They Came To Baghdad

tags: espionage, mystery, thriller

⭐⭐⭐⭐

From Goodreads

They Came to Baghdad is one of Agatha Christie's highly successful forays into the spy thriller genre. In this novel, Baghdad is the chosen location for a secret superpower summit. But the word is out, and an underground organisation is plotting to sabotage the talks.

Into this explosive situation stumbles Victoria Jones, a young woman with a yearning for adventure who gets more than she bargains for when a wounded secret agent dies in her hotel room. Now, if only she could make sense of his final words: 'Lucifer ... Basrah ... Lefarge ...'

I don't think I can rate any Agatha Christie's novel lower than 4 stars. I wasn't expecting much with this short story but surprised I really loved it. The story and writing are superb as usual.

The book is more of a spy thriller than a murder mystery. The main protagonist is Victoria Jones, a young woman who is bored with her low paying job as a typist. She meets and gets enamored with a very charming and handsome young man, Edward who is going to Baghdad in a few days. Victoria, on a whim, decides she wants to follow him without knowing his full name and with just 4 pounds in her pocket.

Victoria is a pathological liar who invents stuff without batting an eyelash and people believe her because she is resourceful, pretty, and charming herself. She succeeds in going to Baghdad armed with just her lies and meets Edward. Victoria gets to know a lot of people, some are famous personalities, who are also in Baghdad for some reason. She gets into dangerous situations and is able to get out of them, of course, and helps in preventing a crazy group of people from implementing their sinister plan during a summit with the American President and Russian Premier.

Highly recommended for Agatha Christie fans.

The Moonstone

tags: detective story, mystery

⭐⭐

From Goodreads

Bequeathed a rare diamond by her late uncle, heiress Rachel Verinder has no idea it was stolen from an Indian temple or that it has a cursed history. When the diamond disappears on her eighteenth birthday, multiple suspects - including Rachel’s suitor, Franklin Blake - are implicated in its theft. Determined to prove his innocence, Franklin begins his own investigation. Did one of his fellow Englishmen steal the jewel? Or was it whisked back to India?

The case, which unfolds through multiple narratives, takes startling twists and turns in pursuit of the truth. Widely considered the first great detective novel written in English, The Moonstone is one of Wilkie Collins’s most famous works.

It is considered the first detective novel but I beg to disagree. The Moonstone was written in 1848 and Edgar Allan Poe's The Murders In The Rue Morgue came out first in 1841. Yes it is a very short story with less than 100 pages but C. Auguste Dupin was the first fictional detective in the first detective story ever written and the most brilliant IMHO. M. Dupin and Poe's story inspired both Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle.

The Moonstone is unnecessary long and not very exciting. I was bored to death and finishing it was a chore. It's more like a family drama and the center of the story is the missing moonstone. I didn't like the writing style with multiple points of view divided into their own chapters written in the first person - my pet peeve.

I find the book too simple and pedestrian. And too contrived. The detective, Sergeant Cuff is sharp and smart but I never warmed up to his character.  His character is as dry as the Sahara. The rest of the characters are not likable specially the housemaid who has a physical defect and not pretty. She fell in love with a young man way above her station. Adoration and unreasonable protection of a person who doesn't look at or even acknowledge her is crazy and it isn't the fault of the man. She is a housemaid in the 1800s! The whole mystery is revolved around him and he isn't even aware that it is so. 

I find the story very weak and doesn't need to be 600 pages long. It was serialized so understandable but the editors should have trimmed it to just a third because the rest is just group of words that do not contribute much to the story. I skipped one chapter after realizing it has nothing to do with the narrative and is totally totally not needed. Totally. I'm not kidding. 

Not recommended.

Decision To Leave

tags: Korean movie, mystery, Park Chan-Wook, police investigation, thriller

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

An insomniac detective becomes infatuated with a young and beautiful widow after she becomes the prime suspect in his latest murder investigation.

