OVERLOOKED FILM: THE GREAT HOTEL MURDER (1935)

 Based on one of Vincent Starrett's Jimmie Lavender story "Recipe for Murder" (Redbook Magazine, November 1934), The Grand Hotel Murder dropped the Lavender character' who knows why?  (Lavender, a Chicago gentleman detective, was the popular character in forty-nine stories by Starrett.  Surely he could have carried a film as himself.)  The film also made a number other changes to the basic plot.

Roger Blackwood (no longer Jimmie Lavender) is a young crime novelist (not a critic) in California (nope, not Chicago), specifically, San Francisco's Hotel Mardena.  A body is found in room 940, a man who died by poisoning.  Blackwood (Edmund Lowe) joins forces (sort of) with hotel detective Andy McCabe (Victor McLaughlin) to solve the murder while each tries to upstage the other.  McCabe is also aided by his assistant, Feets (John Wray).  Since this is a hotel, there are a lot of suspects; since this is a B mystery programmer, there's a bit if snappy dialogue.  Things come to a smashing and very abrupt end during a New Year's Eve party.

There's some decent plotting stuck here amongst a whole lot of vagueness.  The film is a pretty good time waster for those who like that sort of thing.   They really should have stuck closer to Starrett's original story.

Directed by Eugene Forde, with a script by Arthur Kober.  Also featuring Rosemary Ames, Mary Carlisle, Henry O'Neill, C. Henry Gordon, William Janney, and Charles C. Wilson.  Look closely and you'll see Lynn Bari, perhaps best known the WWII pin-up model dubbed the "Woo-Woo Girl," in an uncredited role as a receptionist.

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78lrDazqgNM

BITS & PIECES

Openers:  Martha begat Joan, and Joan begat Ariadne.  Ariadne lived and died at home on Pluto, but her daughter, Emma, took the long trip out to a distant planet of an alien sun.

Emma begat Leah, and Leah begat Carla, who was the first to make her bridal voyage thruigh sub-space, a long journey faster than the speed of light itself.

Six women in direct descent -- some brave, some beautiful, some brilliant; smug or simple, willful or compliant, all different, all daughters of Earth, though half of them never set foot on the Old Planet.

-- "Daughters of Earth" by Judith Merril  (first published in the anonymously edited anthology The Petrified Planet, 1952; reprinted in New Worlds and SF Impulse, April 1967, and in Merril's collections Daughters of Earth:  Three Novels (1968), The Best of Judith Merril (1976), and Homecalling and Other Stories:  The Complete Solo Short SF of Judith Merril)

Merril was a highly influential science fiction writer, editor and critic.  She was active in the science fiction field long before she burst into prominence with her classic first story in the genre, "That Only a Mother" (Astounding Science fiction, June 1948); previous to that, she had published a number of stories in the detective, western, and sports pulps.

The Petrified Planet was the second of two "Twayne Triplets" from Twayne Publishing, a shared world anthology (the first) working from the concept of the planet Uller, as envisioned in a preface by John D. Clark, Ph.D. and (uncredited) Fletcher Pratt.  (Pratt is often credited as the editor of this volume by Curry and by The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, among others, although Virginia Kidd credits John Ciardi with the editorship.  The book contains three novellas by Pratt, H. Beam Piper, and Merril.)

The story concerns a line of women who contributed to humanity's reach to the stars and beyond.  The main portion centers on Emma, who tells of the colonization Uller and of the sacrifices made there; Emma is relating her history for her granddaughter Carla, who is about to embark on an even more dangerous quest.  It's easy to call this a feminist story, but at its heart it is a humanist story, one about mankind's drive to seek new frontiers.  "Daughters of Earth" is a personal, powerful, and  emotional story which also maintains a hard science fiction edge.  

Highly recommended.

Incoming:

