A Small Town In Germany

tags: comedic, mystery, spy catcher

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
From Goodreads

The British Embassy in Bonn is up in arms. Her Majesty's financially troubled government is seeking admission to Europe's Common Market just as anti-British factions are rising to power in Germany. Rioters are demanding reunification, and the last thing the Crown can afford is a scandal.

Then Leo Harting—an embassy nobody—goes missing with a case full of confidential files. London sends Alan Turner to control the damage, but he soon realizes that neither side really wants Leo found—alive.

Set against the threat of a German-Soviet alliance, John le Carré's A Small Town in Germany is a superb chronicle of Cold War paranoia and political compromise.

With an introduction by the author.

John le Carré's short novel was first published in 1968 and in the "introduction" he wrote that he was not happy with the book. He meant it to be comedic but the German people were not too happy with his depiction of them. He revised some of what he wrote and he was half satisfied with the finished novelette. 

I disagree with him. I loved the novel. It really has several laugh out loud portions specially the dinner with the German guests. The description of the wife of one of the guests is so funny. The book has the signature le Carré numerous characters that have their own quirks and personalities. 

Alan Turner, the spy catcher that everyone at the embassy despised and feared, was sent to Bonn to find Leo. He had a clever and hilarious brusque way of extracting information from the embassy people in order to know Leo and where he could be. All the embassy people told half truths about their relationship with Leo, including the 2 women, one worked at the embassy and the other was the wife of the head of the embassy. They both loved Leo. 

Leo never spoke throughout the book and only appeared on the last page but he was so alive and present through the descriptions of various people in and out of the embassy.

The book is comedic but tragic. Alan and Leo have become 2 of my most favorite characters created by  le Carré. 

Highly recommended for John le Carré enthusiasts.

Ripley

Goose🥚

The actor Andrew Scott is almost 50 years old and therefore much too old to play 25 year-old Tom Ripley. He looks more like the father of Marge or an older friend of Dickie. Who did the terrible casting? 

Scott also lacks the irresistible charm of Tom Ripley as described in the books. What young people befriend an old man with no charisma nor good looks? 

Filming in black and white screams overly pretentious and it annoyed me so much. 

I've seen two versions, one with Matt Damon and another with Alain Delon. They are not perfect but I enjoyed them more because both actors did excellent job as a con artist. Watch those instead. 

Not recommended even if you haven't read the book.

The 70s

 

Blondie and Debbie's runaway cat...

I know a girl from a lonely street 

Cold as ice cream, but still as sweet 

Dry your eyes, Sunday girl 

Hey, I saw your guy with a different girl 

Looks like he's in another world 

Run and hide, Sunday girl 

Hurry up, hurry up and wait 

I stay away all week and still I wait 

I got the blues, please come see 

What your loving means to me 

 She can't catch up with the working crowd 

The weekend mood and she's feeling proud 

Live in dreams, Sunday girl 

"Baby, I would like to go out tonight 

If I go with you my folks'll get uptight" 

Stay at home, Sunday girl 

Oooh oooh oooh 

Hé, j'ai vu ton mec avec une autre fille 

Il semblait dans un autre monde 

Cours te cacher Sunday girl 

Quand je t'ai revu l'été j'ai décidé 

Si ton amour était pareil au mien, 

Je pourrais être Sunday girl 

Dépêche-toi, dépêche-toi et attends 

Toute la semaine absent et pourtant j'attends 

J'ai le cafard, je t'en prie viens voir 

Ce que ton amour représente pour moi 

Dépêche-toi, dépêche-toi et attends 

Toute la semaine absent et pourtant j'attends 

J'ai le cafard, je t'en prie viens voir 

Ce que ton amour représente pour moi 

I got the blues

 

Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up and wait 

Hurry up, please come see 

What'cha do to me

 

Short Stories by Ellis Peters

Never Pick Up Hitch-Hikers!

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From Goodreads

A hitchhiker is caught in a murderous web.

 His whole life, William Banks has been trying to escape his mother, who wants desperately for him to become a lawyer. Banks wants to paint, and when he gets the opportunity to attend art school in the next county, he jumps at the chance. It’s only forty miles, but it’s a start.