Park Chan-Wook (director of Old Boy) deftly tackles a "platonic love story" between a police detective and his main murder suspect. The highly stylized movie is almost perfect with its story, screenplay, acting, directing, cinematography, music, and a touch of humor. The movie is long at 2 hours 18 minutes and too complicated [maybe just for me] that it needs a second and maybe a third viewing to fully appreciate. I was entertained and liked it nevertheless.

Quirky lead detective Hae-Joon has trouble sleeping and his relationship with his wife looks headed towards divorce territory. He carries several small stuff, example - eyedrops, in his jacket that has 12 pockets and his pants has extra pockets too. Then he meets the beautiful and enigmatic widow who is much younger than her deceased husband who died while climbing a steep and rocky mountain. One of the detectives asks why anyone would want to climb it and that it should be illegal to climb the said peak. Detective Hae-Joon is too nice to the suspect from the get-go even buying sushi boxes for their lunch which means he is already infatuated with her. He keeps an eye on her almost 24/7, sleeping and spying on her in his car on the parking lot, recording her every movement including her eating habits like ice cream and leaving the left over melting outside of the fridge. In other words, he is obsessed but at the same time trying to find if she killed her husband.

I like these dialogues

Det. Hae-Joon to murder suspect Seo-Rae, thereby confessing to her how he feels

You said I have "class". Do you know where that comes from? Confidence. I used to be a very confident police officer. But...Because of this obsession I have for a woman...I screwed up the investigation. I am collapsing.

Detective's wife to him and when she took a phone call for him

You're only happy when surrounded by murderers and violence. Congratulations. There's been a murder.

The murderous widow is played by Chinese actress Tang Wei who became famous in the 2007 Ang Lee movie Lust, Caution. She doesn't seem to age since that movie came out. She's 42 now but still looks early 30s. She's so pretty, has a very nice voice both in Korean and Mandarin languages, and is a very good actress. She's married to Korean director screenwriter Kim Tae-Yong and speaks very good Korean. In the movie she occasionally speaks Mandarin to her telephone app to translate into Korean.

2022 as widow Seo-Rae

2007 Lust, Caution as Wang Jiazhi

Seoul Vibe

 

tags: action, comedy, Korean movie, Netflix

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

From Netflix

Worldwide excitement is escalating in Seoul in the days leading up to the opening of the 1988 Summer Olympics. The fashion is old school, the music is sentimental and the racing is the best in the world. The drivers of the Sanggye-dong Supreme Team receive an offer they can’t refuse and become mired in a VIP slush fund investigation.

I love this movie 💗💗💗because I love movies set in the 80s. What's not to love? 1988 Seoul, the clothes, music, the actors.

I remember when I went to Seoul a few months before the 1988 Olympics and everything was Olympics Olympics Olympics. I even bought a hand fan with the swirly logo. I think it's kept somewhere in the basement. LOL 

American brands, culture, clothing, and food were very popular at the time, specially Pizza Hut and McD's. Koreans were obsessed with anything American. In the movie Park Yoon-Hee wore a jacket with Washington Redskins and her brother Park Dong-Wook, played by Yoo Ah-In was wearing a jacket with Oakland Raiders at the end of the movie. The pair of Nike shoes offered to a rival is so spot on. 

Most of my favorite Korean actors are in the movie but I specially love Lee Kyu-Hyung and his 80s clothes. He is one of the more versatile Korean actors in Korean dramas and movies.

Highly recommended for fans of Korean movies and set in the 80s.

 

Echoes

 

tags: Netflix TuDum series, thriller

⭐

Leni and Gina are identical twins who have secretly swapped their lives since they were children, culminating in a double life as adults, but one of the sisters goes missing and everything in their perfectly schemed world turns into chaos.

I couldn't even finish Episode 1. The leads, Michelle Monahan and Matt Bomer, are both terrible actors. Why are they whispering all the time? Why? Do the director and these actors think this is good acting? It is exasperating. On the opposite side, the lead policewoman is loud and overacting. Not a single actor is believable and acts natural. What you see are ACTORS IN FRONT OF A CAMERA RECITING THEIR LINES. Who could finish watching this lame series? Not me.