• Sherman Alexie, Ten Little Indians. Short story collection.  "Sherman Alexie offers nine poignant and emotionally resonant stories about Native Americans who find themselves at personal and cultural crossroads.  In 'The Life and Times of Estelle Walks Above', an Intellectual feminist Spokane Indian woman saves the lives of dozens of white women all around her, to the bewilderment of her only child.  In 'Do You Know Where I Am?' two college sweethearts rescue a lost cat -- a simple act that has profound moral consequences for the rest of their lives together.  In 'What You Pawn I Will Redeem', a homeless Indian man must raise $1,000 in twenty-four hours to buy back the fancy dance outfit stolen from his grandmother fifty years earlier."
• Lauren Beukes, Broken Monsters.  Fantasy novel.  "Detective Gabriella Versado has seen a lot of bodies.  but this one is unique even by Detroit's standards:  half boy, half deer. somehow fused together.  As stranger and more disturbing bodies are discovered, how can the city hold on to a reality that is already tearing at the seams?  If you're Detective Versado's geeky teenage daughter, Layla, you begin a dangerous flirtation with a potential predator online.  If you're the desperate freelance journalist Jonno, you do whatever it takes to get the exclusive on a horrific story.  If you're Thomas Keen, known on the street as TK, you'll do what you can to keep your homeless family safe -- and find the monster who is possessed by a dream of violently remaking the world." 
• Ben Bova, The Star Conquerors.  Juvenile, one of the Winston "Adventures in SF" series.  Bova's first science fiction novel; signed copies without dust jacket are going for $1400(!).  "Explore New Worlds...and Resistance Is Futile...all found their home here first with Star Watch Captain Geoffrey Knowland in what some say is a virtual blueprint for Star Trek."  I'm not sure who the "some" are who are saying this, but maybe they have their wires crossed.  Nonetheless, it's an interesting book.
• Andrea Camilleri, The Terracotta Dog.  An Inspector Salvo Montalbano mystery.  "The Terracotta Dog opens with a mysterious tete-a-tete with a Mafioso, some inexplicably abandoned loot from a supermarket heist, and some dying words that lead Inspector Montalban to a secret grotto in a mountain cave where to young lovers, dead fifty years and still embracing, are watched over by a life-size terracotta dog.  Montalbano's passion to solve this old crime takes him, heedless of personal danger, on a journey through the island's past and into a family's dark heart amid the horrors of World War II."
• Mike Carey, Dead Men's Boots.  The third in the Felix Castor series of paranormal mysteries.  "A brutal murder in King's Cross bears all the hallmarks of a long-dead American serial killer, and it takes more good sense than Castor possesses not to get involved.  He's also fighting a legal battle over the body -- if not the soul -- of his possessed friend, Rafi, and can't hake the feeling that his three problems might be related.  With the help of the succubus Juliet and the paranoid zombie data-fence Nicky Heath, Castor just might have a chance of fitting the pieces together before someone drops him down a lift shaft or rips his throat out.  Or not..."  
• A. Bertram Chandler, John Grimes:  Rim Runner.  Omnibus of four science fiction novels.  "Once a spacer, always a spacer.  and no dirtside job -- even one as nominally glamorous as Commodore of the Rim Worlds Naval Reserve -- can keep a  bred-in-the-bone spaceman like John Grimes out of the void for long.  Older and wiser, he's nonetheless nostalgic for his days in the Survey service, so when the stars call, he gladly leaves the paperwork behind and heads off for adventure.  Now practical, hard-headed Grimes is not the sort to believe in ghosts,  but he's willing to give psychics a chance when shapely Sonya Verrill, a commander in the Federation Survey Service, proposes a ghost-hunting expedition in the sector around Kinsolving's Planet.  Out where the fabric of space and time wears thin, ships have encountered Rim Ghosts -- apparitions of craft and crewmates from alternate universes.  When Grimes organizes a seance to make contact, their ship is yanked Into the Alternate Universe, and their only hope of getting home again may lie in a lost relic -- a sleeper ship from the first age of space exploration.  After their wild ghost chase, Grimes and Sonya embark on a wholly different adventure:  marriage.  But running their own lttle shipping company takes a back seat to danger when a distress call leads the pair to an alien ship from an alternate universe -- a ship carrying Contraband from Outer Space -- mutant rats who evolved to rule their universe...and threaten to break through to ours.  In The Rim Gods, Grimes is drawn into four perilous adventures, when a ship full of religious fanatics uses a psionic to summon God, when a rogue Rim Worlder tries to sell advanced weaponry to the robber barons of Tangaroa, when trouble in the form of a predatory starfish threatens to ruin the economy of Mallise, and when an impossible planet appears out of nowhere -- a world where dragons, fairies, and sleeping beauties are real.  Another visit to Kinsolver's Planet, where the boundaries between reality and surreality are almost non-existent, find The Commodore at Sea.  For he is whisked into a continuum in which fictional characters exist, and he is surprised to meet Sherlock Holmes, Lady Chatterley, Tarzan and Jane, and...A. Bertrtam Chandler?"  The Grimes books are pure fun, and I doubt if anyone was better at transplanting the sea story into outer space.
• Anne Cleeves, Dead Water. A Jimmy Perez mystery.  "The body of journalist Jerry Markham is found, hidden in a boat at the marine.  Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez has been out of the loop, but his interest in this new case is stirred and he decides to help the inquiry.  Markham -- originally a Shetlander who then made a name for himself in London -- had moved away from the island years before.  In his wake, he left a scandal involving a young girl, Evie Watt, who is now engaged to a seaman.  He had few friends n Shetland, so why was he back?  Willow and Jimmy are led to Sullom Voe, the heart of Shetland's North Sea oil and gas industry.  It soon emerges from their investigation that Markham was chasing a story in his final da\ys.  One that must have been significant enough to warrant his death"  I caught this one on my Shetland re-watch a few months ago.
• Eugene Cunningham, Triggernometry:  A Gallery of Gunfighters, with Technical Notes, too, on Leather Slapping as a Fine Art, gathered from many a Loose Holstered Expert over the years  Non-fiction collection of minibiographies.  "In this now classic volume, Eugene Cunningham collects -- in his 'gallery' -- biographies of nearly a score of master gunfighters, including such notables as John Wesley Hardin, Billy the Kid, Dallas Stroudenmire, Sam Bass, Wild Bill Hickok, Butch Cassidy, and Tom Horn.  Himself a westerner with a feel of the pistol and rifle, Cunningham knew firsthand several of the Texas gunfighters featured in his book, the product of more than thirty-five years of research, interviews, and writing.  Cunningham examines the evidence and breaks down the myths surrounding the exploits of Wild Bill Hickok, for example, preferring to find instead the living, breathing human behind the legend.  His final chapter, 'Triggernometry,' remains a fascinating discussion of the gunfighters' expertise with the fast draw and the 'road agent's spin,' pistol fanning, the 'border shift.' 'rolling,' and 'pinwheeling,' and the use of various holsters and harnesses."  First published in 1934, Triggernometry has been cited as one of the best Western Nonfiction Books by the Western Writers of America.
• P. N. Elrod, editor, My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding.  Fantasy anthology with nine stories.  "An 'ordinary' wedding can get crazy enough, so can you imagine what happens when otherworldly creatures are involved? Nine of the hottest authors of paranormal fiction answer that question in this delightful collection of supernatural wedding stories.  What's the plan when rival clans of werewolves and vampires meet under the same roof?  How can a couple in the throes of love overcome traps set by feuding relatives...who are experts in voodoo?  Will you have have a good marriage if your high-class wedding is held on a cursed ship?  How do you deal with a wedding singer who's just a little too good at impersonating Elvis?  Shapeshifters, wizards, and magic.  Oh my!"  Authors include L. A. Banks, Jim Butcher, Rachel Caine, P. N. Elrod, Esther M. Friesner, Charlaine Harris, and Sherrilyn Kenyon.
• Michel Fessier, Fully Dressed and in His Right Mind.  Crime/fantasy novel.  "Johnny Price first meets the little old man at the scene of a streetside murder.  The little old man confesses that it was he who shot the man, and Johnny figures he's either drunk or crazy.  He stops in at a bar, and there is the little old man again.  Johnny starts running into him everywhere.  He can't shake him.  when Johnny meets the artist Dorgan and invites him to move in with him, Dorgan is intrigued by the little old man as well, and wants to paint him.  Johnny's life becomes further complicated when on night he sees a naked young lady swimming in a lake in the park.  He tries to talk to her, but she dives back and swims away.  But Johnny persists, and eventually discovers that he name is Trelia, and that she swims naked in the lake most every night.  Dorgan wants to paint her too.  But the little old man has plans for Johnny, and neither Dorgan nor Trelia can help him.  Because once the little old man casts his green eyes on Jonny, he might as well give up hope!"  Also included in this edition are thee short stories from Manhunt from 1953.  Fessier was a screenwriter and film producer.  Of this book, historian Bruce Catton wrote, "The effect is as surprising and stimulating as a smack in the hoot-nanny with an ice-cold wash cloth" -- whatever that means.
• John C. Hocking, Conan:  City of the Dead.  Collection of two Conan novels.  "In Conan and the Emerald Lotus, the seeds of a deadly addictive plant grant sorcerers immense powers, but turn its users into inhuman killers.  In the exclusive long-awaited sequel, Conan and the living Plague, a Shemite wizard seeks to create a serum to use as a lethal weapon.  Instead he unleashes a hideous monster on the city of Dulcine.  Hired to loot the city of its treasures, Conan and his fellows in the mercenary troop find themselves trapped in the depths of the city's keep.  To escape, they must defeat the creature, its plague-wracked undead followers, then face Lovecraftian horrors beyond all imagination."  When it comes to recommending action-packed adventure, no one knows their beans better than James Reasoner, who featured this book on his blog this past Friday. and who recommended this very highly.  If Reasoner recommends it, I'm there!
• Raymond F. Jones, Planet of Light.  Juvenile, one of the Winston "Adventures in Science Fiction" series; as sequel to Son of the Stars.  "The story follows Rod Barron and his family as they are taken to a planet in the Great Galaxy of Andromeda to participate in a meeting of an intergalactic analogue of the United Nations.  They face the question if Earth is ready to join an intergalactic society."  Great stuff when I was twelve years old and probably still great.
• Gerald Kersh, Clock Without Hands, The Horrible Dummy and Other Stories, Karmesin:  The World's Greatest Criminal -- or the Most Outrageous Liar, and Neither Dog Nor Man:  Short Stories.  George the Tempter posted a review of this author last Wednesday, reminding me of all the great Kersh short stories I have yet to read.  Previously almost forgotten, Kersh is having a revival thanks to publishers such as Valancourt Books, Faber & Faber, and London Books, so I was able to easily get e-book versions of these four collections.  Harlan Ellison cited Kersh as his favorite author, " a talent so immerse and compelling," and Anthony Boucher wrote that Kersh was "incapable of writing a dull sentence."  Thank you, George for spurring me on and tempting me...
• Tom King, Vision, Vol. 2:  Little Better Than a Beast.  Graphic novel based on Marvel characters.  "Once upon a time, a robot and a witch fell in love.  And then some pretty bad things happened.  but the story of Vision and Scarlet Witch was just the start.  Because now, Vision has built a new life for himself -- a new family.  Yet while every family has its share of skeletons in the closet, for the Visions those skeletons are real.  And now the family's facade is crumbling.  the Avengers knew the truth.  That Vision's wife has killed.  That he lied to protect her.  And that lie will follow lie, death will pile upon death.  the Avengers know they need to act.  Tragedy is coming and it will send the Android Avenger into a devastating confrontation with Earth's Mightiest Heroes.  Nobody is safe."
• Ursula Le Guin, Gifts.  Young adult science fiction novel.  "Scattered among poor, desolate farms, the families of the Uplands possess gifts.  Wondrous gifts:  the ability -- with a glance, a gesture, a word -- to summon animals, bring forth fire, move the land.  Fearsome gifts:  They can twist a limb, chain a mind, inflict a wasting illness. the Uplanders live in constant fear that one family might unleash its gift against another.  Two young people, friends since childhood, decide not to use their gifts.  One, a girl, refuses yo bring animals to their deaths in the hunt.  The other, a boy, wears a blindfold least his eyes and his anger kill...Le Guin writes of the cruelty of power, of how hard it is to grow up, and of how much harder still it is to find, in the world's darkness, gifts of light."
• Frances and Richard Lockridge, Curtain for a Jester.  A Mr. and Mrs. North mystery.  "M r. Byron Wilmot was well-known for his practical jokes.  so no one was surprised when his part on April Fool's Day was filled with jokes and tricks.  But they were surprised when Pam North found Wilmot dead the next morning.  When the malicious intent behind many of Wilmot's jokes was discovered, the list of suspects grew.  Anyone who had been humiliated by him could have wished him harm.  That was understandable,  But Pam believed the red-headed dummy used in a trick at the party was a clue -- or perhaps it was just a red herring.  Once again, the Norths are involved in a mystery where everything is not what it appears to be.  Will Pam's uncanny ability to observe the most subtle clues lead them to the answer in time or, will the killer have the last laugh?"  Showing my age, but I cannot read this series without picturing Barbara Britton as Pam.
• Ellen MacGregor & Dora Pantell, Miss Pickerell and the Last World, Miss Pickerell and the Supertanker, Miss Pickerell Meets Mr. H.U.M., Miss Pickerell on the Moon, Miss Pickerell Tackles the Energy Crisis, Miss Pickerell Takes the Bull By the Horns, and Miss Pickerell to the Earthquake Rescue.  Juveniles about everybody's favorite no-nonsense, get-it-done spinster heroine and her cow.  You may have to have been of a certain age to remember this character, but remember her I do, and fondly.  This was one part of my youth that was not misspent.  A dash of humor and a dash of science education.  MacGregor died after publishing the fourth book in the series; Pantell later took over the series using MacGregor's notes.
• Rob MacGregor, Spawn.  Tie-in to the movie based upon the comic book character.  "Once Al Simmons worked for the government as a sold and efficient assassin.   but he wanted something his top-secret agency could never allow:  He wanted out.  So the people he trusted with his life led him into an ambush -- and his life ended in a rush of terrible flames.  Now he has come back -- to the street where he once lived -- to the woman he once loved...to the traitors who destroyed his body but not his soul.  Al Simmons, though, isn't Al Simmons, anymore.  With a new body forged in the flames of Hell, he's an unstoppable weapon for chaos and destruction.  Reborn, relentless, without a master, he must fight the dark objective for which he was resurrected in order to prevent the approaching Armageddon.  He is...SPAWN."
• Barry N. Malzberg, Collecting Myself: The Uncollected Stories of Barry N. Malzberg.  Thirty-five previously uncollected stories.  Malzberg may not be everyone's taste but his talent shines through with every word.  From The Enclopedia of Science Fiction:  "Malzberg's writing is unparalled in its intensity  and in its apocalyptic sensibility...he is a maser of balck humor, and is one of the few writer to have used sf's vocabulary of ideas extensively as apparatus in psychological landscapes, dramatizing relationships between the human mind and its social environment in an sf theatre of the absurd."  Also included is a bibliography of books by Malzberg (many under pseudonyms) through 2013; since this book was published this year, it's a shame the bibliography has not been updated.
• Alan E, Nourse, Trouble on Titan.  Juvenile, part of the Winston "Adventures in Science Fiction" series.  "When Tuck Benedict and David Torm faced each other on the bleak and frigid face of titan, Saturn's sixth moon, they represented, literally [literally, really? -- JH}, the opposite ends of the universe.  For in the twenty-second Century, Tuck represented the rich and easy civilization of an Earth that had grown luxurious by utilizing solar energy through a catalytic mineral produced in Titan's grim mines.  David Torm, whose ancestors had been exiled to Titan centuries before, stood for the hardened Titan colonists who huddled beneath their airtight dome to mine the metal responsible for Earth's prosperity.  Meeting on the eve of an open revolt by the Titan miners against Earth's authority, these two teenagers found grounds for friendship that their bnickering fathers could never see." 
• Ian Rankin, Beggars Banquest.   Collection of 22 crime stories, including eight featuring Inspector Rebus.  One story, "Death Is not the End," had been expanded into the 1999 novel Dead Souls.
• James Sallis, Ghost of a Flea.  A Lew Griffin mystery.  "A man stands in a darkened room in New Orleans. looking out through a window, seeing the past.  There's a body on the bed behind him:  wind pecks at the window, traffic sounds drift aimlessly ion.  the man thinks that if he doesn't speak, doesn't think about what happened, somehow things will be all right again.  He thinks about his own life, about the other's, about how the two of them came to be here.  Lew Griffin is alone...or almost so.  His relationship with Deborah is falling apart; his son, David, has disappeared again, leaving a note that sounds final.  His friend Dan Walsh, who is leaving the police department, is shot interrupting a robbery.  And Lew is directionless.  He hasn't written anything in years:  he no longer teaches...there's nothing to fill his days.  Even the attempt to discover the source of threatening letters to a friend leaves him feeling roofless and lost..."
• John Saul, Creature.  Horror novel.  "A powerful high-tech company.  A postcard-pretty company town.  Families.  Children.  Sunshine.  Happiness.  A high-school football team that never-ever loses.  And something else.  Something horrible...  Now there is a new family in town.  a shy nature-loving teenager.  A new hometown.  A new set of bullies.  Maybe the team's sports clinic can help him.  Rebuild him.  They won't hurt him again.  They won't dare."
• Robert Silverberg, Jungle Street and Running with the Barons.  Collection of two crime erotica novels from the 60s originally published as by "Don Elliot."  Jungle Street (originally published as Sex Jungle):  "Danny Flaherty's family moves to a new neighborhood, so he's out of the Shining Sinner, and looking to get into the Golden Dragons.  Getting into a new gang mans an initiation. and Danny's ready for whatever they've got in mind.  Mike Reilly, the Prez of the Dragons, first asks Danny to infiltrate a neighboring gang.  Easy.  Then he's asked to participate in a robbery.  Not so easy.  He has to hit the owner on the head with a bottle, and now the guy's in a coma.  Could be worse.  But the final initiation is the tricky one -- Danny's got to make it with three Dragon debs in front of the whole gang.   And that's how he meets Lisa, Reilly's girl,.  It's all been kicks up to now.  but Danny has big plans and nobody's going to stop him from taking what he wants."  Running with the Barons (originally published as The Passion Barons):  "Marty Capuano might be short but he was a big man  in his Lower East side gang.  Now his family is living in Jenkinsville, Ohio, and he feels like he's been banished to Nowheresville.  So he goes looking for a new gang and finds the Dragons.  Marty is the best there is with a  blade,. and he makes pretty short work  of the Dragon's prez.  Now he's sitting on top again, with the former prez's deb, Jojo, and the fear and respect of the whole gang.  But this is only the beginning .  there's a snooty chick named Jill who snubbed him when he first hit town, and she's got to be brought down a notch ...and there's the bartender who wouldn't serve him a beer...Marty still has a lot of folks to get even with, and he's only just started."  Silverberg wrote hundreds of these paperback originals back in the day and they all read well for what they were.  This edition has an eight-page bibliography of Silverberg's books through 2014.
• Keith Thomson, Pirates of Pensacola.  A swash-buckling parody with "rum, eye patches, peg legs, and a wisecracking parrot in need of a twelve-step program."  How could I resist?
• James Thurber, Thurber on Crime.  A collection of stories, articles, drawings, and reflections, edited by Robert Lopresti.  An assemblage of wonderful, witty, and wise bits about crime, murder, humanity, men, women, dogs, and other things by a humorist who -- in my humble opinion -- ranks second only to P. G. Wodehouse.
• [Uncredited], Why Do we Say It?  The  Stories Behind the Words, Expressions and Cliches We Use.  Just what the title says.  Alphabetically, it runs from "A-1" to "Zest," with stops along the wat for such words as "flibbetigibbet" and "pants," and such phrases as "pull one's leg" and "son-of-a-gun."  Lest we think we are getting of easily, there are also ten quizzes on various words and phrases.
• Donald E. Westlake,  Baby, Would I Lie?  Comic crime novel, a follow-up to Westlake's Trust Me on This.  "Branson, Missouri, is the home of Country Music, USA.  Its main drag is lined with theaters housing such luminaries as Roy Clark, Loretta Lynn, and Merle Haggard -- but you'd better get there early because the late show's at eight.  Branson is one big long traffic jam of R.V.'s, station wagons, pickup trucks, NRA decals, tour buses, and blue-haired grand mothers.  Now Branson just got a little more crowded.  Because the murder trial of country and western star Ray Jones is about to begin, and the media has come loaded for bear.  The press presence ranges from the Weekly Galaxy, the most unethical newsrag in the universe, to New York City's Trend:  The Magazine of the Way We Live This Instant.  in the middle of the melee stands Ray Jones himself, an inscrutable good ol' boy who croons like an angel but just may be as guilty as sin-- of the rape and murder of a 31-year-old theater cashier.  Sara Joslyn, of Trend, isn't sure about Ray.  The sardonic Jack Ingersoll, her editor and lover,  is sure of this much:  this time he's going to do an expose that will nail the Weekly Galaxy to the wall.  A phalanx of reporters and editors from the Galaxy are breaking every rule, and a few laws, to get the inside story on Ray Jones's trial.  Meanwhile, the IRS is there, too.  They want all of Ray Jones's money, no matter what the jury decides.  Set to the beat of America's down-home music, as raucous as a smoke-filled honky-tonk, as funny as grown men in snakeskin boots, Baby, Would I Lie? is a murder mystery, a courtroom thriller, a caper novel, and a classic Westlake gem."

