Monthly Archives: February 2016

Forgotten Book: Carter & Lovecraft by Jonathan L. Howard (2015)

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With the name Carter & Lovecraft, you know this book has got to be weird.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 178th in my series of Forgotten Books.

Late last year I began to hear some chatter about this book. I liked the title Carter & Lovecraft but I wasn’t sure what it was about. Did it deal with Lin Carter and the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series? I wasn’t sure. And I never saw the book. Until Valentine’s weekend when I was attending ConDFW in Dallas.

ConDFW was celebrating its 15th anniversary and I believe I have been to all of them. Over the last 43 years, I have attended a large number of conventions, mostly in Texas, but I have gotten little afield from there. Anyway, ConDFW has a primarily literary focus and I have a good time there seeing old friends and trying to make some new ones.

Anyway, Adventures in Crime and Space had Carter & Lovecraft for me. I loved the cover by Ervin Serrano. Tentacle-lee things are always interesting on covers, don’t you think? When I saw it, I was pretty sure it was going home with me.

I opened up the book to read the flaps and discovered that I had other books by the writer, Jonathan L. Howard. Now I had three names to conjure with – Howard (a favorite of mine since 1967), Lovecraft (since 1968) and Carter (never a real fan of his writing but his period as editor of the adult Fantasy Series was wonderful). And then I see that Jonathan L. Howard was the author of the Johannes Cabal series of novels – Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, Johannes Cabal the Detective, Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute, and The Brothers Cabal. I have the first two volumes (which also had great covers) but I had not read them. There was a quirky quality to them that appealed to me. I will now have to investigate the other two volumes and give them all a read.

Carter & Lovecraft (to get back to the book) deals with former policeman Dan Carter who has been involved in tracking down a serial killer called the Child-Catcher. While he and his partner are securing the scene, his partner talks to the killer and soon ends up killing himself. This is totally unexpected and bothers Dan a lot. He decides to retire from the force and become a private investigator.

The PI world is not Marlowe and Spade. It’s more divorce cases and skip tracing. Until the day a lawyer shows up and tells him that he is the sole heir to the estate of one Alfred Hill of Providence. Hill has been missing for seven years and has been declared dead. Carter has never heard of Hill and has no idea why he has gotten this legacy. But it involves a house. So he decides to check out the house and drives to Providence and finds that it’s not just a house. It is an antiquarian bookstore, Hill’s Books.

Inside the bookstore is a young African American woman, Emily Lovecraft. She is the last blood relation of H. P. Lovecraft, who was a great uncle of some sort. She’s heard all the stuff about him – his weird writings, his racism, and his misogyny, all of it. She is surprised to see Carter and to hear that Alfred Hill has been declared dead. Hill was her employer and had not been seen for a while, but she just thought he was eccentric.

Carter mentions the lawyer and brings out his paperwork, which appears to be legitimate to Lovecraft’s high powered boyfriend. Carter and Lovecraft reach an easy truce and Carter suddenly finds himself in a partnership with the woman.

Then the murders start. Not just any murders, but truly odd ones. A math professor drowns inside his car. Except that there is not any water in the car or in the lungs. And a casino pit boss in Atlantic City throws a young man out because he is defying the laws of probability at a roulette wheel. As he is escorted out, the man plays four slot machines side-by-side, hitting the maximum jackpots on each. Astronomical odds against that happening. And, soon after, the pit boss is killed when, while eating his dinner, he suddenly gains about 700 pounds and literally explodes within his office, just like Mr. Creosote in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life.

Oddly enough, someone called Dan Carter on the math professor’s phone just after the murder and he finds himself deep in the investigation. This leads him to William Colt, an odd graduate student who has a cube of aluminum that isn’t quite right.

From here, the story gets wonderfully weird. Insane non-Euclidian geometry was always one of my favorite parts of the Lovecraft stories. And while it plays a part here, I was surprised that this novel does not draw on the Cthulhu Mythos stuff but rather on the Dunsanian fantasies Lovecraft wrote featuring the fictional dreamer Randolph Carter. Only, perhaps not quite fictional as Dan Carter appears to be a descendant who also suffers from odd dreams.