Avoid.

The Long Goodbye

tags: favorite, hardboiled detective-crime, mystery, Philip Marlowe

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

From GoodRreads

Down-and-out drunk Terry Lennox has a problem: his millionaire wife is dead and he needs to get out of LA fast. So he turns to the only friend he can trust: private investigator Philip Marlowe. Marlowe is willing to help a man down on his luck, but later Lennox commits suicide in Mexico and things start to turn nasty. Marlowe is drawn into a sordid crowd of adulterers and alcoholics in LA's Idle Valley, where the rich are suffering one big suntanned hangover. Marlowe is sure Lennox didn't kill his wife, but how many stiffs will turn up before he gets to the truth?

The Long Goodbye is Raymond Chandler's 6th Philip Marlowe novel, written in 1953. I consider it a masterpiece and have added it to my favorites list. The first book, The Big Sleep, is also a 5-star book and I loved it but it didn't earn a spot on my favorites list. Books 2 to 5 got 3 and 4 stars from me.

Philip Marlowe developed a friendship with and a "savior" complex for the down on his luck Terry Lennox. Twice, 3 times, 4 times he helped Terry. The short [about 400 pages] novel's prose is IMHO most brilliant sometimes poetic has numerous memorable characters - the most beatiful blonde femme fatale, cuckoos, vicious thugs. Throughout the story, Chandler has seamlessly inserted his opinion on law agencies, politicians, media, society's morals and ethics, rich people, consumerism, etc. without sounding preachy, just matter of fact. They were true in the 1950s and even truer nowadays.

Highly recommended.

*****************************************************************************************

My favorite quotes from the book

The first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith outside the terrace of The Dancers.

The French have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right. To say goodbye is to die a little.

There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.

A dead man is the best fall guy in the world. He never talks back.

He was a guy who talked with commas, like a heavy novel. Over the phone anyway.

And these

We live in what is called a democracy, rule by the majority of the people. A fine ideal if it could be made to work. The people elect, but the party machines nominate, and the party machines to be effective must spend a great deal of money. Somebody has to give it to them, and that somebody, whether it be an individual, a financial group, a trade union or what have you, expects some consideration in return. What I and people of my kind expect is to be allowed to live our lives in decent privacy. I own newspapers, but I don’t like them. I regard them as a constant menace to whatever privacy we have left. Their constant yelping about a free press means, with a few honorable exceptions, freedom to peddle scandal, crime, sex, sensationalism, hate, innuendo, and the political and financial uses of propaganda. A newspaper is a business out to make money through advertising revenue. That is predicated on its circulation and you know what the circulation depends on.

Sheriff Petersen just went right on getting re-elected, a living testimonial to the fact that you can hold an important public office forever in our country with no qualifications for it but a clean nose, a photogenic face and a close mouth. If on top of that you look good on a horse, you are unbeatable.

Let the law enforcement people do their dirty work. Let the lawyers work it out. They write the laws for other lawyers to dissect in front of other lawyers called judges so that other judges can say the first judges were wrong and the Supreme Court can say the second lot were wrong. Sure there's such a thing called law. We're up to our necks in it. About all it does is make business for lawyers.

Man has always been a venal animal. The growth of populations, the huge costs of war, the incessant pressure of confiscatory taxation – all these things make him more and more venal. The average man is tired and scared, and a tired, scared man can’t afford ideals. He has to buy food for his family. In our time we have seen a shocking decline in both public and private morals. You can’t expect quality from people whose lives are a subjection to a lack of quality. You can’t have quality with mass production. You don’t want it because it lasts too long. So you substitute styling, which is a commercial swindle intended to produce artificial obsolescence. Mass production couldn’t sell its goods next year unless it made what is sold this year look unfashionable a year from now. We have the whitest kitchens and the most shining bathrooms in the world. But in the lovely white kitchen the average [person] can’t produce a meal fit to eat, and the lovely shining bathroom is mostly a receptacle for deodorants, laxatives, sleeping pills, and the products of that confidence racket called the cosmetic industry. We make the finest packages in the world, Mr. Marlowe. The stuff inside is mostly junk.

