Jerry Peterson's Posts - CrimeSpace2024-03-29T07:02:42ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPetersonhttps://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/60996608?profile=RESIZE_48X48&width=48&height=48&crop=1%3A1https://crimespace.ning.com/profiles/blog/feed?user=09026ihc6zvmh&xn_auth=noMeet the real Inspector Houndtag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-11-24:537324:BlogPost:2570222010-11-24T18:14:41.000ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPeterson
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English playwright Tom Stoppard, his plays performed more than the plays of any other dramatist of his generation – and Stoppard’s still writing – is a fascinating guy. He was a newspaperman and a drama critic before he sat down to write his first play in 1960.<br></br><br></br>I became aware of him when I saw a production of his play, “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.”<br></br><br></br>Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are minor characters in Shakespeare’s…
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English playwright Tom Stoppard, his plays performed more than the plays of any other dramatist of his generation – and Stoppard’s still writing – is a fascinating guy. He was a newspaperman and a drama critic before he sat down to write his first play in 1960.<br/><br/>I became aware of him when I saw a production of his play, “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.”<br/><br/>Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are minor characters in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, messengers who are murdered off stage.<br/><br/>Stoppard makes them the lead characters in his play. They are waiting for someone in the royal court to give them their assignment. Characters from “Hamlet” move in and out of the scenes, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern mystified by it all because they haven’t yet been told why they are here. There’s great comedy between the two characters, in their lines and their stage business . . . and that’s what I liked.<br/><br/>If you didn’t see the play or the movie, and Stoppard’s name isn’t familiar to you, perhaps you saw the 1998 film, “Shakespeare in Love”. It won seven Academy awards, including an Oscar for best original screen play. Stoppard was the co-writer.<br/><br/>Imagine my pleasure when I learned that Beloit College – just a little south of where I live – was presenting Stoppard’s “The Real Inspector Hound.”<br/><br/>I didn’t know the stage play, but I knew that if Stoppard wrote it, it was going to be both clever and good.<br/><br/>Oh, was it ever.<br/><br/>Stoppard wrote the play in 1968, two years after “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern”. And he uses the same device – two characters who don’t know exactly what’s going on.<br/><br/>The lights go up on an empty stage, empty except for some furniture and a body face down behind a fainting couch.<br/><br/>Nothing happens for the first thirty seconds, then a light comes up on an aisle in the theater . . . and a man in a suit enters and works his way down to a front row seat. He sits down, flips through his program, looks to the wings for someone to come in and the play to start.<br/><br/>A minute later, a man in a sport jacket enters from the aisle and makes his way down to the front row where he sits next to the first man. He, too, flips through the pages of his program and looks to the wings for someone to enter and the play to start.<br/><br/>The two know each other. They are theater critics here to review the show. The first – Moon – is a substitute for Higgs, his paper’s first-string critic. He really wishes that Puckeridge, his paper’s third-string critic, had been called in to review the play. But Moon tells Birdfoot – the second man and a critic for another paper – that Puckeridge is probably drunk again.<br/><br/>Much conversation ensues between the two about the actors, several of whom they know, and the play and what this new play, “The Real Inspector Hound”, might be about. Their observations and speculations range from the absurd to the silly.<br/><br/>Finally, in great frustration, Moon explains the play to Birdfoot in the most direct way possible: “It’s a who done it, man!”<br/><br/>It takes place in Muldoon Manor, isolated in the desolate marshes of England. The road to the manor is cut off. There’s fog. A storm. The sea is crashing against the cliffs. A lunatic is on the loose from the insane asylum. All the cliches from the 1930s British mysteries.<br/><br/>The thesis of the play is Lord Albert Muldoon has disappeared mysteriously. And, yes, there is a body on the stage, but nobody notices the body until much later, when Inspector Hound steps on it – Hound at the house in response to a call about an escaped lunatic seen in the area.<br/><br/>When Hound realizes he has stepped on a body, he announces to everyone on stage, “I’ll call the police.”<br/><br/>Says one of the characters, “But you are the police.”<br/><br/>To which Hound answers, “Thank God I’m here because the line’s been cut.”<br/><br/>The characters divide up to search the house and grounds for whomever may have killed the stranger on the floor.<br/><br/>The character Simon remains behind. When he checks the body for a pulse, he appears to recognize the man. But before he can say anything, someone shoots Simon.<br/><br/>A long pause. Then the telephone on the stage rings . . . and rings and rings some more. Birdfoot, aggravated, goes up and answers it. It’s his wife calling. When he hangs up, the play starts over and Birdfoot becomes trapped in it, reading in the role of Simon.<br/><br/>He, too, is shot.<br/><br/>Moon, horrified by the murder of his colleague, rushes up on stage to investigate. He takes on the role of Inspector Hound.<br/><br/>Major Magnus Muldoon, the missing Lord Albert’s half-brother, accuses Moon of being the madman because Moon isn’t the inspector. Moon tries to run and Magnus shoots him.<br/><br/>Magnus pulls off his disguise and reveals himself as the real Inspector Hound. He then takes off a second disguise and announced that he is not Hound, but the missing Lord Albert.<br/><br/>But Moon – dying – recognizes the actor as Puckeridge, his newspaper’s third-string critic.<br/><br/>Magnus/Hound/Lord Albert admits it, saying he’s waited 10 years for the opportunity to get rid of Higgs – the first dead body on the floor – and Moon so that he can be the newspaper’s first-string critic.<br/><br/>Convoluted?<br/><br/>Well, so is Agatha’s Christie’s “The Mousetrap” which Stoppard parodies in this play.<br/><br/>Theater of the absurd, farce, parody, satire . . . it’s all here in “The Real Inspector Hound”.<br/><br/>A great evening of theater.<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tomorrow: “Cliffhanger”, the play</span>Crime trods the boardstag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-11-24:537324:BlogPost:2570192010-11-24T18:08:53.000ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPeterson
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Your community theater may be betting, as two near me are this season, that crime pays, that you and I will buy tickets and park ourselves in soft seats to see crimes committed on stage and solved.<br></br><br></br>But can we solve the crime before the detective does . . . or the amateur sleuth does?<br></br><br></br>That’s the game.<br></br><br></br>The proof that we theater goers love a mystery is right there in Agatha Chistie’s “The Mousetrap”. That stage play first hit…