This was a very fun and very odd novel with lots of Lovecraftian lore in it. The ending is truly wild. I think it’s perhaps the best of this type of novel since T. E. D. Klein’s The Ceremonies so many years ago. I may still like the Klein book slightly better but they are both in good company.

If this sounds like your sort of insanity, I’d say, give it a try. As always, your dream journey may have different mileage than mine, but be sure to get green stamps along the way.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Forgotten Films: The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything (1980)

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The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything: Not a very good movie then and not a very good movie now.

This is the 156th in my series of Forgotten, Obscure or Neglected Films

One of my favorite writers of all time is John D. McDonald. I’ve read a lot of his books; at some point I will read many more. I read all the Travis McGee novels, but my all time favorite John D. McDonald novel is The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything. I’ve read it several times and I reviewed it as one of my Forgotten Books at some point in the past. I’m not sure when, because several of my reviews were lost when the Missions Unknown site succumbed to whatever evil it was that killed it. Some reviews had not been backed up (my very bad) and there are several which are not available in archived versions of the site.

So, when this book was announced as a made-for-TV movie in 1980, I was there waiting. I watched it. I was appalled. Kirby Winter was being played by Robert Hays, a TV actor who had not yet made his big splash in Airplane!, the film which was his next role. Pam Dawber, late of Mork and Mindy, was Bonnie Lee Beaumont, sporting a horrendous South Carolina accent.  My beloved book was being sanitized and bastardized into pabulum for the masses.

I still remember that paperback book cover which claimed “One day with Bonnie Lee was like a three-year lease on a harem.” Not in this version. “Throne Smith meets Mickey Spillane.” Not in this version.

So, for 35 years I have hated this film as the epitome of bad made-for-TV movies. And I was happy with that.

This week, I was going to watch Svengali with John Barrymore, a silent film that I had on VHS. I put the tape in and while the tape was moving, I was not getting the picture. I tried several times but it was just not tracking correctly…

So, suddenly I am looking for something to watch and review. I was sitting in the floor with the DVDs and was trying to decide. Should I do The Point with its wonderful soundtrack and hippy-dippy story? What about Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings? Or Roger Corman’s Forbidden World, an amazing Alien rip-off? All these were on the tapes in front of me. And I remembered that they were not going to last too much longer, as VHS tapes have a half life of 25 years or so (or at least that’s what I have been told). Anyway, The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything popped up and the next thing I knew I was shoving it into the player and watching it.

The movie’s protagonist, Kirby Winter, is a lovable loser, who worked for his uncle Omar Krebs. His uncle, worth $220 million dollars has died and Kirby is anxious as the will is read. Turns out Kirby’s inheritance is a gold-plated watch. And that’s it.

Suddenly the Board of the Krebs Foundation is noting that Omar moved $75 million into a side venture OK Enterprises, which Kirby worked for. The only other employee, the sexually-repressed-and-not-loving-it Miss Wilma Farnham (Zohra Lampert), has burned all the company records according to Omar’s instructions.

As a result, Kirby and Wilma are being hunted for embezzlement. Omar’s competitors Joseph Locordolos (Ed Nelson) and Charla O’Rourke (Jill Ireland!) are trying to unearth Omar’s secrets and are using Kirby to try and find out anything.

This leads Kirby to find a new place to stay. His hotel manager, Hoover (Burton Gilliam, notable in Blazing Saddles, not so much here), finds him a friend’s apartment. While there, Kirby is visited by Bonnie Lee Beaumont, who mistakes him for her boyfriend. This mistake leads to anger and then strangely to attraction. While having a hot dog, Kirby accidentally sets the watch and finds that he can stop time around him. He is able to act while everyone remains frozen in the moment.

So far, the film is OK – not good but OK. But from here, it goes bad. The way to fix things seems to be to undress people or leave them in awkward situations. Dressing hired guns up as Las Vegas showgirls is TV-risqué but not particularly effective.

The film was not as bad as I remembered, but it is still not good. I saw this so you do not have to. Nor do you want to see the sequel, The Girl, the Gold Watch and Dynamite (1981), which thankfully does not feature Hays or Dawber but does not replace them with anyone better.