Uncharted

 

tags: action, adventure, based on video game, Magellan's lost treasure, Netflix streaming

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

A very short synopsis from IMDB

Street-smart Nathan Drake is recruited by seasoned treasure hunter Victor "Sully" Sullivan to recover a fortune amassed by Ferdinand Magellan, and lost 500 years ago by the House of Moncada.

I love it! 'Nuff said. Can't wait for the sequel.

Carter

tags: Korean movie, mutant virus, Netflix tudum, nonstop action

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From Netflix

A man wakes up missing his memories. Directed by a mysterious voice from a device in his ear, he sets off on a hostage rescue mission rife with danger.

Joo Won loses his boyish image and he bulked up adding more than 14 pounds in muscles, has buzz cut hair and tattoos. He is naked wearing only a thong in the opening scenes which includes a bloody seemingly endless knife fight inside a bath house full of yakuza and one naked lady with a gun. I have never seen so many naked butts in a movie in all my life. 😆

The action is dizzying and really nonstop. I like it regardless of the CGI and story. Netflix needs more entertaining action movies like this.

Lady Tamara

tags: Netflix streaming, reality TV, Spanish, Tamara Falcó

6 episodes

Tamara Falcó is the 40 year old daughter of Filipino Spanish socialite Isabel Preysler and the late Marquess of Griñón, whatever that is. She is the half sister of singer Enrique Iglesias on her mother's side. She is a TV personality and influencer [her mom is the original trendsetter - influencer in today's lingo], also a chef and now she wants to open a pop-up restaurant in their rundown castle which her father inherited from an aunt. It is a large property with its own chapel and pet cemetery but the castle itself needs major renovation with its crumbling roof and peeling walls.

Broken Summer

tags: drama, Korean, mystery, revenge

⭐⭐

From Goodreads

A death, a lie, a secret. For twenty-six summers he didn’t have the courage to face the past.

Lee Hanjo is an artist at the peak of his fame, envied and celebrated. Then, on his forty-third birthday, he awakens to find that his devoted wife has disappeared, leaving behind a soon-to-be-published novel she’d secretly written about the sordid past and questionable morality of an artist with a trajectory similar to Hanjo’s. It’s clear to him that his life is about to shatter and the demons from his past will come out. But why did his wife do it? Why now?

The book forces Hanjo to reflect on a summer from his youth when a deadly lie irreversibly and tragically determined the fates of two families.

First time I read a book written by a South Korean set in Korea, one of the free books on Amazon First Reads and the only worth reading. I didn't download books last month because they are waste of my time. I thought this will be different but I was wrong. What else is new? 

The premise is interesting but I was put off right away by the short sentences that remind me of David and Ann reading primers in Kindergarten. Like See Ann run. See David run. Something like that. It's boring. Once in a while there are longer sentences that are more descriptive but too flowery for my taste. Then the author goes back to David and Ann mode. Very frustrating. Lost in translation maybe? 

I liked the mystery enough of the wife's disappearing act and the novel she wrote to be published that might ruin her husband. The book then shifts back and forth from the present to the past 20 plus years. A teenage girl neighbor and friend of Hanjo didn't come home one night and was found dead a few days later. Hanjo's father confessed to the killing and was jailed. So I continued to read regardless of David and Ann distractions until I finished and it is underwhelming. 

Stupid drama annoyed me. It read like a typical Korean TV drama, mystery, incompetent police, social disparity, perceived sexism, love pentagon (oh give me a break!), alcoholism (the ever present soju), suicide, and unnecessary revenge because of misunderstandings and presumptions of the characters. Contrivances abound. The 2 stars are for Hanjo's success story as a painter because that's the only interesting part in the whole novel. How he became successful regardless of his mediocre talent is worth reading but his wife's reason for her actions is unbelievably shallow. 

If you can tolerate David and Ann style of writing, go ahead and download from Amazon First Reads.