Getting to class, however, will be a deadly proposition. On his way there, Banks is picked up by Alf, a down-on-his-luck crook who has dreamed up a plan involving a fire, a burned body, and a dead hitchhiker. By all rights, Banks shouldn’t live to see morning, but a stroke of luck—and a very helpful village girl—help him escape death without his ever knowing he was in danger. Caught up in a bizarre case of missing identity, Banks must think quickly to save his own life—once he finally realizes someone is trying to kill him.

First Published January 1, 1976

This novelette is more of an adventure with a bit of comedy. It has a little mystery and lots of dead [bad] characters. The women in this short story are more prominent specially the wife of the bank robber. She is formidable both physically and mentally. The setting is 1970s but she wears a 60s bouffant hairstyle, think Amy Winehouse. The wig (hair extensions) adds 4 inches to her height and when she removes it for the night, it sits on the dresser looking like a Pekinese. LOL

60s bouffant hair style

The Assize of the Dying

Aunt Helen

⭐⭐⭐

In The Assize of The Dying, a defendant in an English courtroom is sentenced to death for a terrible slaying he insists he did not commit. Rising to his feet, Louis Stevenson places a medieval curse on the prosecutor, the judge, the jury foreman, and the actual killer—the four men responsible for his fate. Profoundly shaken by the condemned prisoner’s words, a young couple looking on believes Stevenson’s declaration of innocence. And their determination to uncover the truth only intensifies when two more deaths follow in quick succession.

In Aunt Helen, the seemingly civilized residents of a stately English country house keep secrets about love, marriage, adulthood, and desire hidden behind closed doors—until the “perfect murder” threatens to expose them.

First published in 1971 

In The Assize of the Dying, there is a supernatural element, sort of, when the falsely accused hexed the judge, prosecutor, jury foreman, and the killer during the assize that if he dies in jail, all four will also die. He killed himself and all four people he cursed died one by one. There is a contrived romance in the novelette. 

In Aunt Helen, I guessed who the villain is right away. 

Most Loving Mere Folly

First published January 1, 1953 under her real name Edith Pargeter

⭐⭐⭐⭐

A pair of artists is undone by jealousy and despair on the outskirts of London

In a forgotten suburb of London recently leveled by German bombs, an artists’ colony has taken root. Theo Freeland spent the war painting, studiously avoiding danger, while his wife, Suspiria, made pottery during the day and drove ambulances at night. But now the war is over, and Theo spends his time drinking himself into a stupor while Suspiria tolerates him as best she can. She has her work, and that’s enough. After all, she and Theo are promised to each other—till death do they part. Death, as it happens, is right around the corner.

Suspiria’s life changes forever the night her husband is helped home by Dennis Forbes, a strapping young mechanic who can’t take his eyes off the drunkard’s wife. When Theo is later found poisoned, and Suspiria claims Dennis as her own, the village turns on them. But the real tragedy is yet to come.

Suspiria at 36 is 14 years older than Dennis and she is already married. Still, they fall in love a la Vronsky and Anna.. Expect tragic outcome. Poor Karenin, I mean Theo. 

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

Ellis Peters, the author of the Brother Cadfael mystery novels set during the medieval period, is the penname of Edith Pargeter. She is my favoritest author and her The Heaven Tree Trilogy sits at Number One on my favorites fiction books list.

Beauty And Mr. Romantic

 

Plot Synopsis by AsianWiki Staff

Park Do-Ra (Im Soo-Hyang) is an A-list actress, but a case causes her to fall to the bottom. Go Pil-Seung (Ji Hyun-Woo) is a rookie drama series PD. He falls in love with Park Do-Ra and he tries to bring her back to the top.

My weekend might get busy again watching this new 50 episode Korean drama starting on March 23. The queen of Korean revenge dramas Im Soo-Hyang stars so I have to watch her in a romcom series. I hope there won't be any revenge and the writer doesn't drag the story or add the ever annoying amnesia.

Literal title is Beauty and the Devoted. Alternate title on drama websites is Beauty And The Pure Guy.

The Signal

tags: drama, German, Netflix, pseudo sci-fi 

Goose egg🥚

The Signal: Woke In Space 

I just wasted more than 4 hours on this nonsense. It was made to spew wokeness. It has no entertainment value. The writer made up a ridiculous nonstory mainly to promote kumbaya We Are The World stupid idiotic nonsense with some "they are so greedy" and "we should stop war" without any context or back story. 