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Your community theater may be betting, as two near me are this season, that crime pays, that you and I will buy tickets and park ourselves in soft seats to see crimes committed on stage and solved.<br/><br/>But can we solve the crime before the detective does . . . or the amateur sleuth does?<br/><br/>That’s the game.<br/><br/>The proof that we theater goers love a mystery is right there in Agatha Chistie’s “The Mousetrap”. That stage play first hit the boards at the Ambassadors Theatre in London on November 25, 1952.<br/><br/>And the production has never closed. It’s running still in London’s West End, at St. Martin’s Theatre, there since 1974. More than 24,000 performances to date.<br/><br/>I have no idea how many community theaters have put “The Mousetrap” on their stages. Thousands, surely.<br/><br/>Nearby Beloit Civic Theatre, here in southern Wisconsin, assembled a trio of crime dramas for it current season, which it advertises as a season to die for: “Whodunit, The Musical”, “Cliffhanger”, and “Deathtrap”.<br/><br/>“Whodunit” was a romp. Three of the six cast members were musical theater professionals. My, could they sing and act – they were marvelous.<br/><br/>Playwright Ed Dixon based his script on Mary Roberts Rinehart’s novel, “The Circular Staircase”.<br/><br/>Rinehart (1876-1958) is our American counterpart to Agatha Christie. She was an eminently successful writer of mysteries, and it was Rinehart’s 1908 novel, “The Circular Staircase,” that shot her into the stratosphere of the publishing world. The book sold a million and a quarter copies in her lifetime.<br/><br/>In “The Circular Staircase”, a middle-aged spinster is persuaded by her niece and nephew to rent a country house for the summer. The house had belonged to a man who had stolen securities and hidden them in the walls of the house, a man now thought to be dead.<br/><br/>Dixon retailored the story. He has a wealthy spinster and her cockney maid rent a Connecticut summer home. The year is 1931. When they arrive, all the help has quit, except for an odd butler who tells them that something strange is going on. The spinster’s niece joins them, bringing a boyfriend from college. That night as all are settling in, a face appears at the window and someone tries to break in. Later, after everyone has gone to bed, a gun shot sounds. The cast come running from their rooms to investigate, and they find a body lying in the middle of the living room – the body of a stranger.<br/><br/>A body on the floor trumps most things. So if one is good, why not two?<br/><br/>So, yes, there is a second murder.<br/><br/>And then a detective arrives . . . an individual as strange as the butler.<br/><br/>Speaking of the butler, that cliched phrase “The butler did it” comes from Mary Roberts Rinehart’s novel “The Door”, in which the butler actually did do it.<br/><br/>But back to “Whodunit, The Musical”, the show is part mystery, part drawing room farce, and very much a musical comedy.<br/><br/>Can you see it somewhere?<br/><br/>Maybe.<br/><br/>The Beloit show was only the third production of the musical in the country.<br/><br/>It is that new.<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tomorrow: Meet the real Inspector Hound</span>Meet P.J. Parrishtag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-09-03:537324:BlogPost:2488132010-09-03T19:27:57.000ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPeterson
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P.J. Parrish, as a crime writer, is a powerhouse – 10 New York Times bestsellers with her Louis Kincaid thrillers, the first, “Dark of the Moon”, out in 2000; and the most recent, “The Little Death”, out just this year.<br></br><br></br>The pronoun “her” suggests Parrish is one person. She’s actually two – sisters, Kristy Montee of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Kelly Nichols of Houghton Lake, Michigan.<br></br><br></br>Montee is a former newspaper writer and editor,…
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P.J. Parrish, as a crime writer, is a powerhouse – 10 New York Times bestsellers with her Louis Kincaid thrillers, the first, “Dark of the Moon”, out in 2000; and the most recent, “The Little Death”, out just this year.<br/><br/>The pronoun “her” suggests Parrish is one person. She’s actually two – sisters, Kristy Montee of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Kelly Nichols of Houghton Lake, Michigan.<br/><br/>Montee is a former newspaper writer and editor, and Nichols, of all things, was at one time a blackjack dealer.<br/><br/>Don’t ask me how the sisters do it, come up with such good books while writing at great distances from one another . . . well, I know how they do it. They swap electronic files. Thank you, Internet.<br/><br/>And they talk a lot via Skype. Again, thank you, Internet.<br/><br/>Still theirs has to be a world of compromises, but Montee and Nichols make co-writing work. They have the book sales to prove it, and they have the honors. They’ve collected 11 major crime fiction awards, including two Shamus awards, an Anthony, and an award from International Thriller Writers.<br/><br/>You can meet P.J., or one-half of her – Kelly Nichols – tomorrow afternoon if you’re in the Chicago area. She and four other crime writers will be at Centuries & Sleuths Bookstore in Forest Park, talking about their books.Anniversary for a bookstoretag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-08-31:537324:BlogPost:2484042010-08-31T14:00:00.000ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPeterson
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On Saturday, Centuries & Sleuths Bookstore in Forest Park, Illinois kicks off a month-long celebration of its 20th anniversary.<br></br><br></br>Twenty years in the book biz!<br></br><br></br>What are the numbers? Sixty percent of start-up businesses don’t survive their first year, and 90 percent are gone before the end of their third?<br></br><br></br>So to make it 20 years, a business has to be really good.<br></br><br></br>Augie Aleksy has made Centuries & Sleuths vital…
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On Saturday, Centuries & Sleuths Bookstore in Forest Park, Illinois kicks off a month-long celebration of its 20th anniversary.<br/><br/>Twenty years in the book biz!<br/><br/>What are the numbers? Sixty percent of start-up businesses don’t survive their first year, and 90 percent are gone before the end of their third?<br/><br/>So to make it 20 years, a business has to be really good.<br/><br/>Augie Aleksy has made Centuries & Sleuths vital to people in Forest Park and the nearby Chicago burbs who buy books, who find the chain bookstores a bit cold and remote because of their size.<br/><br/>You come here for mysteries and histories, the store’s specialties and Augie’s interests.<br/><br/>Fantastically loyal fan groups, reader groups, and writers groups meet here – a mystery discussion group, a history discussion group, the Chicago chapter of the G.K. Chesterton Society, the Chicago chapter of the Dickens Fellowship, the Chicago chapter of Sisters in Crime, and the Midwest chapter of Mystery Writers of America.<br/><br/>Those two local groups – the history discussion group and the mystery discussion group – do exceptional programs for the store. The history discussion group has presented a series it calls “Meeting of the Minds.” In that series, members have portray famous people in history talking about the issues of their times – Napoleon, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Martin Luther, Mark Twain, Elizabeth I, Joan of Arc, Isabella of Castile, and F.D.R., to list off just a few.<br/> <br/>And the mystery discussion group has conducted a trial of Richard III; an impeachment hearing for FDR; two great debates with Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, and Henry Clay; and an imaginary debate between U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and C.S.A. President Jefferson Davis. The group also has presented historical culinary programs and mystery plays.<br/><br/>Writers come here to do book talks and signings – lots of writers. During September, 42 of us crime, mystery, and thriller writers will be here on weekends, talking with the store’s readers and our fans about our books.<br/><br/>Forty-two!<br/><br/>You’ll meet some of them right here on my blog over the next four weeks.<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tomorrow: Donald Evans</span>A book you wouldn't know if you weren't reading thistag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-08-14:537324:BlogPost:2462852010-08-14T20:00:36.000ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPeterson
