a simple two chord song.  It’s less interesting than the others, but again, it’s the lyrics that stand out: “I guess that makes me a heathen, something lower than dirt / I hear them calling me heathen, ooh like they think it hurts.”

I’m curious to hear just what Adia would do with these songs when she’s not in this Tiny format.  I imagine she can be really powerful.

[READ: November 23, 2016] McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales

For some reason or another I have put off reading this McSweeney’s volume for many years.  This is technically McSweeney’s #10, although it was also released in this printing from a  major publisher. Sadly for me, my McSweeney’s subscription had expired sometime around here so I’ve never actually seen the “official” Volume 10 which I understand has the exact same content but a slightly different cover.

One of the reasons I’ve put off reading this was the small print and pulpy paper–I don’t like pulpy paper.  And it was pretty long, too.

But I think the big reason is that I don’t really like genre fiction.  But I think that’s the point of this issue.  To give people who read non-genre fiction some exposure to genre stuff.

Interestingly I think I’ve learned that I do enjoy some genre fiction after all.  And yet, a lot of the stories here really weren’t very genre-y.  Or very thrilling.  They seemed to have trappings of genre ideas–mystery, horror–but all the while remaining internal stories rather than action-packed.

Which is not to say I didn’t enjoy anything here. I enjoyed a bunch of the stories quite a bit, especially if I didn’t think of them as genre stories.  Although there were a couple of less than exiting stories here, too. (more…)

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Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery (McCarter Theatre, Princeton NJ, March 13, 2015)

Posted in Baskerville, Funny (ha ha), Gregory Wooddell, Jane Pfitsch, Ken Ludwig, Lucas Hall, McCarter Theatre, Meta, Michael Glenn, Princeton, NJ, Set in New Jersey!, Sherlock Holmes, Stanley Bahorek on March 14, 2015| Leave a Comment »

bask[ATTENDED: March 13, 2015] Baskerville

We saw ads for this show some time last year during a Princeton street festival.  The folks at the McCarter booth really talked up the show and said our kids would love it.  In recent days the play has been getting rave reviews.  Needless to say we were pretty excited to go.

Well, the play was awesome.  I’m not sure that the kids loved it. Clark said he liked parts of it but found the mystery a bit hard to follow. And Tabby was kind of scared by the dark scenes and loud noises.  But everyone seemed to have a good time–even if it did end at 10PM.

And the play it self was really fantastic.  Going in we knew literally nothing about the play except that it had something to do with Sherlock Holmes.  I assumed it was the Hound of the Baskervilles story but I wasn’t sure if there was a twist on it at all.

And I certainly didn’t know anything about the way the play was structured.  In the brief write up in the booklet it seemed like the story might have a meta- component. And it did, but not in the way I expected.  For the meta component was that they really played up the constraints of the theater and wound up making jokes about the stage and how actors often play multiple roles.  For example, they said things like “that rabbit” and then a stuffed and mounted rabbit would wheel across the stage.  Or that he needed his hat and a trap door would open and a hat would be thrown to him.  And the hilarious way the flowers arrived was outstanding–I’m still not exactly sure how they did it. (more…)

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