The female lead character said such dialogue but they were never discussed before or after EVER. What? Did I miss something? It was frustrating. 

The script is utterly bad and so is the acting. The woman chosen to be on board the ISS looked like she was really high on something. The program funded by an evil billionaire to let 2 civilians to board the ISS for some experiment chose a woman who is a smoker, takes drugs, has psychological problems, and hallucinates. Great! Sheesh. What could go wrong?

She is so stupid for not recognizing the voice she picked up from space which is the voice of Carl Sagan's son in Voyager 1 saying "Hello". She thought it was communication from aliens. What a moron! Her equally ignorant or maybe evil partner prevented her from telling the real astronauts who would have told them it is from Voyager. They could have prevented their murder by the evil benefactor. But they are stupid so they deserve what they got. 

Avoid it. I watched so you don't have to.

The Daughter of Time

tags: historical, mystery, Richard III

⭐⭐

From Wikipedia

Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Grant is feeling bored while confined to bed in hospital with a broken leg. Marta Hallard, an actress friend of his, suggests he should amuse himself by researching a historical mystery. She brings him some pictures of historical characters, aware of Grant's interest in human faces.

He becomes intrigued by a portrait of King Richard III. He prides himself on being able to read a person's character from his appearance, and King Richard seems to him a gentle, kind and wise man. Why is everyone so sure that he was a cruel murderer?

With the help of other friends and acquaintances, Grant investigates Richard's life and the case of the Princes in the Tower, testing out his theories on the doctors and nurses who attend to him. Grant spends weeks pondering historical information and documents with the help of Brent Carradine, a likable young American researcher working in the British Museum.

Using his detective's logic, he comes to the conclusion that the claim of Richard being a murderer is a fabrication of Tudor propaganda, as is the popular image of the King as a monstrous hunchback.

I have never been interested in reading any books written by Josephine Tey until now because all the new mystery/crime novels are garbage. Well, the Daughter of Time published in 1951 is almost as nonsense as the current novels coming from the U.K. In 1990 it was voted number one in The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time list compiled by the British Crime Writers' Association. In 1995 it was voted number four in The Top 100 Mystery Novels of All Time list compiled by the Mystery Writers of America. 

One of the reasons for their rating is they think it is not formulaic compared with popular mystery novels written by prominent authors. IMHO, mystery novels written by Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Ellis Peters are hardly formulaic and I consider these writers way better than Josephine Tey. 

I am scratching my head. Really. The very short book at 200 pages is one of the most boring crime/mystery fiction I ever read. I don't give a rodent's behind about the Wars of The Roses saga and it is a forgone conclusion that the inspector will declare Richard III innocent of suffocating his nephews to death just by looking at the portrait. Ah, alrighty then.🙄

I find Grant a pompous condescending character mocking Thomas More calling him a gazillion times "the sainted" More regardless of him knowing More was just a scribe for the enemy of Richard III and was just 5 years old when the "murders" happened. A young American started helping him gather information from several historical publications available from the British Museum. Their back and forth read like they came straight out of a textbook. The author did not bother to give these 2 characters distinct and different voices and personalities. They sound alike - wooden, cardboardy, and extremely borrrring. The 200 pages seem like a tome because it failed to make me involved in the mystery. Sheesh.

2 stars because I agree with some of her ideas specially the false stories created by unscrupulous politicians helped by their lapdog journalists. Their evil partnership was present since the dawn of time and hasn't changed.

Read if you must but I'm warning you it will make you snooze. Just watch those Wars of the Roses TV series. Maybe not accurate, but so is this book.

A Killer Paradox

tags: crime, Korean drama, Netflix

⭐⭐⭐⭐

8 episodes, 55 to 60 minutes

Choi Woo-sik and Son Suk-ku. How can I not binge watch the whole thing? The series has similarity to the characters in the book Crime And Punishment but the reason for the murders is closer to the 1999 movie The Boondock Saints. The writer IMHO plagiarized the main theme of the movie which is the moral dilemma in killing evil murderers and rapists. There are too many similarities I just cannot ignore. I still rate it 4 stars.