Froggy Bottom:  From 1929, here's Andy Kirk and His Twelve Clouds of Joy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8fjcIzc9j4

Here Comes Summer:  Now that summer's here, it's time to do some serious thinking about cookouts.  There are few things better about summer than cookouts and/or barbeques.  Here are some thirty ideas that will take you a bit beyond the usual burgers and brats -- hamburgers with zing, barbequed baked beans, cool and creamy macaroni salad, grilled pineapple and grilled watermelon, rosemary roasted potatoes, deviled egg potato salad, cracker barrel grilled chicken tenders, corn salad, Mexican street corn, green beans with smoky bacon, beer can chicken, Coca Cola pulled pork, Mexican hot dogs, Caprese salad, copycat KFC cole slaw, Buffalo chicken wings, broccoli salad, crispy smashed potato salad, fall of the bone ribs, shrimp salad, three bean salad, arugula salad, Alton Brown guacamole, oven roasted asparagus, fried apples, Chick-Fil-A lemonade, fruit salad (shades of The Wiggles!), caramel apple crisp, and chocolate covered bananas.

Is your mouth watering yet?

https://insanelygoodrecipes.com/cookout-food/

Boys Beware:  June is Pride Month, set aside to celebrate and commemorate lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender pride -- although as with Black History Month, Women's History Month, and similar celebrations, gay pride should be celebrated year long.  The things that set some apart are the things that collectively make us all human, and that's a good thing, isn't it?

Civil rights, women's rights, reproductive rights, labor rights, privacy rights, religious rights, and so on have come a long way, even though sometimes it feels like we are taking a step backwards.  To illustrate this, here's an "educational" video put out by the Inglewood Police Department and the Inglewood Unified School District in the 1950s warning about the danger of homosexuals because they're all out to get you.  It's a trippy piece of propaganda and fear mongering.  (One should always, however, keep in mind "stranger danger" -- but, geez, Louise, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.)

We should be thankful that we have moved beyond knee-jerk prejudice and hatred, believing that all hsmosexuals are out there grooming kids.  Well, most of us.  In most of the country.  I hope.

https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=classic+school+education+films&mid=60B45667A4AD0C0FBF4660B45667A4AD0C0FBF46&FORM=VIRE

Explanation Needed:  A farmer was sitting on his porch getting drunk.  A neighbor walked by and asked him, "It's such a beautiful day.  Why are you sitting out here getting hammered?

The farmer looked at him an said, "There are some things you just can't explain."

The neighbor asked, "What do you mean?"  the farmer explained.  "I was in the barn milking the cow, and when the bucket was almost full, she kicked it over with her left leg.   Well. I gor so mad that I got some rope and tied her left leg to a rafter."

The neighbor was a little bit confused.  "Well?"

The farmer continued, "There are just some things you can't explain.   I got the bucket and began milking again, when, dang it, she kicked the bucker over with her right leg.  So I got some more rope and tied her right leg to a rafter."

"That solved the problem, didn't it?"

The farmer shook his head and took another gulp of his drink.  "There are just things you just can't explain.  I positioned the bucket under the cow and began milking once again.  Then that cursed cow flicked its tail and knocked over the bucket!  So I tied her tail to a rafter.  But I had run out of rope and had to use my belt.

"Without my belt, my pants fell down.  Just then my wife came in."

The farmer shook his head in sorrow.  "There are some things you just can't explain."

Musical History:  From 1963, a young, clean-cut Frank Zappa teaches Steve Allen how to play the bicycle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QF0PYQ8IOL4

The Battle of Bannockburn:  Today marks the 710th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn.

From Wikipedia:  "The Battler of Bannockburn was fought on 23-24 June 1314, between the army of Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland, and  the army of King Edward II of England, during the First war of Scottish Independence.  It was a decisive victory for Robert Bruce and formed a major turning point in the war, which ended 14 years later with the de jure restoration of Scottish independence under the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northhampton.  For this reason, the Battle of Bannockburn is widely considered a landmark moment in Scottish history."

On the first day of the battle, the English knight Sir Henry de Bohun spied the Scottish king, who was on a small horse and carried only a battle ax.  De Buhun lowered his lance and charged.  Rather than flee, Bruce rode at the Englishman.  At the last few seconds, Bruce shifted his mount to the side, stood up in his stirrups, and delivered a great blow to de Bohun, smashing through the knight's helmet ins into his brain.  After the fact Bruce expressed sorrow that he had broken the shaft of his favorite axe.

"After Robert Bruce killed Henry de Bohun on the first day of battle, the English withdrew for the day.  That night, Sir Alexander Seton, a Scottish noble serving in Edward's army, defected to the Scottish side and informed King Robert of the English camp's low morale, telling him they could win.  Robert Bruce decided to launch a full-scale attack on the English forces the next day and to use his schiltrons [a compact body of troops forming a shield wall, or phalanx -- JH] as offensive units, as he had trained them.  This was a strategy his predecessor William Wallace [remember Braveheart? - JH] had not employed.  The English army was defeated in a pitched battle which resulted in the deaths of several prominent British commanders, including the Earl of Gloucester and Sir Robert Clifford, and the capture of many others, including the Earl of Hereford."

My mother-in-law claimed to be a descendant of Robert the Bruce, but I doubt if there is a person of Scots ancestry who has not made a similar claim.  (She also claimed to be related to Jesse James and to have a bit of American Indian blood.  Eileen also never met a conspiracy theory she did not like, so go figure.)

Happy Birthday, Phil Harris:  Harris was born Wonga Philip Harris in 1904.  (The name Wonga supposedly came from the Cherokee, and meant "fast messenger."  The orchestra leader, actor, and singer was known for his work on The Jack Benny Show and The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show (in which he starred with his wife).  He voiced a number of well-known characters for Disney, included Baloo the Bear in The Jungle Book, Little John in Robin Hood, and Thomas O'Malley in The Aristocats.  In 1950 he had a number one hit with the novelty song "The Thing."  By all accounts, he was a pretty decent guy.

Here's his signature song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_dK0W0qfRo

Florida Man:

• One-time Florida dentist and "troubled" Tampa area resident Richard G. Kantwell, 60, has been charged with three counts of interstate transmission of threat to injure.  This is actually the tip of the Kantwell iceberg.  FBI Special Agents evidently considered Kantwell's threats dangerous enough to interview him, ask him to stop, then took action when he continued.  Kantwell issued "approximately 100 threats and various other disturbing messages" to about 42 victims from August 2019 to July 2020 -- and those were the ones for which the FBI says it has evidence.  Kantwell allegedly bragged about owning weapons, "enjoying the violence," and that he "loved creating widows and orphans."  Three of his expletive-laden messages could land him in federal rpison for up to fifteen years.  Kantwell had been licensed to practice dentistry until this past February; previously he had defied an agreement to stop practicing as a dentist in 2017 and the Florida Board of Dentistry had reprimanded and fined him.
• Florida Man Joseph Leedy, 40, recently drove across the Marin County Jail parking lot, up the entrance ramp, and into the jail itself, where he poured motor oil on the floor and tossed out rubber snakes.  Just a typical day in Florida.
• In a case that happened just one street over from where I live, Florida Man and plastic surgeon Benjamin Jacon Brown, 41, has been charged with second degree felony homicide and culpable negligence in the 2023 death of his wife Hilary Brown.   Brown was performing surgery on his wife's for an abdominal scar revision, bilateral arm liposuction, lip injections, and ear adjustment procedures on November 21 when she went into cardiac arrest.  He reportedly waited for twenty minutes before calling an ambulance, which took her to the hospital where she died a week later, evincing lidocaine toxicity.   Hilary Brown had prepared her own tumescent solution which Brown reported that she had taken around 12 pm; he did not report that an hour earlier she had ingested a "handful" of multicolored pills.  An emergency restriction of license was issued following her death, citing also "questionable circumstances that happened in the moths leading up to her death."   Two previous patients had reported that Brown performed BBL surgery on them without permission and that there was a lack of sterilization in the rooms during surgery.
• If you want to paint something in Florida, you'd better do a good job of it.  Florida Man Daniel Peirre, 47, allegedly whacked his nephew on the head with a hammer while at a job site in Loxahatchee.  Reportedly the uncle complained that he no longer wanted to work with his nephew because he did not do a good job.  Pierre struck his nephew and left the young man unconscious while he drove away, according to police.  The nephew suffered life-threatening injuries, including a skull fracture and a brain tear.
• And if you are going to be a roommate in Florida, you'd better clean up after yourself.  71-year-old Florida Woman Patricia Whitehead shot and killed her roommate because he allegedly did not pick up after himself.

Good News:

• I'm not sure this is good news or not, but perfectly preserved cherries have been found in George Washington's Mount Vernon cellar.  As far as I can tell, no one has dared taste the.     https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/perfectly-preserved-250-year-old-cherries-found-in-george-washingtons-cellar-at-mount-vernon-pr/
• Woman raises fund to help 90-year-old veteran still working in the heat to retire     https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/woman-raises-233000-to-give-90-year-old-veteran-still-working-in-the-heat-the-option-to-retire/
• Heiress appoints 50 people to give away her  multi-million euro fortune https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/austrian-heiress-appoints-fifty-citizens-to-give-away-her-e25-million-fortune/
• Tired of noise pollution?  these students invented a leaf blower silencer attachment     https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/students-invent-leaf-blower-silencer-attachment-corporation-expects-to-be-selling-them-soon/
• Lung cancer drug brings unprecedented results       https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/lung-cancer-drug-elicits-unprecedented-results-in-new-trial/
• Lost donkey now "living his best life" with elk herd five years later     https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/lost-donkey-seen-living-with-elk-herd-5-years-later-living-his-best-life/

Today's Poem:

Bannockburn

Robert Bruce's address to his army

Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled,

Scots, wham Bruce has often led;

Welcome to your gory bed,

Or to victorie.

Now's the day, and now's the hour;

See the front o' battle lower;

See approach proud Edward's power --

Chains and Slaverie!

Wha will be a traitor knave?

Wha can fill a coward's grave?

Wha sae base as be a slave?

Let him turn and flee!

Wha for Scotland's king and law

Freedom's sword will strongly draw,

Freeman stand., or freemen fa'?

Let him follow me!

By oppression's woes and pains!

By your sons in servile chains!

We will drain our dearest veins,

But they shall be free!

Lay the proud usurpers low!

Tyrants fall in every foe!

Liberty's in every blow!

Let us do, or die!

-- Robert Burns

HYMN TIME

 From 1913, Homer Rodeheaver.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAgun-X58kE

WILD BILL HICKOK #10 (1963)

People familiar with this blog know that I am not a fan of the historic Wild Bill Hickok (he was a murderous s.o.b.), but that does not deter me from enjoying stories about his fictional persona, whether on television, films, books, or comic books.