Series organizer Todd Mason hosts more Tuesday Forgotten Film reviews at his own blog and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Forgotten Book: Walking Wolf by Nancy Collins (1995)

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Walking Wolf is a short novel but one full of wonders and magic.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 177th in my series of Forgotten Books.

It is no secret that I am a fan of the weird western. I’ve written a couple of weird western short stories over the years. I am also a fan of Nancy Collins. I first met her at a convention in New Orleans when Sunglasses After Dark had just come out. It was a wonderful inventive vampire novel featuring Sonja Blue, who would later star in several more novels.

Later we were both nominees for the John W. Campbell Award at the World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago in 1991 which was won by Julia Ecklar. Other nominees that year included John Cramer and Michael Kandel.

That’s pretty much were our similarities end. Nancy went on to write a bunch of novels and comic books and stuff. I occasionally produce a short story.

Walking Wolf is a werewolf novel set in the old west and is also the name of the main character. Walking Wolf, the character, is found as an orphan by the Comanche Indians and raised as one of them. At first he has no idea of his identity and abilities. Through his eyes, we get a view of the plains Indians in the mid 19th century. He is raised as an Indian brave and finds himself a friend in Quanah Parker who would later become a fierce chief even though he was half white.

He becomes apprenticed to Medicine Dog, the shaman of the tribe who recognizes Walking Wolf as a skin walker or shape shifter. Walking Wolf does not even know what he is or what he is. One day when hunting buffalo he shifts into wolf mode and astounds the tribe, especially Flood Moon, the girl he intends to marry. Where she had been friendly before, she has no desire to be a shape shifter and she attempts to kill him which results in her death.

Walking Wolf is ashamed of his action and feels he must learn more about himself, So he decides his name is Billy Skillet and he sets out to see the West. He teams up with a Reverend Near in the small town of Vermillion. The Reverend is not a nice person and he attempts to have Billy be his slave while he kidnaps and rapes young girls which he blames on Billy. Billy escapes and the town in destroyed. Billy next meets Professor Praetorius, a charlatan selling snake oil in his medicine show. He has a pinhead which he brings out when sales are tough to show for a nickel. Billy and Praetorius get along well until some folks who tried the snake oil with bad results. Everyone gets lynched which does not work well for the Professor or the pinhead. Billy, however, cannot be killed in this way, but it does hurt.

He soon finds himself in the company of The Sundown Kid, a vampire gunslinger who tells Billy information about the werewolves who had immigrated from the Europe. Unfortunately he is being hunted by a supernatural bounty hunter named Witchfinder Jones, who wears a wolf pelt that Billy instinctively knows is the pelt of his father. Jones also has a wallet made from a woman’s teat that is from Billy’s mother. Jones travels with silver bullets and other paraphernalia. Jones is to become Billy’s nemesis and to be a constant antagonist.

Billy reverts back to the Indian ways and becomes Walking Wolf again. He meets the famous from the period, including Custer, Sitting Bull (whom he regards as an uncle), and more. As an outcast in either world, Walking Wolf offers a differing view of the world around him. He does not age in the same manner as normal people.

This is a good novel, rather short but filled with lots of wonder and magic. I enjoyed pretty much everything about it. Think Lawrence Talbot (theWolfman) as Little Big Man and you have an idea of what this one was like.

Originally published by Mark Ziesing in a nice hardcover edition with a wonderful J. K. Potter cover, It is currently available in e-book form or as a trade paperback. So, if you find this intriguing, it’s available. I think it’s well worth a try.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Forgotten Film: Phantom Lady (1944)

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Cornell Woolrich's Phantom Lady is an engaging mystery film, just not a great one.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 155th in my series of Forgotten, Obscure or Neglected Films

I really love the novels of Cornell Woolrich, whether writing under that name or William Irish or George Hopley. For a while, I had a very nice collection of first editions of his work including a beautiful copy of Phantom Lady. But I took the money and ran a long time ago.

Woolrich was a master of suspense and tension, particularly in his novels, though some also comes through in his films. Check out my review of Jacques Tourneau’s The Leopard Man which was based on Woolrich’s novel Black Alibi. It features one of the most terrifying scenes ever put on screen and that scene is straight out of the novel.