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You’ve read family histories. Pretty dry, right?<br></br><br></br>Not Leslie Huber’s <span style="font-style: italic;">The Journey Takers</span>.<br></br><br></br>A friend of Leslie, who had read an early draft, handed the manuscript back and asked, “Who am I supposed to be cheering for?”<br></br><br></br>Georg and Mina Albrecht, Leslie’s Germany ancestors who made the journey to America? Karsti Nilsdotter, Leslie’s great-great-great-great grandmother who came here from…
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You’ve read family histories. Pretty dry, right?<br/><br/>Not Leslie Huber’s <span style="font-style: italic;">The Journey Takers</span>.<br/><br/>A friend of Leslie, who had read an early draft, handed the manuscript back and asked, “Who am I supposed to be cheering for?”<br/><br/>Georg and Mina Albrecht, Leslie’s Germany ancestors who made the journey to America? Karsti Nilsdotter, Leslie’s great-great-great-great grandmother who came here from Sweden? Or Karsti’s future husband, Edmond Harris, who traveled here from England by way of Australia?<br/><br/>Leslie thought about that for a while and concluded, while Georg, Mina, Karsti, and Edmond were the journey takers, this really was her book, her story of discovery of self as she trekked to distant parts of the world to learn who her ancestors were, what their lives were like, and what prodded them to leave behind everything they knew, everything familiar, everything they loved to come here to a country where they knew no one.<br/><br/>To illustrate, in chapter 3, Leslie has been researching Georg Albrecht’s parents. She learns how many children die young in Germany of that time – 3 in 10 don’t make it to their first birthday.<br/><br/>Writes Leslie, “‘The Lord gave and the Lord hath taketh away,’ they [Georg and Mina] reminded each other when they lost a baby. Small, innocent children, having so little of this sinful world on them, were certain to return to heaven, they believed. And wasn’t heaven a paradise where they could live with God, a much better place for a child than this wretched world of sorrow and suffering? Their faith gave them hope that despite the injustices and heartbreaks of life now, something greater awaited them.”<br/><br/>In the next section of the chapter, the story comes back to Leslie. After she has learned how difficult it was for children in the time of her ancestors’ families, she gets word from the doctor that she’s pregnant – her first child. In world time, this is 150 years later.<br/><br/>She writes:<br/><br/> For the next two weeks, I attempt to work two jobs full time since I’ve started my new job but haven’t quite finished my old one. David [Leslie’s husband] has gone to Belgium for ten days to present a paper at a conference. For the first nine of those days, I hardly notice he’s gone since I spend every waking hour working. But the day before he comes back, that changes. I have some news to share with him – news that makes it difficult to concentrate on anything else.<br/><br/>As I wait at the airport to pick him up, I think of creative ways to make my announcement. I watch impatiently as his plane pulls up to the gate, my heart beating faster. At last, the doors open and passengers file out into the terminal. Towards the end of the line, David appears, his feet dragging and his eyes glazed. I run up and hug him.<br/><br/>“How was your trip?” I ask absently, my mind on my news.<br/><br/>“I haven’t slept in twenty-four hours. I’m wiped out.”<br/><br/>I don’t even hear him. “Guess what?” I say, completely forgetting my elaborate announcement plan. “We’re going to have a baby.”<br/><br/>He stares at me blankly. I wait, ready for an enthusiastic reaction.<br/><br/>“Oh,” he says after a moment, his voice still dull. “That’s nice.”<br/><br/>I stare at him, stunned.<br/><br/>“That’s nice!” I repeat. “That’s all you have to say. Our entire lives are about to change and you say, ‘that’s nice?’!”<br/><br/>“I mean, that’s great,” he tries again, summoning a little more animation in his voice.<br/><br/>“That’s great?” I narrow my eyes at him before turning to walk towards the baggage claim.<br/><br/>He hurries after me. “Leslie, I’m just really tired,” he says when he catches up.<br/><br/>I stop walking and look at him.<br/><br/>“I’m excited,” he says in a less-than-excited-sounding voice.<br/><br/>I raise my eyebrows.<br/><br/>“I am.”<br/><br/>As we pick up his bags and load them in the car, David continues to profess how thrilled he is. Still, after about ten minutes in the car, he’s sound asleep. I turn and glare at him every couple of minutes, but soon find I get little satisfaction out of being irritated at someone who’s sleeping.<br/><br/><br/>Leslie and her husband now have four children, all healthy, all growing like weeds, not one death – something Leslie’s ancestors, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Journey Takers</span>, could only wish for.<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tomorrow: William Faulkner speaks</span>Mark Twain's autobiography to be in a bookstore near youtag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-08-13:537324:BlogPost:2460752010-08-13T19:24:38.000ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPeterson
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In November.<br></br><br></br>And this will be the unexpurgated edition. In it is everything Twain dictated to his secretary during the last four years of his life. He died in 1910.<br></br><br></br>Twain specified that the most controversial parts of the manuscript be left out of any printed editions for a century, lest those sections damage Twain’s image or his reputation.<br></br><br></br>Said he in his instructions back in 1906, “From the first, second, third and fourth…