This issue features four stories; only one is about the title character: "The War of the Medicine Men."  Frontier scout Johnny Barker is hired to take a census of the Indians of the Plains, but the Sioux and the Cheyenne take offense at this idea, believing that the white soldier were robbing them of good medicine.  Soon, Johnny is fleeing for his life on a wounded pony.  The blood-thirsty Cheyenne soon have Johnny trapped, but off in the distance is "a slim white man with blazing eyes and ivory handled Colt revolvers at his waist."  Wild Bill spurs his mare. Black Nell, into action.  Each shot from Wild Bill's gun salys an Indian, allowing he and Johnny to escape.  Wild Bill manages to make it to Fort Leavenworth with the badly wounded Johnny.  There, he worries about a possible Indian war.  Meanwhile, a Cheyenne medicine man, White Buffalo, is searching for a way to bring war to the soldiers.  He stuns a grazing buffalo, and while it is unconscious, White Buffalo paints the beast white.  Now that he has a sacred albino buffalo, the medicine man can convince his tribe that the Great Spirit wants them to kill the white man.  Can Wild Bill stop this nefarious plot?

Next up:  We have Chief Black Hack in "The Black Hawk Indian Tomahawk War."   This is not the Black Hawk I am familiar with from August Derleth's historical novels and nonfiction about the Black Hawk War.

This is followed by an eight-page illustrated biography of General Charles John Freemont:  "Explorer, soldier, surveyor, and Indian fighter, -- his life was one big adventure -- and he lived it to the hilt!"

Finall, we have "Kit West and the Prince of Pioneers."  Kit, a female, is taking wagons of supplies from Lexington, Kentucky, to the Missouri settlements, when she and her companion Hank are stopped by a strange-looking, dandified man.  He declares himself to be Prince Rudolph of Mordovia, and demands to speak to the officer in command.  It does not settle well with the prince when he finds that Kit is the one in command.  He says he wishes to help fight the Indians so he will be taking over command at once.  Kit laughs at him and drives on.  The prince swallows his pride and joins the group as a mere rifleman, which does not stop him from constantly complaining along the way.  The wagon caravan keeps getting into trouble -- within two days, five wagons have broken down -- could the axles have been deliberately broken?  The next week a rash of food poisoning hits the group.  Then scouting parties are slaughtered by Indians, but the Prince always manages to escape unharmed.  Is he the cause for all the trouble and heartache, or is he merely an innocent fool?

All in all, a decent issue.  Note, however, that the cover illustration has absolutely nothing to do with anything inside.

Enjoy:

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=90425&comicpage=&b=i

FORGOTTEN BOOK: ATLANTIS ENDGAME

 Atlantis Endgame by Andre Norton and Sherwood Smith  (2002)

Last week I reviewed Key Out of Time, the fourth and supposedly final book in Andre Norton's Time Traders series.  That book ended ten thousand years in the past on an alien planet with 
Time Agents Ross Murdoch and Gordon Ashe, along with a Polynesian girl and her two telepathic dolphins abandoned with no way of getting home and with no way of knowing whether their actions have prevented the extinction of intelligent life on that planet.  Well, sometimes it's good to keep readers hanging, although every reader knows in their heart that good will prevail, even if the heroes have to forge new lives in the past.

Every reader also knows that you can't keep a good series down.  So...

Thirty-one years after the publication of Key Out of Time, Norton returned to the Time Traders franchise with Firehand, co-authored by P. M. Griffin.  (Many late-in-their-career authors resort to co-writers; it's any one's guess how much of these works were actually written by the original authors.)  Two other Time Traders novels followed:  Echoes in Time (1999) and Atlantis Endgame (2002(, both co-authored by Sherwood Smith (who had also continued Norton's popular Solar Queen series, which had ended in 1969).

Since I have not read either Firehand or Echoes in Time I have no idea how the hell Murdoch and Ashe managed to get off that ten-thousand-year-ago planet, but get off it they they did.  The two are older now.  Ashe is mostly stuck to an administrative desk job and longs for the action of the past.  (Play on words here, he-he-he.)  Murdock is married to a fellow Time Agent, the very capable Eveleen Riordan; their marriage looks like it's in for the long haul..  Decades ago, Ashe had studied with young archaeologist Linnea Edel.  Ashe effectively vanished after he was secretly recruited as a Time Agent.  Linnea married, quit work to raise a family, widowed, remained in occasional contact with her children who had moved to different areas of the country, and began working again in her chosen field.  She was never able to find out what had happened to Ashe until now.  Exactly how she found Ashe and how she knew (or at least gleaned) that Ashe was with the Time Traders is never explained.  (Things that are difficult to explain for an author are often best left unsaid.)

While working on a site at Thera, the very top of a massive undersea volcano volcano near Crete,   Linnea unearthed a gold earring under eighty feet of volcanic ash which dates back to approximately the 1620s B.C.  The earring had a modern jeweler's mark on it.  The earring was an exact match to a pair that Eveleen's father had given her on her 21st birthday --it was the same earring.  Thankfully, no bodies or remains were discovered near the earring, but there could be no denying that the Tame Agents had been on Thera some 3600 years before.

Sometime around 1620 B.C. there was a massive volcanic eruption, blowing thirty to fifty cubic miles of land into dust and causing a tsunami that took out all the ports along the Aegean; the black cloud from the explosion ruined crops in China and left traces in tree rings as far away as California.  Krakatoa was just a child's firecracker compared to this explosion.  There was no evidence of massive death; any population must have evacuated before the explosion.  A relics such as the Antikythera mechanism hints at an advanced civilization, but exactly how that civilization vanished is unknown..  This could have been the source of the legend of Atlantis.

Suspicion falls onto the Baldies, a mysterious intergalactic race that seems intent on eliminating all other races.  Could they have placed a large thermonuclear device to cause the volcanic eruption?  If the civilization of Thera had not been destroyed, it is possible that the Industrial Age could have come a thousand years earlier.  Who knows how advanced humanity might have been today?  It's time (another pun, he-he-he) for the Time traders go go back to just before the explosion to investigate.  Going on this mission are Murdoch, Eveleen, Ashe, Linnea (although not a Time Agent, she is the closest thing thay have to an expert on that era), and two Greek Time Agents (to do the heavy lifting).

The ancient island is called Kalliste.  It is a major port of a Minoan-based civilization.  Its language is un know, but because it is a major port, various other languages, including forms of ancient Egyptian and ancient Greek, can be used.  There is a single religion, accessed through an oracle and a group of priestesses who are devout believers and who show none of the hypocrisy that many other religions do.  The volcano has been showing some activity, occasionally scattering small rocks like rain, minor quakes move the earth, the air is cloudy and foul, poison gases leak from open chasms, and the populace is wondering what they might have done to offend the gods; a number of citizens have already left the area.  Yet many of the people go about their daily business, doing their best to ignore the danger around them. 

It doesn't take long to discover that the Baldies are there, but what their purpose and exact plan is remains unknown.  The Time Agents cannot prevent the explosion -- their one sacred duty is to maintain the time line, but perhaps they can help spur an evacuation.  But how?

But there's another spanner in the works:  a second alien race is present in Kalliste -- a race that Murdock -- who is the only human who has encountered one personally -- calls the Fur Faces.  It's a race that appears to be from the Time Agents' future.  What are they doing here?  Are they working with the Baldies?  Are they working against the Time Agents?

The Fur Faces offer to work with the Time Agents, claiming they are the enemies of the Baldies.  The Baldies, they claim, are trying to prevent the volcanic explosion because this will lead not to an age of progress as the Time Agents posited, but to a world of stagnation where mankind will never advanced far enough to reach the stars.  Who to believe and what to do?

And exactly when will the volcano blow (if it does)?  And will our heroes have enough time to get the heck out of Dodge?

In the meantime, there are also hints of a potential romance between Linnea and Ashe, just because...

An interesting book with perhaps just a bit too much historical background and detail to drag down the main plot.  Still worth a read but Norton had done better in her early days.

THE LONE RANGER: THE OSAGE BANK ROBBERY (DECEMBER 17, 1937)

 [Cue Th William Tell Overture]

[Add a hearty "Hi -Yo, Silver!"]

Get ready, gang, for another exciting adventure of The Lone Ranger.

Hard to believe, I know, but during all the years The Lone Ranger was on the radio (2956 episodes, beginning in 1933) and on television (221 episodes, from 1949 to 1957), the Lone Ranger never once realized that "Kemo sabe" was the Indian phrase for "I need a raise." *

Any way, let's go back to those thrilling days of yesteryear. (Actually, thrilling day -- December 17, 1937, to be exact.)

In this episode Earle Grasser plays the masked man; Tonto was played by John Todd.

Enjoy.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvhW9a9keOg

* Who can forget the immortal words of Lyle Lovett in "If I Had a Boat"?

     Mystery masked man was smart

     He got himself a Tonto

    'Cuz Tonto did the dirty work for free

     But Tonto he was smarter

     One day said, "Kemo sabe

     "Kiss my ass.  I bought a boat.  I'm going out to sea."

SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: IN THE HEART OF FIRE

In the Heart of Fire by Dean Koontz  (an Amazon Original Stories ebook. 2019)

This story (actually a novelette, or perhaps a novella) is the first in a series of ten original ebooks about a nameless clairvoyant who fights evil.  Nameless (as he is called -- no relation to the Bill Pronzini detective) has no memory of his life prior to the last two years, nor, perhaps, does he know his own name.  He is a tool for a powerful unseen organization that has a technology far beyond what we know today -- a technology that allows him to know and to track really evil people.  Even Nameless's contact, known to Nameless only as Ace of Diamonds, could be a man, or a woman, or a machine.  Ace is the one who lays the groundwork for Nameless's missions and provides him with the high-tech equipment he needs.

I mentioned that nameless is a clairvoyant.  He can see into the past or into the future, visions that he can't control.  Often these visions are with him as an observer; sometimes these visions actually place him at the scene; in very rare instances, these visions have Nameless entering the head of the person committing evil, feeling what that person feels when committing heinous acts; Nameless fears that someday it will be this last kind of vision that will destroy his sanity and whatever innocence he might have left.

In this story, Nameless is sent to the small Texas town of Worstead, the hunting grounds of a sheriff who is a tone-cold murderer and a pedophile.  (Think Jim Thomson's Lou Ford, only far more psychotic.)  Sheriff Russell Soakes is the scion of a powerful local family.  He is well-liked and has been in office for years.  With a few exception, Soakes choses his victims from people passing through on the interstate, ones with no other family and ones that would not be missed.  Families who are traveling with young daughters.  Soakes has this thing about young girls -- he really likes them, and likes them in the worse possible manner.  Soakes has a large tract of property far from town, and Soakes has a bulldozer; he buries his victims alive in their cars so there is no trace of them anywhere.  When I say victim, I don't include the young girls; those he saves for special treatment.  He has been doing this for at least seventeen years and no one in the community has ever been the wiser.

Soakes has now set his sights on young Seraphina Demeter, the 10-year-old daughter of a young widow.  Seraphina's mother, Jennifer, is beginning to have suspicions about the way Soakes is acting around her daughter.  She tries to distance herself from Soakes and lets Soakes know about her suspicions.  Soakes warns her to be quiet, because accidents could happen and Seraphina would become an orphan and placed at the mercy of the state and Soakes has powerful contacts throughout the state.

It's a cat and muse game between Soakes and Nameless and Nameless is playing on Soakes's home court.  Despite the odds, things turn out terribly (and deservedly) had for Soakes.

A violent, scary, otherworldly story that one might expect from Koontz.  Nameless, as flawed both he and his actions might be, is an instrument of the light.  This one may be too visceral for some readers.

Nameless appears in two series of ebook original stories.  I have only read this first one, so I can't say whether this series concludes Nameless's quest, wrapping things up in a fine little bow.