But, let’s talk about Phantom Lady. Scott Henderson (Alan Curtis) is a successful engineer in a bad marriage. On his anniversary he and his wife have a fight and he storms out of the apartment. He goes to a local bar where he meets a lonely woman with a gaudy hat. They make small talk and he invites her to go to a show. When he asks her name, she demurs, saying that they should enjoy the night with no names and no history. They take a cab to the show where a drummer tries to get her attention and the headliner Monteiro (Aurora) is seen wearing the same hat. Monteiro is obviously furious.

Henderson returns home to find police Inspector Burgess (Thomas Gomez) waiting. Henderson’s wife has been strangled with one of his neckties. Henderson isn’t worried about being arrested for the crime because he didn’t do it. But when the police question the bartender (Andrew Tombes) he says Henderson was alone. So does the cab driver. And when Monteiro is questioned, she remembers nothing about the Henderson’s companion and the hat the argued about isn’t even among her costumes.

Henderson finds himself on trial for murder and, with no alibi, he is quickly convicted and sentenced to die. The only one convinced he’s innocent is his secretary, Carol “Kansas” Richmond (Ella Raines), who is in love with him. She cannot find any other way to help him, so she shadows the bartender. When he makes a casual slip about being paid, he tries to attack her and ends up getting killed in traffic. At that point, Carol suspects she is on the right trail.

She begins to track down the drummer (Elisha Cook, Jr.) who admits that he was paid $500 to forget what he saw. Carol calls Burgess, but by the time he gets there the drummer is dead. At this point, the film gives away the identity of the real killer, something which was not disclosed in the book until the very end.

Scott’s friend, Jack Marlow (Franchot Tone) has been in South America and when he returns he agrees to help Carol solve Scott’s problem. Together they find the Phantom Lady and the hat, but the murderer is still about and Carol is in deep trouble.

This was a good film, just not the great film which might have been made from the book. In glorious black and white, it has many of the features of a good noir film but somehow falls flat. The tense moments just don’t quite come across that way, until the point at which Carol confronts the killer. Part of the problem is the source material. Woolrich novels sometimes rely on coincidence and, as in this case, you have to buy that people are willing to let a man die after being paid to forget something. Somehow I tend to have a better opinion of people than that. Of the four, one should have broken down.

When reading the books, the breakneck pacing gets you through. With the film, that pacing isn’t there and the flaws emerge.

I still like this film, though, and I still love the work of Woolrich. I’m hoping you do to. TCM runs this film fairly regularly and you should check it out when you can. It’s not Out of the Past or Double Indemnity, but it’s still worthwhile.

Series organizer Todd Mason hosts more Tuesday Forgotten Film reviews at his own blog and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

FORGOTTEN BOOK: Run from the Hunter by Keith Grantland (Charles Beaumont and John Tomerlin), 1957

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The "wrong man" suspense novel Run from the Hunter takes place around Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama, which makes it a fun, fast read for this time of year.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 176th in my series of Forgotten Books.

As I write this, Mardi Gras is being celebrated across the country and in New Orleans with fine gusto. I have never been to the various parades and such since I dislike large crowds and drunken revelries as a general rule. But I have friends who are there right now collecting beads, listening to blues and jazz and eating some mighty fine food.

So I decided to celebrate Mardi Gras in a different way by reading a mystery set during Mardi Gras, though in Mobile, Alabama. In Run from the Hunter, Chris Adams is a former columnist for the Mobile Messenger who has been convicted of killing his former girlfriend Steffany Fontaine. There seems to be a motive, since she was running around on him. Adams is innocent and a bartender should have provided the alibi, but, for some reason, the bartender lied and now Adams is on his way to prison via railroad.

Mobster Frank Giogio is on the same train with the same destination intended. But he confides in Adams that the train will be derailed in four minutes. Adams tries to alert the police who do not believe anything he says. They should have listened.

Giorgio is killed when the bridge over the swamp is blown up, as are several policemen. But Adams survives and manages to get the handcuff key and escape into the dark and the bayou. The police are definitely going to be following him.