For those who haven't seen The Boondock Saints, the movie is about twin brothers in Boston who in self defense killed 2 Russian thugs terrorizing their local pub owner. They also killed in one go 8 of the Russian mobsters, including their leader, by sheer luck. They believed and decided they are good in getting rid of mafias, drug lords, pedos, sex merchants, or anyone who is a menace to society. The FBI agent played by Willem Dafoe was no match for the boys and eventually joined them. LOL. The Boondock Saints is one of my favorite movies.

Fast X

⭐

Ugh! Enough of this series already. Just stop it! The actors are getting older, fatter, and uglier [the always grumpy Michelle Rodriguez and Vin Diesel in particular]. Even Ludacris has noticeably aged, starting to have eyebags.

I had to watch the whole movie, over 2 hours of crappy dialog and acting, explosions galore, and ridiculous car chases, so I can rate it. The 1 star is for John Cena and the boy who both did a good job delivering their lines. Almost every actor [except Ludacris, Tyrese Gibson, and Sung Kang] sounds like he/she is reading. Jason Momoa's Dante is cartoonish and over the top but I somehow wanted him to win just to end this series once and for all. Alas, the movie ends in a cliffhanger and there is going to be a Fast XI. Oh dear. Why???!!!

Do not watch.

The Bad Weather Friend

tags: horror, humor, mystery, sci-fi. supernatural, suspense

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From Goodreads

Benny is so nice they feel compelled to destroy him, but he has a friend who should scare the hell out of them.

Benny Catspaw’s perpetually sunny disposition is tested when he loses his job, his reputation, his fiancée, and his favorite chair. He’s not paranoid. Someone is out to get him. He just doesn’t know who or why.

Then Benny receives an inheritance from an uncle he’s never heard of: a giant crate and a video message. All will be well in time. How strange—though it’s a blessing, his uncle promises. Stranger yet is what’s inside the crate. He’s a seven-foot-tall self-described “bad weather friend” named Spike whose mission is to help people who are just too good for this world. Spike will take care of it. He’ll find Benny’s enemies. He’ll deal with them. This might be satisfying if Spike wasn’t such a menacing presence with terrifying techniques of intimidation.

In the company of Spike and a fascinated young waitress-cum-PI-in-training named Harper, Benny plunges into a perilous high-speed adventure, the likes of which never would have crossed the mind of a decent guy like him.

Amazon Prime First Reads for the first time ever offers one great book and possibly one good book to start the year.

Dean Koontz's The Bad Weather Friend is superb. The usual sci-fi, horror, humor, mystery, and supernatural are all present, with a little romance added to the mix. It has a fabulous happy ending and I laughed out loud at the parts where Dean Koontz poked fun at almost everything from "climate change advocate"(Greta), pronouns (he/she/it/they/them), smutty fictions (A Game of Thrones), industrial cheap home decor (Ikea), EVs, artists with no actual talent (Francis Bacon, Edvard Munch, Jackson Pollock), and so much more.

Nice Benny never gets angry and doesn't get shocked by anything. When he was a small child, his abusive and drunkard father was shot and killed in front of him. He was spared by the killer because he didn't go into hysterics nor manifested fear. He instead proudly showed the LEGO he was building, a staircase to heaven, and the killer probably thought he was a retard. 

His most horrible experience was in a private school out in the remote mountains when he was 13 years old. The demented wife of the school principal seemed like a descendant of Dr. Moreau, experimenting on unsuspecting children of wealthy parents. She was actually infected by aliens and was being used by nefarious secret government agency to study how to subdue the citizens but she had a more sinister plan which was to rule the whole universe. 

When he was a 23 year old successful realtor, he received a shipment from his weird Uncle and the box contained an 1800 year old 7 foot tall alien being called a craggle. Spike, the craggle reminds me of a golem or a jinni. He has super powers and is staying with Benny to protect him from evil people, AKA the elites, who cannot stand nice people and want to kill them all to prevent more nice people to multiply.

I like the humor, the political jabs, and Odd Thomas vibes, although I find Dean Koontz inserted too many metaphor.

I love the book and recommend it to Dean Koontz fans. (Leftists will find themselves being ridiculed in the book so avoid if you are a humorless leftist.) 😁