Nameless:  Season One

• In the Heart of Fire
• Photographing the Dead
• The Praying Mantis Bride
• Red Rain
• The Mercy of Snakes
• Memories of Tomorrow

Nameless:  Season Two

• The Lost City of the Soul
• Gentle Is the Angel of Death
• Kaleidoscope
• Light Has Weight But Darkness Does Not
• Corkscrew
• Zero In

THE ROAD KILL CAFE

Foley, Alabama, is about an hour's drive from our house.  They have a Tanger's Factory Outlet there with a large mess of stores that interest me not at all, but Kitty always had a good time there, especially at the Vera Bradley outlet store.  Both girls and our granddaughters also like the place  -- lots of shoe stores and a place that sells rubber chickens for dogs, as well as a place where you can get fudge.  So we take a family trip out there serval times a year.  (Foley also has a pretty neat used book store [yea!], and OWA ( a large amusement park and entertainment complex [meh]), and a Lambert's restaurant (family dining where the waiters throw rolls at the customers from across the room  -- the food is okay and kids love the idea of catching dinner rolls on the fly).  But the main attraction for my family is the outlet mall.

So why am I telling you all this?  Because before we get to Foley we go through a small town called Elberta.  The main drag in Elberta is Route 98 and the downtown section takes up just a couple of blocks.  There, on the left, as you go through to Foley, is the Road Kill Cafe -- an unassuming hole in the wall that never seemed to be open.  This made us wonder if the place was permanently closed, but, over the years, there it was -- unchanged --every time we drove through.  We got curious and eventually Christina looked it up on the internet.  The Road Kill Cafe was a going concern but it was only open from 10 to 12:30; the internet didn't give her much more information than that.  With a name like that, and armed with the knowledge that it was actually in business, we just had to try it out.  So...

Road trip.

We got there at 10:30, frustratingly later than we had intended (slow-pokey drivers and an unexpected traffic jam for no reason we could discern slowed us down).  Christina, myself, Amy, Erin and Trey.  Walt stayed home to get Jack to whatever summer thing he had scheduled, Jessie had to work, and something came up and Mark needed to be somewhere later that morning.  The five of us entered the cafe, fully expecting to met Larry, Darryl, and Darryl.  Au contraire.

It turned out the Road Kill Cafe was a buffet-style restaurant (who knew?)and the place was packed.  A waitress cornered us as we came in and took our drink orders (sweet tea or soft drink).  We managed to find a table.  The food was good old Southern cooking, and plenty of it.  Porkchops smothered in gravy, fried chicken, cut green beans with bacon, mashed potatoes, some sort of Spanish rice, sweet corn, spinach, black-eyed peas, and a large salad bar, which included potato salad and cole slaw.  Everything was delicious.  People kept coming into the cafe and customers kept going back for seconds; I watched one man build a mountain of mashed potatoes on his plate, nothing else, just mashed potatoes; he seemed very happy.  For dessert, there were two kinds of cake and some soft serve ice cream; the ice cream was delicious, although it tended to melt fast -- you can't have everything.  The buffet menu changes daily, and the cafe remains open until 1 pm on Sundays, for the church crowd.

There were customers of all ages there, but the majority seemed to be the entire over-55 population of Elberta.  (The population of Elberta was 1,498 according to the 2010 census, by the way.)The Road Kill Cafe was the morning meeting place for the town.  Everybody seemed to know everybody else and everybody was super-friendly.  The restaurant staff made you feel at home.   There were pictures on the wall of the local youth teams the Cafe supports.

The cost?  About fifteen bucks a head.  Before you pay, each diner has to pick a token out of a cloth bag; if you get a special token, your meal is discounted.  People over ninety years of age eat free -- there were two nonagenarians chomping down at on table.

After we left, we hit the factory outlet for a bit.  On the return home, about 1:30, parking spaces in from of the cafe were empty and the place once again looked deserted.

I highly recommend this place.  Great food and a great community feel.  the only drawback was that the seats on the chairs were pretty well stained -- something I did not notice until it was pointed out to me.  On the place side, I was not hungry for the rest of the day, eating nothing else until my 6:00 a.m. bowl of corn flakes this morning.

Now for another point of view.

While we were there, Amy texted her mother.  The conversation was as follows:

AMY:  What in the holy southern hell have we done.  

I don't think this is an experience, AJ [AJ is the family name for Jessie; it stands for "Aunt Jessie"], you will be remiss in not having.

So...it is a buffet.  The seats are disturbingly stained.  The food partially congealed. amalgamus [sic] and unlabeled in a way that is confusing and deeply southern  The staff is very nice.  Pop [that's me] has created an abomination of a food-touching plate [Amy does not like to have her food touched] that consists of, to the naked eye, shredded loose cheddar cheese, several types of olives, gravy (??), and fried chicken,  Bink [Christina -- another family name] tried to imitate someone holding several plates in their hands (like waiters do) but did not accompany the gesture with words.  Erin was under the impression Bink was about to lead the table in prayer.  This resulted in much giggling.  I am looking forward to the blackberry frozen yogurt.

JESSIE:  [smiley face emoji] tp "So...it is a buffet.  the seats are disturbingly s..."

I am so glad you went because your updates are keeping me entertained during this zoom call.  [Jessie's work involved numerous boring zoom calls about budgets]

AMY: [some sort of other emoji but I'm not sure what it represents because I am old] to "I am so glad you went because your update are keep..."

The corn muffin was yummy.  the gravy (//) is surprisingly good.  We completely lost Trey to the food, he has gone nonverbal and tapped into deep southern roots in the way Nana [Kitty] began to turn feral in McGuire's [an Irish restaurant in Pensacola] the first time.  the staff is SUPER nice.  There seem [sic] to be regulars and they know them by name.

JESSIE:  Oh, I would have loved to have been there for the giggles.

AMY:  Pop has cleared his plate with a speed and gusto rarely known to the common man.  Bink says she did not know if he like [sic] it but he certainly ate it.

To paint a word picture, the atmosphere is very "Methodist Church Basement After the Service Core".  This might be why Erin thought Bink was going to led the family in prayer.  I am having flashbacks.

We are pleasantly pleased by the actual food. Erin and I say that we would eat here again.  Pop is freeloading and is neck deep in a slice of unlabled cake [it was a spice cake; a little bit dry but very tasty].  We have yet to discover where the possum on the menu is.  [evidently an in-joke amongst the staff.]

Bink is wearing a skirt and the seats are, as mentioned earlier, distressingly stained in the kind of all over portion of the chair.  she is perched with about one sixteenth of a butt cheek on her chair.

Strange parting ritual:  we all picked a poker chip out of a crown royal bag.  Not sure what for but none of us won anyway.

CHRISTINA [later]:  A lady is holding the tiniest, fluffiest black kitten in T.J. Maxx.

*****

And that was our Road Kill adventure.  I'd go back.

OVERLOOKED FILM: THE BISHOP MURDER CASE (1929)

Ogden Nash may not have been far off the mark when he wrote, "Philo Vance needs a kick in the pants."  And Raymond Chandler wrote that Vance was "the most asinine character in detective fiction."  The monocle wearing, know everything, supercilious Vance was the very popular detective in a series of novels by S. S. van Dine, marking a transition in the detective story to the (almost) modern era.  (The early Ellery Queen, for instance, was a Vance clone.)  Vance appeared in twelve novels; towards the end, his popularity began to fade as most mature works and more mature characters began to appear.

Vance appeared in fifteen films between 1929 and 1947.  Four of the first five films starred William Powel; the third film, The Bishop Murder Case, featured Basil Rathbone in the leading role.

A man nicknamed "Cock Robin" is found with an arrow in his heart at an archery range.  Next to the body is a chess piece, a bishop.  More murders follow, each accompanied by a nursery rhyme.  It's up to Philo Vance to unravel the mystery.

Also staring Leila Hyams and Roland Young.  Look closely and you may spot noted screenwriter (Dark Passage, The Petrified Forest, An Affair to Remember) and film director (Destination Tokyo, Broken Arrow, 3:10 to Yuma) Delmer Daves in a minor acting role.

Scripted by Lenore J, Coffee and directed by David Burton (stage direction) and Nick Grinde (screen direction).

Enjoy matching wits with one of the most irritating detectives in history.

https://archive.org/details/BishopMurderCase

DAVID "STRINGBEAN" AKEMAN (1915-1973)

Remember Hee-Haw?  You do?  then you must remember "Stringbean," one of the most popular main cast members of that show.  He was born 109 years ago today...

"Hillbilly Fever"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlFmdepcH-I

"Cripple Creek Opry"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMHbTMOzsEA

"Fishin' Song"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZqBRVhav5I

"Liza Jane"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXnlFAa5E7o

"It's Mighty Dark to Travel"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgjzlvvD_7s

"20 Cent Cotton 90 Cent Meat"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxa0kVF_coE

"Hot Corn Cold Corn"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QXeMAhz3FQ

"Run Little Rabbit"  (with Earl Scruggs and Lester Flat)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uOy3WdT3mY

"Chewing Gum"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg3IWf7mVJs

"Mule Went Away with the Little Red Wagon"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXmTLjrIx4Q

"Me and My Ole Crow"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzloBAtkiOA

"Pretty Little Widow"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9WBdcGm-nA

"Good Old Mountain Dew"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIReUuXliNI

His career ended in tragedy when he and his wife Estelle were shot and killed by burglars at their Ridgetop, Tennessee, cabin.  their bodies were discovered the next morning by their friend and neighbor, Grandpa Jones.

Their deaths were memorialized in the song "The Ballad of Stringbean and Estelle" by Sam bush in 2009:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43Er1Pu37us

HYMN TIME -FATHER'S DAY EDITION

 Cody Johnson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teigJDySn2o

THE COBRA WOMAN (OCTOBER 1944)

 Here's a one-shpt. pocket sized Australian Comic book  containing two adventure stories.

"The One-Eyed Man" is a Shado McGraw adventure.  "Professor Dare, having discovered a formula for the production of an article of world-wide importance has photographed the formula on a sensidised eyeshade.  By this means he intends sending the formula overseas by a messenger wearing the eyeshade, hoping to evade a group of spies who are pout to obtain the formula.  Professor Dare has selected Shado McGraw yo act as the one eyed messenger."  Well, that's pretty vague, but not vague enough to realize that some shady work may be afoot.  And shady work there is!  It is discovered that someone has stolen the formula and substituted a gloating message in its place on the eye shade.  McGraw determines that two rival spies have been at work, Count Zaroli and Tony the Boney -- but which of them actually stole the formula?  This leads to a chase, with McGraw uttering the immortal line, "Hey!  Taxi!  Follow that car and make your old speedometer do its stuff!"  For reasons that make no sense to me, Tony the Boney's assistant Skeleton Jim has been disguising himself as McGraw.  Black hands reach out of a doorway and grab McGraw -- it's Moonshine, Tony the Boney's Negro thug (who, sadly is drawn to represent a large ape).  All this folderol means that Count Zaroli is the one who actually stole the formula, and Twisty (Tony the Boney's "information runner") knows where to find him.  McGraw grabs a handy dandy machine gun and holds Tony the Boney's crew at bay until the police arrive, but Tony the Boney "presses the wall -- a door opens and he disappears through it -- crayfish fashion"  Tony the Boney is going after Count Zaroli and the formula!   McGraw takes Moonshine with him and follows through the dark passage -- but Moonshine (doing his best Mantan Morland imitation) is afraid of the dark.  (During this passage, the dreaded "N" word is used.)  Zaroli tries to escape by plane, dropping a grenade on McGraw, but ends up wrecking his pane.  It's now up to McGraw to discover what Count Zaroli did with the formula.  Not to worry.  He does.

"The Cobra Woman" is billed as the first adventure of "Red" Steele...British Agent!  A dying man staggers into Red Steele's apartment and collapses, a knife in his back.  He is Captain Batlow of the British Intelligence Service in Aden.  His mysterious dying message, only that the Cobra-Woman will be in Aden that night.   Batlow's Arab slave boy Abdul had little to add.  Steele contacts the British Resident in Aden to inform him of the death.  Batlow's effects contained no papers.  Steele doubts that he had been killed by Arabs because the knife used to kill him was not curved and clues point to Batlow having come from Africa.  Steele guesses that Batlow had been investigating the "Assyrian affair."  Batlow had been the third man sent to investigate the frontier fights between "the Italians, the British, and so on" -- no two are dead and a third missing.  Steele is anxious to get his hands on whoever killed his friend.  In the meantime, there's a ball to be held at the residency that evening and Hedy Menar -- the riches woman in Africa, and possibly the most beautiful -- has been added to the guest list.  Could she be the mysterious Cobra Woman?  Of course she can.  And she's wearing a chain that belonged to Batlow!  Hedy Menar captures Steels, and threatens him with torture, but Abdul learns that she has captured Steele and brings help.  A few Sudanese (again, the "N" word!) were killed willy-nilly, but eventually (SPOILER ALERT!) the Cobra Woman is brought to day.