In the darkness, he manages to find a run-down house and takes shelter. But he is soon surprised by a young woman with a rifle. His case is now well known and the young woman, Loni Gaillard, recognizes him. And so does her mother. Adams tells his story and Mrs. Gaillard believes him. Besides, the rifle has no bullets.

Adams is allowed to sleep the night before he’s sent to see Jericho, an old man who agrees to help him. Jericho has an old Deusenberg that they use to go back to Mobile. Meanwhile, tracking Adams is Lieutenant Carr, the police homicide detective who built the case against him. Turns out, Carr was also one of Steffany’s suitors. He took her death pretty badly and has vowed to track Adams down.

Since it’s Mardi Gras and Adams is afraid of being recognized, he and Jericho stop for costumes, a pirate costume for Adams and a skeleton for Jericho. Adams contacts his former boss, Sheridan “Sherry” Paige, for help. They track down the bartender to question him about his perjury, only to find him dead. Things seem to be progressing poorly for Adams as the police keep getting closer and closer.

Run from the Hunter is a pretty nice suspense and mystery novel, which Beaumont began but turned over to his friend Tomerlin to finish. The duo worked together on the final draft and polish. The original edition was published by Gold Medal under the Keith Grantland name, which Tomerlin says in his introduction to the Centipede Press edition was from the middle names of each of their sons. There were two printings from Gold Medal and a hardback edition in the UK from Boardman. I’ve had both the Gold Medal printings, which had different covers, and I recently acquired the Centipede Press edition, which is very nice and contains a decent short story, “Moon in Gemini,” by the pair.

I have read a lot of Beaumont’s short fiction. I’ve got his solo novel The Intruder, which was filmed in the early 60’s with William Shatner in the lead. I haven’t read it yet, though it has a good reputation. The quality of Beaumont’s short work gives me hope for it. The film version was made by Roger Corman and is one of the few Corman films to not make a profit. IMDB shows a 7.8 out of ten rating for the film. Apparently Beaumont, William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson all have bit parts in it.

Centipede Press also did a recent edition of that novel, which is the edition I have. They make very nice books. They are expensive but the quality that goes into the finished product is always worthwhile.

So enjoy your Mardi Gras and have a wonderful weekend. Check out Run from the Hunter if you get the chance. It’s a worthy novel that deserves a larger audience.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Forgotten Films: The President’s Analyst (1967)

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The President's Analyst might appeal to you if you like your comedies on the paranoid side. Not so much, however, if you're an Adam Sandler fan.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 154th in my series of Forgotten, Obscure or Neglected Films

Comedy is such a personal thing. Films some people, find to be hilarious, I find to be offensive, juvenile, or just not funny. I’m looking at you Adam Sandler! Nothing you have done is funny to me, so I make it easy on both of us and avoid your movies like the plague. Same goes for Ben Stiller, Kevin James, Seth Rogen, Melissa McCarthy and most of today’s “comedians.”

Now that I have gotten that out of the way, I want to recommend a very funny comedy. The President’s Analyst is certainly one of my favorite films. It is a product of its time and the rampant paranoia makes it seem like something Philip K. Dick might have done.

Dr. Sidney Schaefer (James Coburn) is a prominent New York psychiatrist. One of his patients is Don Masters (Godfrey Cambridge), a spy with the Central Enquiries Agency (the CEA). The opening scene of the film shows Don killing an Albanian spy while pushing a cart through the street of the garment district in broad daylight. Don drops off the cart with the dead body to some handlers so he can make his appointment with Dr. Schaefer. Don then tells Sidney how he feels about this action during his session and waits for the doctor’s reaction.

This turns out to be the final piece in the vetting of the good doctor to become the personal analyst for the president. He is told that everyone needs someone to talk to and he has been selected for the role.

Sidney and his girlfriend Nan (Joan Delaney in her first film role) are moved to Washington, DC, much to the disgust of Henry Lux (Walter Burke) the head of the Federal Bureau of Regulation (FBR), who has moral objections to the living arrangement.

Soon Sidney has more secrets in his head than is good for him. He can’t discuss them with anyone, and he becomes the target for various foreign powers. When it is discovered that he talks in his sleep, Nan is removed from the house. He can still see her, but he cannot go to sleep with her.

Then the fun really begins. Sidney starts to see spies and plots everywhere. Unfortunately for him, the spies and plots are real. He tries to escape by insinuating himself into the household of the Quantrills (a very young William Daniels and Joan Darling), a pair of gun-toting liberals. The Quantrills’ son wiretaps Sidney’s attempt to call the president for help and turns him over to the FBR, which naturally has orders to kill him.

Sidney escapes in the van of a rock band called Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (fronted by Barry “Eve of Destruction” McGuire and Jill Banner). Luckily, the doctor finds some peace and love here. While dallying with Snow White in a grassy field, we are shown how insane everything is with spies attempting to capture him killed by other spies who have the same intent. When Sidney and Snow leave, the field looks like a battle scene. Spies have been garroted, stabbed, shot, killed by poison dart and more. It is a marvelously surreal and funny scene.

Don, meanwhile, is teaming up with Kydor Kropotkin (the wonderful Severn Darden) to rescue Sidney. Kropotkin rescues Sidney from the Puddlians, rockers who work for the Canadian secret service. While fleeing with Sidney, Kropotkin finds himself undergoing analysis and liking it. Soon he is a patient.

I’m going to not reveal the ending, which deals with one of the most nefarious of all spy groups and features Pat Harrington in a great role. But Sidney, Don, Kropotkin, and Nan (who was also turns out to be a spy) have to try to save the world.

It a frantic, paranoid satire that is as relevant today as it was nearly 40 years ago. I’ve watched this film many times and given it to many friends. One way to judge how close our friendship will be is in seeing how they react. Those who don’t get it are never going to be close friends.

I love The President’s Analyst, and it’s pretty readily available if you need to see it. And, If you like those guys I singled out in the first paragraph, it’s likely you won’t like this one. As I said before, my taste is in my mouth. And I like it there.

Series organizer Todd Mason hosts more Tuesday Forgotten Film reviews at his own blog and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Forgotten Book: Between the Living and the Dead by Bill Crider (2015)

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In addition to solving crimes, you can depend on Sheriff Dan Rhodes to do some bull wrestling in a Walmart parking lot.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 176th in my series of Forgotten Books.

I don’t know how many people click the link at the end of the column to see the listing of the other Forgotten Books each of these installments. Patti Abbott, a very fine writer in her own right, compiles a listing each week (and when she’s not available, some other very fine folks make it).

I have found some wonderful titles from the various listings. The listing for last week contained two that someone felt compelled to write about. I had read three of those titles and was aware of six others. The remainder were new to me or had never been on my radar. I will be checking out several more of them as the year moves forward.

Among the people who write the various Forgotten Book and Forgotten Film columns each week, Bill Crider is a prominent force. To the general reading public, I’m not so sure. He has written a lot of books over the years but he has not achieved household name status. And that is the shame.

I have posted about other Crider titles over the past five years, including A Vampire Named Fred and Mike Gonzo and the Sewer Monster. These were young adult books I really enjoyed. In addition to them, Crider has written mystery novels in five different series, men’s adventure novels, horror novels, western novels, a Nick Carter-Killmaster novel and some pseudonymous things he is very tight lipped about.

The Sheriff Dan Rhodes series is the biggie among his mystery novels. The series currently stands at 23 books (there is another being prepped for publication). Rhodes was his first series character, beginning with Too Late to Die (1986). Rhodes, the sheriff of Blacklin County, Texas, works out of Clearview, a smallish town with its share of wonderful characters.

Between the Living and the Dead begins with the death of Neil Foshee, a local meth dealer, at the local haunted house. Everyone knows the house is haunted. It has been empty for years. The last owner died alone there. So, over the years the stories about the death have grown and expanded. Sheriff Rhodes knows the facts, but locals don’t want facts to get in the way of their stories.

Local math professor/singer/amateur PI/character C. P. “Seepy” Benton provides some fun comic relief to the proceedings, as he has set up Clearview Paranormal Investigations (CPI) and offers his “expertise” to the county for a potential law enforcement endorsement.