We are promised further adventures of both Shado McGraw and "Red" Steele, presumably in other one-shots from the publisher.

We are also treated to two one-page humor (excuse me, humour) strips, both by Eric Potter:  "Young Bill" and "Wombat Flat."

As you read this comic book, be aware of the sensibilities of both the time and place.

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=90390&comicpage=&b=i

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HAROLD KEANE!

When my late father-in-law was little he truly believed all the flags were on display because of his birthday.  I never found out who really disabused him of that notion.

Harold was of those called the "Greatest Generation."  His father was County Cork Irish and left the Auld Sod one day for unexplained reasons -- his two brothers also left the same day, one for Canada and the other for Australia; suspicious circumstances, indeed.  Harold's father settled on the Massachusetts South South, married, worked in the shoe industry, and had a bunch of kids.  A family story -- possibly true -- was that he had a chance to join up in a start-up company called Thom McAn but declined because he thought it was too risky.

Harold's father was probably an alcoholic, which left the heavy lifting of raising a family to his wife.  Their oldest boy, Bob, caught polio at age eleven.  His mother was told that he would never survive, then that he would never get out an iron lung, then that he would never be able to get around or hold a job.  With her Irish stubbornness and grit, she proved them wrong -- Bob did all of these and -- although he did not have use of his legs, managed to get along quite nicely on crutches and lived into his eighties after a long and successful career at Raytheon.  The youngest child, Claire, had Down syndrome.  Her mother was told that she would not live long and that should have to be institutionalized for what time she did have.  Again, the naysayers were proved wrong; Claire lived far beyond her life expectancy and passed away at 43, living at home, hold down a job, and surrounded by a loving and dedicated family (I was one of the ones who loved Claire dearly -- she was a sweetheart).  In the middle, along with Harold, were two brothers and three sisters.  All were good people, talented and smart and happy with their own life choices.

When World War II broke, Harold and his cousin Eddie enlisted in the Navy.   They swapped off during parts of their physicals, Harold taking exams as Eddie for those portion they knew Eddie would fail, and vice versa.  Harold ended up in the Pacific Theater and was award a Bronze Star for bravery.  When Kitty was young he would regale her with humorous stories of his time in the service; he never spoke of the dark times or the scary times -- few people of that generation did.  After the service and married with tow very young children, he entered Georgia Tech to study engineering.  But he had never finished high school and when Georgia Tech discovered that, they tried to kick him out;  they couldn't and that was evidently something that grated on some school officials.

Harold worked most of his life for technical companies on contract to the military -- usually the Air Force.  His work was almost always hush-hush and he would be away from home for months at a time.  Whenever there was a family problem, Eileen had a telephone number to call and she would leave a message and that message would eventually be relayed to Harold; sometimes that took several days.  When Harold worked at Cape Canaveral, Eileen and the kids would be housed at a local motel or trailer park.  Sometimes Harold would wake Kitty and her brothers in the middle of the night and say that it was a great time to take a walk.  They would go down to a nearby beach and there they would watch, among other things, the first Gemini rocket take off.  Of course, Harold could never say why he wanted to take the kids for a walk because a lot of what he did was classified, but Kitty always appreciated being able to view a few moments of history. 

Harold was basically an easy-going man with a great sense of humor, but he was always one step away from County Cork Irish and had a seldom revealed Irish temper.  I was it flare up once or twice and was glad I was never its target -- once when the woman hired to make Kitty's wedding dress refused to pattern it according to her wished, and once when he had an encounter with a dishonest car salesman. (honesty and integrity were the mainsprings of Harold's being).

Harold died in his early eighties of pancreatic cancer, after having twice before appeared to have beaten that terrible disease.  He died as he wished, at home; no hospitals for him.  We were sad that he died a few days before his great-grandson Mark was born, because he would have loved Mark -- both as a baby, then a child, and finally a man we could always be justly proud of.  But I cannot be too sad, because when I think of Harold I automatically think of Mark and I realize that the Circle has not been broken.

Both Kitty and I were fortunate because he both had extraordinary fathers who stood head and shoulders above so many of the crowd.  (And I smile when I use the phrase "stood head and shoulder above the others" because Harold was typical county Cork Irish, with a build like a fireplug, short in height but tall in stature.)

Harold, it has been an honor knowing you and being a part of your family.

Today, as on every Flag Day, the family is off to gorge ourselves on ice cream, Harold's favorite treat (excepting, of course, bread pudding  liberally doused with whiskey).

FORGOTTEN BOOK: KEY OUT OF TIME

 Key Out of Time by Andre Norton (1963)

Last wek I reaveled in time.  A sunny day with soft breezes...a patio swing...a cold soft drink by my side...and a paperback science fiction novel by Andre Norton.  Suddenly, I was thrust back six decades to a time when I was reading that same novel, while gliding back and forth on a swing.  Because I was raised in Massachusetts, the cold soft drink was a "tonic," rather than a "soda," or even a "pop," or -- Gawd help us! -- a "phosphate."  But there I was, reliving my youth, and having a great time of it.

Call it memory if you like.  I call it time travel.

And time travel happens to have been the focus of Key Out of Time, the Andre Norton novel in question, the fourth and (for a long time, final) book of Norton's Time Traders series.  (Thirty-one years later, the series was revived [with co-writers] with Firehand [1994, with P. M. Griffin], Echoes in Time [1999, with Sherwood Smith], and Atlantis Endgame [2002, also with Sherwood Smith].  Sine the 1990s until her death in 2005, many of Norton's books were co-written, including new adventures featuring characters from some of her earlier series.)

Ross Murdock and Gordon Ashe are Time Agents, currently trying to solve the mystery of the planet Hawaika, a world of ocean dotted by archipelagos.  With them is Karara, a telepathic Polynesian girl, who has a psychic link to two Earthly dolphins, Tino-rau and Tauao.

Hawaika holds no intelligent native life, nor is there any archaeological evidence of there ever having such.  But records retrieved from an ancient wrecked spacecraft that one belonged to the Baldies -- a long-vanished extra-galactic race of conquerors indicate that a civilization once exited on the watery world.  Using time probes, Murdock and Ashe hope to discover what this race may have been and why it vanished so completely.  The deadline for doing is fast approaching and if if they do not get results, the Time Traders will be moving on to another planet.

While exploring a part of the ocean, Murdock discovers a large saucer-like depression on the sea floor.  the sides of the structure have clearly been made by some intelligent species.  The crew hastily assembles a Time Gate to visually probe the past.  First calibrated for 10,000 years earlier, they got a dim view of a distant citadel under attack by a group of ships.  Calibrating the probe for 300 years later, the citadel and all signs of life are gone, replaced by giant metallic pylons stretching to the sky.  Another 330 years later -- a full half century from their first probe -- all signs of intelligent life having ever been on the planet have been erased.

A sudden storm, stronger than an Earthly typhoon, strikes, and Murdock and Ashe, along with Karara and the dolphins, are sucked into the Time Gate.  Murdock regains consciousness, aware that Ashe had been thrust into the past with him, but with no sign of his partner anywhere around, nor was he aware that Karara and the dolphins had also fallen into the time trap..  What is all about Murdock, are the shattered remnants of the Time Gate, totally destroyed.  Murdock and Ashe -- wherever he was -- are hopelessly trapped in the past.  Soon he stumbles upon the Polynesian girl and her dolphins.

The native of Hawaika of ten millennia ago fall into two warring groups:  the Raiders, seafarers who hunt dangerous ocean beasts, while also raiding the land-dwelling Wreckers, who try to lure the Raiders' ships to destruction to be looted.  There is a third group on the planet -- the ancient race of the Foanna, who had lived on the planet before the coming of the other Hawaikans.  The Foanna are secretive and powerful, using both super-science and their awesome psychic powers to lord it over the Wreckers.  (They couldn't be bothered with the Riders.)

Unknown to everyone, into this mix are thrown the Baldies, working behind the scenes to ignite a full-scale war between the Wreckers and the Raiders. in the hopes that such a conflict might spill over to the Foanna.  For some reason, the Baldies are terrified of the Foanna and are afraid to directly confront them.  The Baldies on the planet are evidently an exploratory group that have not yet informed their leaders of the existence of a new planet to be conquered and destroyed.

It's up to the Time Scouts to rally the natives of Hawaika and defeat the Baldies before they can relay their findings to their masters.  Will their efforts work?  Or will the existence of a destroyed civilization some 10,000 year in the future mean that the Time Agents failed?  Can Murdock and Ashe change a predetermined future and set up a new time stream? 

We don't know, but by the novel's end, there is hope.

When I was a kid, the gateway to adult SF was through the books of either Robert A. Heinlein or though the books of Andre Norton.  Andre Norton's importance in the development of the genre cannot be understated.  And she told a rousing good tale -- one that can still time travel you back to your youth if you let it.

BBC RADIO: HAVE HIS CARCASE (1981)

 To celebrate the 131st birthday of Dorothy L. Sayers, here's the full BBC Radio adaptation of the Lord Pete Wimsey novel Have His Carcase, with Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter and Maria Aitkin as Harriet Vane.  (The 1987 television adaptation featured Edward Petherbridge and Harriet Walter in the roles.)

Hiking in the South West coast of England, Harriet discovers a body lying on a rock by the shore, with his throat cut.  She takes photos and collects the razor that evidently killed him, but by the time she returned with help the body had been washed away.  Lord Peter arrives to help Harriet in the investigation.  In this, the second novel with Harriet as a character, she is still spurning his romantic advances.

The novel -- which Barzun and Taylor praised, "saying the people, the motive, the cipher, and the detection are all topnotch" -- was adapted for the radio by Alistair Beaton.

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm7EhkpLotg

SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: YOU WERE PERFECTLY FINE

 "You Were Perfectly Fine"  by Dorothy Parker  (first published in The New Yorker, February 23, 1929; reprinted twice in The Evening Standard, on November 23, 1937, and on December 7, 1946; included in Parker's collections Laments of the Living, 1930, Here Lies:  The Collected Stories of Dorothy Parker, 1939, The Portable Dorothy Parker, 1944, and Complete Stories, 1995; included in many anthologies, including The Pocket Book of Modern American Short Stories, edited by Philip Van Doren Stern, 1943, Desert Island Decameron, edited by H. Allen Smith, 1945, The Harper Anthology of Fiction edited by Sylvan Barnet, 1991, Light and Lively, edited by Mira B. Felder, 1997, and The American Short Story and Its Writer:  An Anthology, edited by Ann Charters, 1999.

There's an old story about a farmer who has just returned from a weekend trip and he happened to meet his neighbor at the train station.  "Anything happen i town while I was gone?" he asked.  "Well, your dog died," he was told.  The farmer was shocked because he loved that dog.  "What happened/" he asked.  "Well, he was trampled by your horses."  The farmer was aghast.  "What?  How?"  "Well, they stampeded when your barn burned down."  "My barn?  How did that happen?"  "Well, it caught fire after your house burned down."  The farmer had to sit down from the shock.  "Well, it was set afire by some escaped prisoners who broke in and killed your wife."  The farmer lost all color and began to sob.  "My wife's dead?  I can't believe it.  How could this happen?  What are you telling?"  The neighbor looked the farmer squarely in the eye and replied, "Well, your dog died."

This is a very bad joke. So why am I telling it?

Basically it's the theme of Parker's abbreviated short story, "You Were Perfectly Fine."

A young man wakes up at four in the afternoon with a blazing headache after a night on the town.  He seats himself in the living room, muttering "Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh."  The clear-eyed girl on the couch says, "Not feeling well today?"  He admits he is not, and says he is worried about how he might have acted the night before.

"You were perfectly fine," she replied.

Slowly, she recounts what had happened.  The young man was perfectly funny.  Well, Jim Pierson took offense but was stopped before he socked the young man.  Don't worry, she said, the young man was perfectly fine.  And he did not make a pass at Elinor, although she was just a tiny bit annoyed once, when he pour calm-juice down her neck, but don't worry, you were perfectly fine.  He was also perfectly fine when he insisted on singing loudly throughout the entire evening, although the maitre d' thought police would come in and close the place.  And he was perfectly fine when he took offense as a necktie some old gentleman was wearing, and he was perfectly fine he insisted the waiter was his long-lost brother, changed at the cradle by a gypsy band, and he was perfectly fine he started to walk him and slipped in the ice and had a magnificent fall.  (That explains the pain in my..., the young man thought.)  And he was perfectly fine when they took a taxi and he insisted the cab take then round and round the park and admitted he never knew that he actually had a soul and that she had never known known his he actually felt about her and that the taxi ride was the most important thing ever to happen to either of them in their lives.  So, yes, the young man was perfectly fine.  The clear-eyed girl decided what the young man really needed then  was a whiskey and soda and went into the other room to make one.  And the young man kept repeating, "Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy."

A very brief and enjoyable tale, told with all of Parker's wit, available at many locations on the internet.

OVERLOOKED FILM: DR. RENAULT'S SECRET (1942)

 If you are looking for a nifty B-movie ape-into-man film, go no further.

Mad scientist Dr. Renauilt is played by George Zucco (who else?).  Renault experiments on an ape (gorilla?), turning him into an almost human, Noel (played by J. Carrol Naish), who becomes his deformed man servant, purportedly from Java.  Renault lives in an isolated French house with his beautiful niece Madelaine (Lynne Roberts).  Enter Larry Forbes (Shepperd Strudwick, billed as John Shepperd here), a young doctor engaged to Madelaine.  Because a storm has washed out the bridge to Renault's house, Forbes spends the evening at a local inn.  A man who took the room originally meant for Forbes is mysteriously killed.  The next day, at the house of Cr. Renault, Forbes feels that thee is  something strange about Noel but he can't put a finger on it.  Noel is also sending off vibes that he is attracted to Madelaine.  (Hmm.)  Renault has come to fear Noel and locks him in a cage to protect both Forbes and himself.  Noel, having the strength of a might ape, breaks out of the cage and follows Forbes and Madelaine to a local carnival; there he murders a pair of heckling villagers.  Forbes is getting suspicious and sneaks into Renault's laboratory and reads his secret notes about the experiment.  Renault catches him and threatens to kill him.  Noel arrives and kills Renault.  Then a gardener (Rogell, played by Mike Mazurki -- where'd he come from?) kidnaps Madelaine.  Noel follows them and kills the gardener, but not before he fires a fatal shot.  The end.

A fast-moving story with moody photography and tight direction, all of which places it above the typical Poverty Row horror melodrama.  And Naish gives us just the right blend of pathos and terror in his role.  As a bonus we get to see Ray Corrigan once again in his gorilla suit.

Although sometimes compared to Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau, Dr. Renault's Secret was actually based on the 1927 film The Wizard, which in turn was based on Gaston Leroux,s (he of The Phantom of the Opera) 1911 novel Balaoo.  Dr. Renault's Secret was released as part of a double feature with The Undying Monster (based on Jessie Douglas Kerruish's classic werewolf novel).

Ably directed by Harry Lachman (Charlie Chan in Rio, Dante's Inferno, The Yellow Mask); this was his final turn at directing.  Scripted by William Bruckner (Riders of the Purple Sage, Sundown Jim, and a slew of 50s and 60s television shows, including 36 episodes of The Loretta Young Show) and Robert F. Metzler (Circumstantial Evidence, The Undercover Woman, and -- with Bruckner -- Riders of the Purple Sage and Sundown Jim).

A good way to pass an idle 53 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL04ILo6fh0

INCOMING

 Incoming:

• Max Beerbohn, Zuleika Dobson; or, An Oxford Love Story.  Literary satire by "the incomparable Max."  "From the moment she set foot in Oxford, to stay with her grandfather (Warden of Judas), the lovely Zuleika played havoc with the undergraduates --and with none more than with the Duke of Dorset, a character whom Ouida would have been pleased to invent.  Max Beerbohn has called this delicious novel of his 'An Oxford Love Story', and for fifty years"  [-- 113 years now.  JH --] "it has delighted successive generations by its eloquence and wit."
• John Brunner, Endless Shadow, bound with The Arsenal of Miracles by Gardner F. Fox.  An Ace SF Double.  The Brunner was first published as The Bridge to Azrael in Amazing Stories, in February 1964; it was later revised and expanded as Manshape, 1982.  "Two worlds in conflict.  Azrael -- Where pain was the only reality, and murder was ot a crime but a ritual.  Ipewell --Where motherhood was honored and manhood meant a life of servitude and fear.  These two worlds were at the heart of a taut and dangerous situation which threatened to explode, and Jorgen Thorkild, director of the Bridge Systems that connected forty worlds among the stars, had to try tp tame them.  But Thorkild faced still another problem:  the loss of his own sanity..."  Brunner, even at his most slap-dash pulp and PBO heights, was always a skilled writer producing highly readable copy.  The Fox was reprinted in 2018 as by Gardner Francis Fox.  "When Earth's stellar empire was attacked by the Lyanir, a powerful race from the uncharted stars, it was Bran Magannon, High Admiral of Space, who met their battle-challenge.  He saved the Empire, but he also fell in love with the beautiful young Lyanirn queen Peganna, and to the people of the Empire his name became that of a traitor.  Now he was a lone, brooding outcast among Empire's outpost worlds, called Bran the Wanderer.  Then Peganna of the Silver Hair returned and told him of a fabled cache of deadly weapons left eons ago by the long-dead race of the Crenn Lir.  She wanted those weapons for her people, to use against Empire if need be.  Bran the Wanderer laughed, and showed her hoe to find them."  Fox was  prolific novelist in a variety of genres:  science fiction, sword and sorcery, historical, adventure, erotica, among them.. His science fiction tended to be very juvenile -- almost comic bookish.  Fitting, since his major claim to fame was as a writer of more than 4000 comic book stories, including over 1500 for DC comics, where he co-created the original Flash, Hawkman, Zantana, Doctor Fate, and the original Sandman, as well as creating The Justice Society of America before reforming them into the Justice League of America.  Fox also introduced the concept of the multiverse to SC comics.
• Kenneth Bulmer, The Key to Venudine, bound with Mercenary from Tomorrow by Mack Reynolds.  Another Ace SF Double (I picked up seven of these doubles for 50 cents -- less 15% because I'm an old fart).  The Bulmer is the fourth in his "Keys to the Dimensions" series.  "Rodro's men were pushing past, were blundering with reeking weapons into the room to kill and take the princess away.  Lai half stretched up from the princess's restraining arms.  The room was empty of other life apart from Sir Fezius and the two knights now lifting their swords, ready to cut down Lai.  A popping noise sounded like a drum beating.  A man appeared in the middle of the room.  One moment he was not there, the next he stood there, holding a bulky stick in his arm, peering about with a white face.  He said something that sounded like 'Skeet.'  The next instant the room resounded with an avalanche roar and a hellfire blast of scorching flame."  Bulmer was one of the "Piccadilly Cowboys," a group of British writer who produced a gazillion paperback originals in numerous genres under a slew of pseudonyms and house names, many of which were westerns, hence the nickname "Cowboys;" many of their books could easily be categorized as "trash" novels, akin to the violent men's action-adventure paperbacks that were appearing simultaneously ion this side of the Atlantic.  Although Bulmer's more than 160 novels were mainly in the science fiction field, he also penned westerns, historicals, and war novels.  In the science fiction field, he may best be remembered for his 52 novels in the Dray Prescott series (some of which were published as by "Alan Burt Akers" or by "Dray Prescott."  Outside the field, he may be remembered for the fourteen novels in his Fox series of naval adventures, as by "Adam Harvey."  Bulmer was also a talented editor, taking over the reins in the New Adventures in SF series from John Carnell.  The Reynolds is the first novel in the Joe Mauser series, and was expanded from Reynolds' novella "Mercenary" (Analog Science Fact -> Science Fiction, April 1962).  "In the lotus-land of People's Capitalism, Earth circa 21st Century, where telly viewers popped dream-inducing trank pills, what could be wrong?  There were basic staples for everyone.  Work was a forgotten pastime.  Action was all in a flip of a switch.  Nothing could be wrong in this Utopia for which men through the ages had strived.  Nothing, that is, but movement.  The class system had petrified.  You were born a Lower or a Middle...or if you were one of the lucky few, an Upper, with certain special privileges.  But there's always an upstart rebel, like Joe Mauser, who'd risk life itself to rise in caste.  And in lotus-land that's how it was.  Only by hiring oneself out as a mercenary. to fight in the prime-time programmed wars that telly viewers craved for their violence and gore, could Joe Mauser move up the social level.  that is, if he lived that long..."  At one time, Reynolds -- who specialized in combining economics, politics, and action in his stories for John W. Campbell. was the most popular writer for Analog.
• Lin Carter,  Tower of Medusa, bound with Kar Laballa by George H. Smith.  Another Ace SF Double.  Fanboy Carter never came across a fantasy writer or genre he did not try to emulate.  This time it's planetary romance and interstellar roguery.  " 'You are the most notorious and celebrated jewel thief in the Nine Stars.  It was Kirin of Tellus whole stole the Nine Diamonds of Phovia from the dragon-guarded citadel besides the Flaming Sea.  It was you who carried off the tiara of the Queen of Zodah, a trifle composed of eleven thousand matched fire-rubies, with an emperor's ransom...I want you to steal something for me.  I am a doctor of the Minor Thaumaturgies and I am come from Trevelon.  The jewel we are after is called the Medusa.  It is concealed within a structure called the Iron Tower which lies amidst the barren wastes of the uplands of Pelizon, guarded by a maze of traps and deadfalls.  We have, over centuries, and at frightful labor, obtained very precise and complete blueprints of the Tower...There will be no danger.  No danger at all...'  The softly modulated voice of the starship interrupted the conversation.  'I have been under attack for the past 12.03 seconds,' the ship observed calmly."  Not to be confused with the better-known and (possibly) more talented SF writer George O. Smith, George H. Smith penned both science fiction and soft-core eroticism.  "Kar Kaballa was the new king of the Gogs and the rumor was that he would lead his barbaric cannibalistic band of Northern nomads down on a mad crusade against the civilized nations of the world.  Cultured people found this improbable -- but they were soon to know better.  Their weapons were good, about as good as you can get in a Victorian army, which was what the period was.  But there was a traveler in town with a weapon he said was better, an odd chap with a thing called a Gatling Gun from a country nobody had ever heard of called the United States of America.  The question was could this outsider, this Major Churchward, sell his unearthly import to the Empire soon enough -- or would Kar Kaballa become the new Tamerlane of a bloody-dawned Twentieth Century?"
• Samuel R. Delany, The Ballad of Beta-2, bound with Alpha Yes, Terra No! by Emil Petaja.  another Ace SF Double.  The Delany half runs to just a little over 90 pages:  "Centuries ago, the Star Folk has left Earth on twelve spaceships on a generations-long mission to colonize the distant stars.  Ten of the ships had reached their destination.  Two had failed -- and nobody, in the hundreds of years since the disaster, had the slightest inkling of what had happened.  Joneny, a student of galactic anthropology, was assigned the problem.  It seemed routine to him.  Just dome faster-than-light travel to the two wrecked ships, a bit of poking around and then writing up his findings.  But he was ill-prepared for what he found in space at the site of the two ancients wrecks.  One, the Sigma-9, was not subject to the laws of time-stasis (the only exception he knew of), and it was covered entirely with a mysterious green fire that shimmered so much that it seemed alive.  And the other ship, the Beta-2, was nowhere to be seen."  It's hard to explain the excitement Delany and other new writers of the Sixties brought to the field.  You really had to have been there.  The Petaja:  "Earth's space thrust has taken her further and further out, grasping for habitable planets to house her over-flowing population.  She had come to the rim of the Alpha Centauri system, where she knew she could find new homes.  Only, she would never reach them.  the Alphans had been watching Earth for centuries, seeing its technological advances and its moral stagnation.  They had erected a barrier against her attempts to enter their system.  Finally, they decided she was a canker on the face of the universe, and they decreed her total extinction!  Only a small group dissented and they sent one Alphan, Thovy, to save all of Earth..."  This was Petaja's first published novel.  Petaja, once a (rather distant) member of the Lovecraft circle, was of Finnish descent and would incorporate that country's lore for many of his future SF novels.
• Harry Harrison, The QE2 Is Missing.  suspense thriller "The QU2 is missing.  On board: - $250,000,000 in diamonds, the treasure of Nazi war criminals, wrenched from Jewish lives; - Joachim Wielgus, the monstrous, shadowy paymaster to the Nazis in exile; - General Alfred Stroesser, the bloodstained 'lifetime president' of Paraguay, drawn by greed into a desperate gamble; - Hank Greenstein, the American lawyer who finds himself, and his fiancee, caught in the ever-deadlier whirlpool of a tremendous clandestine arms deal; - Uzi Drezner, the enigmatic elusive Israeli who has sworn to seize Weilgus, no matter what.  Before the great ship is found, 2,000 people disappear -- and the future of nations is changed."
• David G. Hartwell & Glenn Grant, editors, Northern Stars:  The Anthology of Canadian Science Fiction.  Collects 27 stories form 1973 to 1994, plus two non-fiction pieces. Authors include Judith Merril, Phyllis Gotlieb, Dave Duncan, Spider Robinson, William Gibson, Michael G. Coney, Donald M. Kingsbury, Charles de Lint, Garfield Reeves-Stevens, Robert J. Sawyer, Robert Charles Wilson, and Candas Jane Dorsey.
• Philip E. High, The Mad Metropolis, bound with Space Captain by "Murray Leinster" (Will F. Jenkins).  Another Ace SF Double.  High was a British SF writer who began contributing to the field in his forties.  The Mad Metropolis  has also been published as Double Illusion.  "Given:  Earth 400 years from now -- a rotten society in which mankind is doomed to die out.  A solution ot the problem -- an ultra-intelligent computer to govern humanity.  One man of seemingly average intelligence, but with an incredible I.Q. potential.  And you have:  A corrupt society turned into a world where there is no corruption, because Mother Machine knows what's best for her human children and does it.  Where that same all-powerful computer is rapidly turning men into zombies.  And where the world's only hope turns out to be the one outlawed not-average man.  Result:  An unusual science-fiction thriller."  The Leinster was first serialized in Amazing Stories in October and November 1965 under the title Killer Ship.  "Trent, captain of the space freighter Yarrow, came from a long line of spaceship commanders...and all of them had been troubled by pirates.  Due to the nature of the space drive, ships in flight were in more danger to each other than from anything else.  It was this ability of one ship's drive to blow out any drive near it that made space pirates so difficult to eradicate.  But this time Trent went into overdrive with a special device aboard -- one that would turn the tables and make space permanently barred to pirates.  Trent was skeptical himself -- and his skepticism stood him in good stead when he found himself more pirate bait than pirate baiter -- and his secret weapon a space-warping double-edged boomerang."  For good old Sf adventure, it's hard to beat Leinster.  ALSO, Philip E. High, The Time Mercenaries, bound with Anthropol by Louis Trimble.  Yet another Ace SF Double.  In The Time Mercenaries, "There had been one war scare too many and so the human race used genetic sorcery to delete aggressive tendencies from its heredity.  But  now mankind was faced with an alien enemy so superior, so ruthless, that it was fight or be wiped out...and the humans could not fight.  They couldn't even give orders to their robots tp reproduce weapons.  The only possibility was to call up and bring back to life a museum exhibit, the submarine Euphrates and its battle-trained crew.  The ship had been sunk a thousand years before and had been preserved to show the decadence of violence --violence which was the only hope against an enemy to whom living space was all-important and human life was only superfluous.   (Has anyone else noticed a major plot fallacy from what we've been given here?)  Trimble was a prolific author of over fifty books -- mostly forgettable westerns and mysteries -- before he published Anthropol, his first science fiction novel:  "There was a double urgency message from the Chief waiting for Vernay, Anthropol's trouble-shooter.  The new assignment was a critical one -- get control of the totalitarian-feminist government on Ujvila -- and do it before the Galactic-Military brought the new-found planet under Federation control their own way -- by slamming in an invasion force and destroying half the planet.  Gal-Mill didn't like Anthropol's slow scientific methods; the natives were afraid on aliens and certainly didn't want Vernay's intervention; and the underground opposition had too much to hide.  So it looked like this mission was going to be one of Verney's hardest. if not his last."  Sounds more than a bit sexist to me, although I suppose a feminist government can be just as corrupt and soul-sapping as any other kind.
• "Alice Kimberly" (Cleo Coyle), The Ghost and Mrs. McClure.  Paranormal cozy mystery, the first in The Haunted Bookshop series.  "Young widow Penelope Thornton-McClure and her old Aunt Sadie are making ends meet by managing a mystery bookshop -- a quaint Rhode Island landmark -- rumored to be haunted.  Pen may not believe in ghosts, but she does believe in good publicity -- like nabbing Timothy Brennan for a book signing.  But soon after the bestselling thriller writer revels a secret about the store's link to a 1940s murder, he keels over dead -- and right in the middle of the store's new Community Events space.  Who gives Mrs. McClure the first clue that it was murder?  The bookstore's full-time ghost -- a PI murdered on the very spot more than fifty years ago.  Is he a figment of Pen's overactive imagination?  Or is the oddly likable fedora-wearing specter the only hope Pen has to solve the crime?  You can bet our everlasting life on it..."
• David Morrell, Shimmer.  Thriller.  "When police officer Dan Page's wife disappears, her trail leads to Rostov, a remote Texas town where unexplained phenomena attract hundreds of spectators each night.  Not merely curious, these onlookers are compelled o reach this tiny community and gaze at the mysterious Rostov Lights.  But more than the faithful are drawn there.  A gunman begins shooting at the lights, screaming, "Go back to hell where you came from!" then turns his rifle on the innocent bystanders.  As more and more people are drawn to the scene of the massacre, the stage is set for even greater bloodshed.  To save his wife, Page must solve the mystery of the Rostov Lights.  In the process, he uncovers a deadly government secret dating back to the First World War.  The lights are mote dangerous than anyone ever imagined, but even more deadly are those who try to exploit forces beyond their control."
• Otto Penzler, editor, The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps.  Doorstop anthology (1144 pages of double column small type) with 52 stories and two novels (Carroll John Daly's The Third Murderer and Frederick Nebel's episodic novel The Crimes of Richmonnd.  (I have this one buried in a box somewhere but I can't find it and I wanted to read Erle Stanley Gardner's "The Monkey Murder," one of two stories I haven't read in a rare ESG collection, The Bird in Hand and Four Other Stories, a 1969 book published by Walter Black (the Detective Book Club publisher) for The Ellery Queen Mystery Club; the other story in The Bird in Hand that I haven't read, "A Tip for Scuttle" is available in the Crippen & Landru ESG collection Hot Cash, Cold Clews, and by the time this is posted, I will also have read that.)  The Penzler book also contains most of the usual pulp detective suspects.  Five bucks for a used copy is a heck of a bargain.
• "John Rackham" (John Phillifent), We. the Venusians, bound with Water of Thought by Fred Saberhagen.  Yes, another Ace SF Double.  Among other works, Britisher Rackham published a gazillion juvenile-ish SF books for the Tit-Bit SF Library in the fifties, and wrote at least three The Man from U.N.C.L.E. novelizations; he also penned a slew of books for the Ace SF Double line.  "Anthony Taylor sat watching the wealthy Borden Harper on his multi-vision screen.  'Is there any more news about the -- the Greenies?' the interviewer was asking.  'None at all,' Harper dropped his voice to a deep sober sincerity.  'We keep on trying.  But I'm afraid we are just going to have to face the unpleasant fact that the greenies are nothing more than human-looking animals...'  Anthony could contain his detestation no longer.  snatching the cushion, he rammed it violently into the speaker grill, wishing he could ram it down Harper's throat.  Harper and the other humans on Venus, milking it of its miraculous beans, using the green-skinned natives to cultivate the crop, because that's all they could be trained to do.  They had no language, no human-style intelligence, no cultural potential, nothing.  Anthony grabbed up a dummy piano -keyboard savagely.  He struck out a crisp-edged series of chords, double handed, up the keyboard.  The notes were sharp. precise sounds.  'Not bad...' he said, aloud. 'For an animal.' "  The Saberhagen was the second novel published by the future best-selling author.  It was revised and expanded twenty years later.  "One explorer had already disappeared on the primitive planet, Kappa.  So the day a second Terrestrial, Jones, ran away after drinking the sacred Kappan water that he had coerced the natives into giving him, the remaining planetologists meant to find out just what was going on.  Questioning the aliens only deepened the mystery.  For they said that what Jones had drunk would enable him to communicate with his animal ancestors.  It was their most precious and sacred possession.  But how could it affect a person never born on Kappa, a person without such 'animal' ancestors?  What had really happened to Jones and the other man -- and what would happen if either of them managed to bring this incredible liquid back to Earth?"
• James Reasoner, Doom of the Dark Delta.  Sword and sorcery novella, the first in the forthcoming Snakehaven series.  ""Washed ashore on a jungle-choked island in the delta of the mouth of the great Jehannamun River, Jorras Trevayle has survived an attack by pirates only to find himself in a desperate race to rescue a beautiful young woman from the sinister plans of an evil sorcerer and save himself from becoming the prey of a Nloka Maccumbo -- one of the giant serpents raised by the inhabitants of this bizarre, perilous land."  If that wasn't enough, the nifty cover art sold me on this one.  
• John Saul, The Unwanted.  Early horror novel from a best-selling author.  "Cassie Winslow is sixteen,  Cassie has just lost her mother in a tragic accident.  Now Cassie, lonely and frightened, has come across the country to live with the father she barely knows and his new family in tiny False Harbor on Cape Cod.  For Cassie, the strange, unsettling dreams that come to her suddenly in the dead of night are merely the beginning.  For very soon, Cassie Winslow will come to know the terrifying powers that are her gift.  And in the village of False Harbor nothing will ever be the same..."  Saul received a lot of flack for making a career of children-in-jeopardy horror novels, but the controversy never hurt his sales.
• John Scalzi, The Last Colony.  Science fiction, an "Old Man's War" novel.  "John Perry, the hero of John Scalzi's debut novel, Old Man's War, has retired with his wife and daughter to one of humanity's many colonies.  It's a good life, but something's...missing.  when John and Jane are asked to lead a new colony world, they jump at the chance to explore the universe once more.  But nothing is as it seems.  Perry and the new colony are pawns in an interstellar game of diplomacy and war between humanity's Colonial Union and a new, seemingly unstoppable alien alliance that has demanded and end to all human colonization.  As these gambits rage above, on the ground Perry struggles to to keep his colonists alive in the face of threats both alien and familiar.  For his family's survival, and everyone else's, Perry must unravel the web of lies, half-truths, and deception spun around him and uncover the colony's shocking true purpose -- lest it become, truly, the last colony of the human race."
• Harry Turtledove and Martin H. Greenberg, editors, The Best Alternative History Stories of the 20th Century.  Fourteen stories not really covering the entire 20th century.  Categorically, t starts with Ward Moore's 1952 "Bring the Jubilee," then jumps to a 1967 Poul Anderson story, then to Jack Chalker's 1979 "Dance Band on the Titanic."  Then  six stories from the 80s and four from the 90s, ending with 2000's "Suppose They Gave a Peace" by Susan Schwartz.  Good stories all, but a pretty self-limiting selection.