Foshee’s two cousins have just gotten out of jail on bail, so they are potential suspects. But then so are Neil’s former girlfriend and her current boss/boyfriend, the mayor, the mayor’s wife and the mayor’s nephew. And when the skeleton shows up, the whole thing changes.

In addition to looking for murderers, a small town sheriff has to deal with lots of things like chasing suspects on foot through the woods and then avoiding the rampaging hogs or wresting a bull in the Walmart parking lot after it charges a small child. He has to deal with the his bickering employees and their relationships. And, of course, he has to deal with the dangerous drivers in Clearview who do not use their turn signals!

Crider captures that small town feeling and atmosphere superbly. Over the course of these books, you get to see the wondrous nature of that small town and come to care about many of the folks.

I’ve known Crider for about 40 years. I’ve read many of the books in this and the other series. They are great go-to books when you need a good solid read that puts a smile on your face and happiness into your heart. I don’t think I tell him enough how much I love his books, so hopefully he gets the idea now. Thank you, Bill, for these books.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Forgotten Films: Predestination (2014)

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The Australian sf film Predestination isn't old, but it may not have cropped up on your radar screen.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 153rd in my series of Forgotten, Obscure or Neglected Films

This week we have a film that is again not very old but may not have cropped up on the radar of many of our readers. Predestination is an Australian film that was screened at South by Southwest in 2014 and opened in the U.S. in January of last year.

It is a tricky film with lots of twists and turns and I will try not to spoil too many of them. The story begins when a young man named John (played by Sarah Snook) enters a bar in 1975 New York and encounters the bartender played by Ethan Hawke. John reveals that he writes confession stories for the various true confessions pulps. There follows a bet with the bar tender where John says he has a weird story and bets a bottle of booze versus $20 that it is the wildest he has ever heard.

The story begins when John says, “When I was a little girl …” and goes forward. He had been a foundling, dropped at an orphanage where he was named Jane. Jane excelled at math and physics but failed miserably at relationships and getting along. Upon leaving high school, Jane applied to work for SpaceCorp, where young women entertain spacers on their return from missions. Essentially, this is a brothel for spacemen seeking intelligent women. But Jane has trouble getting along and eventually is kicked out of the program.

Jane then took a job as a servant for a family and enrolls in classes at a charm school. Here she meets a strange man whom she falls in love with and, in a fit of passion, has sex with. When he disappears, she chalks it up to experience until the skirts get tighter and she finds herself on the road to motherhood. When the child is born, Jane is informed that the delivery was a caesarean section. The doctor informs her that she was an unusual case. She had two sets of organs within her body — male and female. They were both underdeveloped. The pregnancy has messed up her female organs and she has had to have a hysterectomy. To save her life, the doctors make her a man. Also, while she was in the hospital, the baby is kidnapped.

Jane (or John) is now a fish out of water. A person with few social skills and no experience in her new identity, John becomes a secretary and, while typing up a true confession story, decides that he can do better at it and begins to write a column as “The Unmarried Mother.”

So far, it’s a pretty odd story. But the bartender offers John a chance to kill the man who caused her all this grief, made her pregnant, and cost her the life she knew. She leaps at the chance and finds out that the bartender is actually a time traveler for the Temporal Bureau and takes her back in her life.

If this sounds familiar, Predestination is based on the story “All You Zombies” by Robert A. Heinlein. And if you read that story, you know where this is all going. And, if you haven’t, you should.

Sarah Snook is great as Jane and John in her various incarnations. She is a lovely young lady and not a bad young man (bringing to mind a young Leonardo DiCaprio). There is a story about the “Fizzle Bomber” whom Ethan Hawke is tracking. The bomber has blasted him at least once, burning his face significantly in the early moments of the film. Overseeing it all is Mr. Robertson (Noah Taylor), acting strange and mysterious in much the manner that William B. Davis’ Cigarette Smoking Man handled the X-Files weirdness.

I enjoyed the film. I had initially heard about it on Facebook and found a Blu-Ray copy for less than $10 at Amazon, which still lists them at that price. It’s not a perfect film, but it is fun and odd and well worth your time.

Series organizer Todd Mason hosts more Tuesday Forgotten Film reviews at his own blog and posts a complete list of participating blogs.