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In November.<br/><br/>And this will be the unexpurgated edition. In it is everything Twain dictated to his secretary during the last four years of his life. He died in 1910.<br/><br/>Twain specified that the most controversial parts of the manuscript be left out of any printed editions for a century, lest those sections damage Twain’s image or his reputation.<br/><br/>Said he in his instructions back in 1906, “From the first, second, third and fourth editions all sound and sane expressions of opinion must be left out. There may be a market for that kind of wares a century from now. There is no hurry. Wait and see.”<br/><br/>He was right. There is a market today. The University of California Press publishes the first of three volumes of the Twain autobiography in November. By the time UC Press brings out the third volume, half of the material in the three books will have seen print for the first time. That’s how much the editors of the 1924, 1940, and 1959 editions had cut.<br/><br/>They excised Twain at his feistiest, at his most critical of wars and Wall Street . . . and tamer stuff, too.<br/><br/>Well, it’s all here now. And those who have read advance copies of the first volume like it.<br/><br/>You should read New York Times writer Larry Rohter’s story on the Twain autobiography published last month. Here’s the link: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/10/books/10twain.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/10/books/10twain.html</a> <br/><br/>And also click through to NPR. There listen to Weekend Edition host Scott Simon’s story on the book and his interview with Calvin Trillin. Here’s that link: <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128584709">http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128584709</a> <br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tomorrow: A book you wouldn't know if you weren't reading this</span><br/>Two more Roy Rogers storiestag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-08-06:537324:BlogPost:2452792010-08-06T12:39:38.000ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPeterson
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Howard Cherry is one of Roy Rogers’ biggest fans. He befriended Rogers decades ago, and, over the years, Cherry has purchased some of Roy’s movie costumes, hats, and revolvers.<br></br><br></br>The two men are the same size, so from time to time Cherry dons a Rogers outfit for a photo shoot.<br></br><br></br>Now here’s the surprise. Cherry owns the Hopalong Cassidy Museum in Cambridge, Ohio – Cassidy, another cowboy movie, radio, and television hero.<br></br><br></br>I met…
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Howard Cherry is one of Roy Rogers’ biggest fans. He befriended Rogers decades ago, and, over the years, Cherry has purchased some of Roy’s movie costumes, hats, and revolvers.<br/><br/>The two men are the same size, so from time to time Cherry dons a Rogers outfit for a photo shoot.<br/><br/>Now here’s the surprise. Cherry owns the Hopalong Cassidy Museum in Cambridge, Ohio – Cassidy, another cowboy movie, radio, and television hero.<br/><br/>I met Cherry last year when Marge and I stopped by his museum to promote my western crime novel, Early’s Fall. At the top of this post is a picture of Cherry and me, Cherry wearing one of Roy Rogers’ hats.<br/><br/>Second story.<br/><br/>Roy Rogers was not a cowboy, except in the movies and on radio and television.<br/><br/>He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1911 – a city kid.<br/><br/>And his real name wasn’t Roy Rogers. It was Leonard Slye. It was a Hollywood studio executive who came up with Slye’s movie name.<br/><br/>In 1912, Slye’s his father moved the family upriver on a 12- by 50-foot houseboat he built out of salvaged lumber to Portsmouth, Ohio. There he bought a parcel of land where he intended to build a house. The river flooded before he could start construction – and the flood lifted/carried the houseboat to the Slye family’s property. Thus the houseboat, now on dry land, remained the Slye family home for six years until Dad bought a farm 12 miles north on Duck Run. Leonard spent most of his growing-up years here.<br/><br/>How he got to California and into the movies as a singing cowboy, that’s a story for another time.<br/><br/>I’ll end this one by telling you that Portsmouth, Ohio, claims Roy Rogers. The city launched a Roy Rogers/Dale Evans Society back in 1982 with the express purpose of bringing Roy and Dale to Portsmouth for a homecoming.<br/><br/>The society succeeded, and Roy and Dale came.<br/><br/>Big celebration.<br/><br/>That celebration gave birth to the Roy Rogers Festival, the first one held in the spring of 1983. This year’s festival was number 27.<br/><br/>Rogers’ image is there in Portsmouth all year long, in a 30-foot high mural on the city’s flood wall. A star, signed by Roy, also is on the flood wall. And then there’s the Roy Rogers Esplanade, a Roy Rogers county highway, and . . .A book you wouldn't know about if you weren't reading thistag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-08-02:537324:BlogPost:2447162010-08-02T15:17:07.000ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPeterson
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A rescue helicopter almost wiped out Apollo 11 as the capsule fell toward the Pacific Ocean, says writer Scott Carmichael in <span style="font-style: italic;">Moon Men Return</span>, his new book out from the Naval Institute Press.<br></br><br></br>Carmichael grew up in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, not far from where I live. He’s now a senior investigator with the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington.<br></br><br></br>Said a reporter in her story after she…
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A rescue helicopter almost wiped out Apollo 11 as the capsule fell toward the Pacific Ocean, says writer Scott Carmichael in <span style="font-style: italic;">Moon Men Return</span>, his new book out from the Naval Institute Press.<br/><br/>Carmichael grew up in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, not far from where I live. He’s now a senior investigator with the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington.<br/><br/>Said a reporter in her story after she interviewed Carmichael, “Most of us never knew how close a Navy helicopter came to colliding with the command module . . .”<br/><br/>I knew. It was included in the live coverage of the splashdown on CBS television. True, there wasn’t any film or video of the incident, but it was in the report.<br/><br/>Here’s what happened. This is July 24, 1969, at the end of the flight that put the first man on the moon – Neil Armstrong. The commander of the USS Hornet dispatched helicopters and rescue crews to intercept the capsule as it fell toward the Pacific, to secure the craft once it was in the water.<br/><br/>The helicopters flew through heavy clouds that day to get to the spot in the ocean where the capsule’s trajectory showed it would come down. This is the pre-shuttle days of space flight. One copter broke out of the clouds just as the capsule, swinging from its parachutes, dropped past, a thousand feet ahead. The helicopter was closing at 166 miles an hour, so that thousand feet was seconds.<br/><br/>“I’ve listened to the audio tape of that event,” Carmicheal says. “All of a sudden you hear the pilot scream when he sees the command module directly in front of him.”<br/><br/>Seconds – four seconds – that’s all the time the pilot had to react. And he did. He slammed his helicopter left, out of the way . . . and no accident.<br/><br/>Carmicheal became concerned that little had been written about what he calls the behind-the-scenes stuff of the return of that Apollo moon flight, so he took on the project. He interviewed more than 80 Navy men who played significant roles on the Hornet and in the rescue at sea.<br/><br/>One of those he interviewed – and has worked closely with since – was John Wolfram, a classmate from Fort Atkinson High School. Wolfram and Carmichael had been on the school swim team together. In 1969, Wolfram was 20 years old and a Navy frogman. He was assigned to the Hornet’s rescue team of divers, had jumped with his team from their helicopter, and had swum to the Apollo capsule to attach the floatation ring that would keep the capsule upright until the Hornet could arrive and lift the capsule from the sea.<br/><br/>The book includes a picture of Wolfram standing on the floatation ring. He was the first person whom astronauts Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins saw after splashdown.<br/><br/>At $37, this is a book you’re not likely to buy. But do check it out from your local library and relive that time when moon flight was magically and the return home dramatic.<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tomorrow: We go to Broadway</span>A banker gets histag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-07-30:537324:BlogPost:2441712010-07-30T11:36:50.000ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPeterson
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We crime writers love to cast bankers as our villains. They’ve got money, so who’s going to have any sympathy for them? And they make us grovel when we go in for a car loan.<br></br><br></br>I cast a banker as my villain in my thumb novel, <span style="font-style: italic;">Iced</span>, last year. I had him running an investment scam.<br></br><br></br>Fellow crime writer Mike Manno – we’re both published by Five Star – climbed aboard the anti-banker bus this year with…
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We crime writers love to cast bankers as our villains. They’ve got money, so who’s going to have any sympathy for them? And they make us grovel when we go in for a car loan.<br/><br/>I cast a banker as my villain in my thumb novel, <span style="font-style: italic;">Iced</span>, last year. I had him running an investment scam.<br/><br/>Fellow crime writer Mike Manno – we’re both published by Five Star – climbed aboard the anti-banker bus this year with his novel <span style="font-style: italic;">End of the Line</span>.<br/><br/>My banker pops up from time to time and, in the final chapter, I have him arrested at a symphony concert in the rotunda of the state capitol.<br/><br/>Mike shows his banker no mercy. The man’s an embezzler. Mike kills him off before page 1. A city bus driver find the banker, Rhett Butler – I kid you not on the name – dead on his bus. That, too, happens before page 1.<br/><br/>So it’s up to Mike’s state police detective, Jerome “Stan” Stankowski, to solve the crime with deputy state attorney general Parker Noble looking over his shoulder.<br/><br/>Well, no, Noble isn’t looking over Stankowski’s shoulder. He leads the investigation in the way that Nero Wolfe does in Rex Stout’s mysteries. Quirky Parker Noble is the thinking man, and skirt-chasing Stankowski does the leg work, just as Wolfe’s skirt-chasing associate, Archie Goodwin, does the leg work for him.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic;">End of the Line</span> is not a book to be taken seriously, not after you meet some of the curious characters and critters who inhabit it – the bus driver, Sherman “The Wheel” Wheeler; a mafia type named Johnny Capo; Buffy, a girl reporter and Stankowski’s frequent date; and Parker Noble’s dog, Buckwheat Bob, a basset hound who gets whatever high he gets listening to talk radio. This is pulp fiction intended to be enjoyed like movie popcorn. You just can’t put it down until you get to the bottom of the box.William Kent Krueger won't kill off Cork O'Connortag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-07-29:537324:BlogPost:2440872010-07-29T18:22:05.000ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPeterson
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For fans of William Kent Krueger’s Cork O’Connor mystery series – and I’m one of them – Krueger announced big news on his website this month. He won’t retire Cork as he said he would a year and a half ago.<br></br><br></br>Krueger wanted time to write a big stand-alone thriller that would get him a movie contract. To get that time, he said back then, Cork had to go, that <span style="font-style: italic;">Heaven’s Keep</span>, his ninth book in the series…
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For fans of William Kent Krueger’s Cork O’Connor mystery series – and I’m one of them – Krueger announced big news on his website this month. He won’t retire Cork as he said he would a year and a half ago.<br/><br/>Krueger wanted time to write a big stand-alone thriller that would get him a movie contract. To get that time, he said back then, Cork had to go, that <span style="font-style: italic;">Heaven’s Keep</span>, his ninth book in the series published last year, was his last.<br/><br/>Said Krueger this month, “Two things happened. First, the economy went south and I realized that Cork’s been doing a pretty good job of helping me pay the mortgage. And second, I had an idea for another book in the series, one that just knocked my socks off.”<br/><br/>That idea puts Cork in Minnesota’s Iron Range.<br/><br/>Authorities select an abandoned iron mine for a nuclear waste burial site. Residents of the area don’t want radioactive stuff in their backyard and may do something about it, so Cork is called in as a security consultant. The first day on the job he finds six bodies in a poorly hidden chamber in the mine – five of the bodies dead for 40 years, the sixth killed only a week ago. Forensics determines a bullet from Cork’s father’s pistol killed the last of the 40-year-old bodies. Liam O’Connor – Cork’s father – was the Tamarack County sheriff at the time. He died in a shooting some years later.<br/><br/>A bullet from the senior O’Connor’s pistol also killed the most recent body, the gun now owned by Cork.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic;">Vermillion Drift</span> is finished and at the publisher’s. We all get to read it in September when the book comes out.<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tomorrow: A banker gets his</span>Borders now selling e-bookstag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-07-29:537324:BlogPost:2440722010-07-29T17:21:56.000ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPeterson
Amazon and Barnes & Noble have the hog’s share of the e-book market.<br></br><br></br>Yes, you can buy your e-books directly from the electronic book publishers – most of them small houses – but if you want Stephen King’s or Mary Higgins Clark’s latest book in digital, and those of other top-selling writers, you go to Amazon or B&N.<br></br><br></br>Now, though – as of this month – you can buy your e-books from Borders’ electronic bookstore. The company hopes to get 17 percent of the total e-book…
Amazon and Barnes & Noble have the hog’s share of the e-book market.<br/><br/>Yes, you can buy your e-books directly from the electronic book publishers – most of them small houses – but if you want Stephen King’s or Mary Higgins Clark’s latest book in digital, and those of other top-selling writers, you go to Amazon or B&N.<br/><br/>Now, though – as of this month – you can buy your e-books from Borders’ electronic bookstore. The company hopes to get 17 percent of the total e-book business within a year . . . and maybe they will. Borders sells the two lowest priced e-readers out there, the Kobo at $149 and the Aluratek Libre at $119. Additionally, Borders gives you a $20 gift certificate with its Kobo to bring the effective price of the machine down to $129, $20 below Barnes & Noble’s cheapest Nook e-reader.<br/><br/>The company, in financial trouble for much of the past decade, continues to be. Borders reports that its in-store sales for the first quarter of the year dropped 11 percent from the same period last year.<br/><br/>The company lost $64 million for the quarter.<br/><br/>But that’s not as bad as the first quarter of last year when the company lost $86 million.<br/><br/>Borders is half the size of Barnes & Noble. It has 683 stores and 8 percent of the consumer book market, where B&N has 1,357 stores and 16.7 percent of the consumer book business.<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold;">Later today: William Kent Krueger keeps his mystery series going</span>The future of the booktag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-07-28:537324:BlogPost:2439502010-07-28T13:40:21.000ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPeterson
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If more of us writers are getting out there with more books, those of us who survive in this business and profit, says Neil Gaiman, are those who hustle. And few writers are more effective hustlers than Gaiman with his sci-fi novels, graphic novels, children’s books, a British television series, and, yes, movies. Gaiman’s written a flock of television and film scripts that have seen production, and two of his long works –…
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If more of us writers are getting out there with more books, those of us who survive in this business and profit, says Neil Gaiman, are those who hustle. And few writers are more effective hustlers than Gaiman with his sci-fi novels, graphic novels, children’s books, a British television series, and, yes, movies. Gaiman’s written a flock of television and film scripts that have seen production, and two of his long works – <span style="font-style: italic;">Stardust</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Caroline</span> – have been turned into top-rated films. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Graveyard Book</span> is the next slated for filming.<br/><br/>As a promoter of his own work, Gaiman maintains an interactive blog, a Twitter feed, a website, pages on Facebook and elsewhere – all right, he’s got help. And he’s out touring.<br/><br/>Smart authors, he told NPR’s On the Media host Brooke Gladstone, may wind up reverting to the world of Charles Dickens.<br/><br/>Printers here cranked out pirated editions of Dickens’ books and sold them. There wasn’t any profit in that for Dickens, so, when he couldn’t stop the pirates, he decided to go after the Yankee dollar another way. Dickens came here, and he hit the lecture circuit. He gave readings from his books for a price.<br/><br/>Says Gaiman, Dickens gave people the one thing the pirates couldn’t give them – Charles Dickens. And we Americans in that day came out for that. We bought tickets to get into the theaters and auditoriums, so we could see and hear the man who wrote <span style="font-style: italic;">A Christmas Carol</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">A Tale of Two Cities</span>, and so many other books.<br/><br/>Gaiman believes we may be heading for a world, in the next 10 to 15 years, in which Stephen King won’t make any money from his new book, but he instead will pack our country’s arenas and read the book – well, portions of it – to his audiences.<br/><br/>That, Gaiman told Gladstone, will be fun.<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold;">Later today: Borders now selling e-books</span>Dan Schorr, we will miss youtag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-07-27:537324:BlogPost:2438702010-07-27T17:23:51.000ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPeterson
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Newsman Dan Schorr died last week at the age of 93. He had worked up until two weeks before his death, for the past 25 years as a news analyst and commentator for NPR.<br></br><br></br>Schorr said public radio hired him because he was a living history book.<br></br><br></br>“A colleague stuck his head into my office [one day] and said to me, ‘Dan, excuse me, you covered the Spanish-American war, no?’” Schorr told All Things Considered host Robert Siegel in a 2006…
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Newsman Dan Schorr died last week at the age of 93. He had worked up until two weeks before his death, for the past 25 years as a news analyst and commentator for NPR.<br/><br/>Schorr said public radio hired him because he was a living history book.<br/><br/>“A colleague stuck his head into my office [one day] and said to me, ‘Dan, excuse me, you covered the Spanish-American war, no?’” Schorr told All Things Considered host Robert Siegel in a 2006 interview. “He saw the look on my face. He said, ‘No, I guess not. That was earlier, huh?’”<br/><br/>But Schorr was there for World War II, the Korean War, the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, the first space flight, Watergate and the resignation of President Nixon, and the building of the Berlin wall and its fall 28 years later.<br/><br/>He on occasion got in trouble with his bosses. CBS suspended him in 1976 – he later resigned before the network could fire him – and CNN fired him 1985.<br/><br/>But Schorr collected a bushel of honors for his work, including three Emmies, the George Polk Award for radio commentary, and the Edward R. Murrow Award for lifetime achievement in broadcasting. That one came in 2002.<br/><br/>He also collected a perverse kind of honor from the Nixon Administration. White House aides didn’t like Schorr’s reporting on the Nixon Administration and dispatched the FBI to dig up something they could use against him. Investigators didn’t get much, nonetheless the aides put Schorr on a Nixon Enemies List. That list came to light on September 9, 1971, when John Dean mentioned it during a hearing being conducted by the Senate Watergate Committee.<br/><br/>Schorr got the list minutes before air time that evening, for the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. Schorr read the list live on the program and didn’t miss a beat when he came to his name as number 17 and the note “a real media enemy.” Until that moment, he didn’t know he was on the list.<br/><br/>I remember it well. I was watching CBS that evening. A lesser reporter might have stumbled or gasped at the sight of his name on an enemies list. Not Schorr. He read his name and went right on, holding his reaction until after he was off the air.<br/><br/>Schorr was a writer, of his own news stories and commentaries, and of books – six books in his lifetime: <span style="font-style: italic;">Don’t Get Sick in America</span> (1970), <span style="font-style: italic;">Clearing The Air</span> (1978), <span style="font-style: italic;">Forgive Us Our Press Passes, Selected Works</span> (1998), <span style="font-style: italic;">Staying Tuned: A Life in Journalism</span> (2001), The Senate Watergate Report (2005), and <span style="font-style: italic;">Come to Think of It: Notes on the Turn of the Millennium</span> (2007).<br/><br/>Working with other writers, he also co-wrote three other books: <span style="font-style: italic;">Within Our Reach: Breaking the Cycle of Disadvantage</span> with Lisbeth Schorr and William Wilson (1989), <span style="font-style: italic;">Cradle & Crucible: History and Faith in the Middle East</span> with David Fromkin, Zahi Hawass, and Milton Viorst (2004), and <span style="font-style: italic;">The Idea of a Free Press: The Enlightenment and Its Unruly Legacy</span> with David Copeland (2006).<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tomorrow: The future of the book, part last</span>What advice would you give?tag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-07-21:537324:BlogPost:2428642010-07-21T21:07:04.000ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPeterson
Hannah McLay Arnold is 12 and going into seventh grade. Says her grandmother, Jean Arnold, a friend of mine, Hannah is a wonderful storyteller and writer, and has been since she started talking and playing with her stuffed animals.<br></br><br></br>Hannah’s favorite class? English.<br></br><br></br>We writers love her.<br></br><br></br>Said Jean in a contact via Facebook, “I think she [Hannah] should meet a ‘real’ author. I told her I would contact you.”<br></br><br></br>Jean is looking for suggestions of what her…
Hannah McLay Arnold is 12 and going into seventh grade. Says her grandmother, Jean Arnold, a friend of mine, Hannah is a wonderful storyteller and writer, and has been since she started talking and playing with her stuffed animals.<br/><br/>Hannah’s favorite class? English.<br/><br/>We writers love her.<br/><br/>Said Jean in a contact via Facebook, “I think she [Hannah] should meet a ‘real’ author. I told her I would contact you.”<br/><br/>Jean is looking for suggestions of what her granddaughter should do to become a better writer. She wants inspiration she can share.<br/><br/>So, fellow writer, if Hannah were sitting with you at the kitchen table, what would you tell her?<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tomorrow: Notes</span>New edition of Stephen King's "On Writing" outtag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-07-14:537324:BlogPost:2417572010-07-14T16:45:21.000ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPeterson
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Anything with Stephen King’s name on it sells, right?<br></br><br></br>Stack ’em high in the front of the bookstore and watch ’em fly out the door. Everybody wants a copy.<br></br><br></br>And if it’s a re-issue because of an anniversary, well, the publisher and the stores have another sales hook.<br></br><br></br>Stephen King’s <span style="font-style: italic;">On Writing</span> is just that, a re-issue.<br></br><br></br>The book came out 10 years ago and sold more than a million…
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Anything with Stephen King’s name on it sells, right?<br/><br/>Stack ’em high in the front of the bookstore and watch ’em fly out the door. Everybody wants a copy.<br/><br/>And if it’s a re-issue because of an anniversary, well, the publisher and the stores have another sales hook.<br/><br/>Stephen King’s <span style="font-style: italic;">On Writing</span> is just that, a re-issue.<br/><br/>The book came out 10 years ago and sold more than a million copies. Publisher Simon & Schuster has bet a lot of paper and ink that the book’s 10th anniversary edition, out this month, will do it again.<br/><br/>You can buy the book in whatever format you like: hardcover, paperback, electronic. And for an extra $20,000, King will come to your house and it to you.<br/><br/>No, he won’t.<br/><br/>I made that up.<br/><br/>But buy me a plane ticket and I’ll come read his book to you.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic;">On Writing</span> really contains two books, King’s sardonic autobiography and, the second, a tough-love lesson for those who want to write novels.<br/><br/>A lot of us writers have <span style="font-style: italic;">On Writing</span> on our bookshelves. We keep it close so we can pull it down and reread sections when we need King to help us kick a bad habit in grammar or word choice or story structure.<br/><br/>The leaders of my writers group tell every newbie to get this book. That’s how much we value it.<br/><br/>If you have yet to buy your copy, the new 10th anniversary edition is a good reason to get one.<br/><br/>Two hundred eighty-eight pages.<br/><br/>Eighteen dollars at full retail.<br/><br/>But you know how to get the discounts.<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tomorrow: A friend wants advice for her granddaughter who loves to write</span>Meet our new poet laureatetag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-07-13:537324:BlogPost:2416022010-07-13T14:37:34.000ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPeterson
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We have a new top poet in our country – W.S. Merwin, the appointment made two weeks ago.<br></br><br></br>Merwin looks the role – a mop of white hair, somewhat bushy eyebrows. It’s as if he had studied the portraits of Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg and said, “I can look like that.”<br></br><br></br>But more important than “the look”, Merwin’s a sterling poet who has gathered in a basketful of honors for his work, including two Pulitzer prizes – in 1971 for his…
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We have a new top poet in our country – W.S. Merwin, the appointment made two weeks ago.<br/><br/>Merwin looks the role – a mop of white hair, somewhat bushy eyebrows. It’s as if he had studied the portraits of Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg and said, “I can look like that.”<br/><br/>But more important than “the look”, Merwin’s a sterling poet who has gathered in a basketful of honors for his work, including two Pulitzer prizes – in 1971 for his poetry collection <span style="font-style: italic;">The Carrier of Ladders</span> and last year for his collection <span style="font-style: italic;">The Shadow of Sirius</span> – and a National Book Award. He got that one for his 2004 collection <span style="font-style: italic;">Migration: New and Selected Poems</span>.<br/><br/>Merwin also served a previous hitch with the Library of Congress, in 1999 as a poetry consultant.<br/><br/>The poet’s muse touched Merwin early. At age 18, he contacted Ezra Pound and asked for advice on what he should do to become a poet. Pound came back with write 75 lines of poetry every day and, oh, by the way, you ought to translate poetry from other languages into English, to learn what a person can do with language. Merwin has done both.<br/><br/>In the 1960s, he became, with Allen Ginsberg and others on the New York scene, a hell raiser. He opposed the Vietnam war. He condemned it. It’s all there in his 1967 collection of poems, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Lice</span>.<br/><br/>In that decade Merwin began writing poems without any punctuation, and then without capital letters, except for the first letter of each line. Said he, “I came to feel that punctuation was like nailing the words onto the page. I wanted instead the movement and lightness of the spoken word.”<br/><br/>He also works toward that in the manner in which he writes. No computer. No typewriter. Too inhibiting, says Merwin. He writes with a pencil or pen in a small spiral notebook and on napkins. “It’s the nearest thing to not writing,” Merwin said. “The more self-conscious it [the act of writing] gets, the stiffer it gets.”<br/><br/>Merwin is more than a poet. He’s also a playwright, and he’s written a novel, <span style="font-style: italic;">Folding Cliffs: A Narrative</span>, published in 1998. The novel is in verse, and it deals with Hawaii’s history and legend – Hawaii, where Merwin has lived for the past three decades.<br/><br/>You’re not likely to see much of Merwin, our 17th U.S. poet laureate. He’s a recluse. He has agreed to come to Washington, D.C., in October and give a reading at the opening of the Library of Congress’s annual literary series.<br/><br/>That may be it for his travels as poet laureate.<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tomorrow: New edition of Stephen King’s</span> <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">On Writing</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">out</span>Toy Story 3tag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-07-12:537324:BlogPost:2414652010-07-12T13:58:55.000ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPeterson
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Did you love <span style="font-style: italic;">Toy Story</span>, that terrific Pixar movie of 15 years ago? Then you’re going to love <span style="font-style: italic;">Toy Story 3</span> now out in 3-D.<br></br><br></br>It’s the story of what happens to Woody and Buzz and the other toys now that Andy is 17 and going off to college. The adventures and misadventures are bigger and badder. For the audience, it’s an emotional roller coaster, if you’ll forgive the…
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Did you love <span style="font-style: italic;">Toy Story</span>, that terrific Pixar movie of 15 years ago? Then you’re going to love <span style="font-style: italic;">Toy Story 3</span> now out in 3-D.<br/><br/>It’s the story of what happens to Woody and Buzz and the other toys now that Andy is 17 and going off to college. The adventures and misadventures are bigger and badder. For the audience, it’s an emotional roller coaster, if you’ll forgive the cliche.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic;">Toy Story 3</span> has brought in more than $500 million since its release last month, making it the fourth highest grossing movie of the year.<br/><br/>The film is out in IMAX, and wouldn’t you like to see that?<br/><br/>The critics have loved <span style="font-style: italic;">Toy Story 3</span> as much as the audience. Said the critic for Flixster, “Deftly blending comedy, adventure, and honest emotion, <span style="font-style: italic;">Toy Story 3</span> is a rare second sequel that really works.”<br/><br/>Chicago Sun Times critic Roger Ebert prefers the earlier Toy Stories. He said <span style="font-style: italic;">Toy Story 3</span> was “a jolly, slapstick comedy, lacking the almost eerie humanity that infused the earlier Toy Story sagas, and happier with action and jokes than with characters and emotions.”<br/><br/>Nonetheless, he gave it three of four stars.<br/><br/>Will there be a <span style="font-style: italic;">Toy Story 4</span>, say in 10 years when Andy has children of his own? No, say the executives at Pixar, now owned by Disney. But with Disney, it could happen . . . if someone comes up with a good script.<br/><br/>Sift out all of the great things that have made the Toy Story movies so enjoyable and the number one thing for me is Randy Newman’s music, led off with his “You’ve Got A Friend In Me”.<br/><br/>Sweet, sentimental, clever . . . and his other music in the show, rollicking good fun. You go out of the theater singing “You’ve Got A Friend In Me” . . . at least I did, singing it to myself.<br/><br/>One last thing. Remember the Pink Panther movies? The credits ran in front of the film, and director Blake Edwards mixed a Pink Panther cartoon in and among the credits to keep us watching.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic;">Toy Story 3</span> director Lee Unkrich ran the credits at the end, and he put another Toy Story movie in the credits to keep us watching.<br/><br/>Clever!<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tomorrow: Meet our new poet laureate</span>Memories of Art Linklettertag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-07-11:537324:BlogPost:2413862010-07-11T18:38:25.000ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPeterson
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Art who?<br></br><br></br>One wouldn’t have asked that a half-century ago. Then Art Linkletter was everywhere – on radio and television, in bookstores, he even appeared in two movies. Linkletter also was a regular on the lecture circuit. For a fee, he’d come to your organization’s convention and regale your members for 45 minutes with stories drawn from his life and his television shows.<br></br><br></br>The man was born 97 years ago in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. He…
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Art who?<br/><br/>One wouldn’t have asked that a half-century ago. Then Art Linkletter was everywhere – on radio and television, in bookstores, he even appeared in two movies. Linkletter also was a regular on the lecture circuit. For a fee, he’d come to your organization’s convention and regale your members for 45 minutes with stories drawn from his life and his television shows.<br/><br/>The man was born 97 years ago in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. He was adopted by an itinerant preacher and his wife, Fulton and Mary Linkletter. The family moved to San Diego, California, when Linkletter was five. He grew up there and eventually attended what is now San Diego State University, intending to become an English teacher. But the local radio station offered Linkletter an announcing job. He took it, he said, because it paid better than teaching would.<br/><br/>Linkletter jumped to a station in San Francisco and then Los Angeles where he hit it big when John Guedel created a radio show for him called People Are Funny, an audience participation show with contests and gags.<br/><br/>NBC executives liked Linkletter’s audition tape and bought the show, put it on in 1942. It became a monster success.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic;">People Are Funny</span> ran until 1960. On television, the program aired from 1954 to 1961.<br/><br/>Three years after Linkletter launched <span style="font-style: italic;">People Are Funny</span> on NBC, he launched <span style="font-style: italic;">House Party</span> on CBS, a gentler version of <span style="font-style: italic;">People Are Funny</span> that aired five days a week on radio. <span style="font-style: italic;">House Party</span>, too, moved to television, running from 1952 to 1969. The best and most popular segment featured Linkletter interviewing 5- to 10-year-olds kids. He would sit with them so he was on their eye level, and he would draw out from them the wildest things.<br/><br/>One boy said his father was a policeman, to which Linkletter asked, “What does he do as a policeman?”<br/><br/>“He arrests lots of burglars,” the boy said.<br/><br/>“Does your mother ever worry about the risks?” Linkletter asked.<br/><br/>“Naw, she thinks it’s great,” he answered. “He brings home rings and bracelets and jewelry almost every week.”<br/><br/>The boy’s parents probably wished television had never been invented.<br/><br/>Eventually parents began coaching their children before they went to the studio. When Linkletter found out, he came up with a question that he’d often ask: “What one thing did your parents tell you not to say?”<br/><br/>And all the juicy stuff would roll out.<br/><br/>Linkletter edited the best of these interviews into a book titled <span style="font-style: italic;">Kids Say the Darndest Things!</span>, and <span style="font-style: italic;">Peanuts’</span> Charles Schulz illustrated it. A huge bestseller as was the sequel <span style="font-style: italic;">Kids Still Say the Darndest Things</span>. Those books came out in 1957 and 1962.<br/><br/>Linkletter went on to write 17 books, including two autobiographies, Confessions of a Happy Man (1960) and <span style="font-style: italic;">I Didn’t Do It Alone</span> (1980).<br/><br/>Life was not always good to Linkletter. His daughter, Diane, became a drug addict. He reached out to her time and again to no avail. She committed suicide in 1969 at age 20 – leaped to her death from her sixth-floor apartment.<br/><br/>Linkletter’s response was to go on an anti-drug crusade. He used his popularity to get families to look at what LSD and cocaine were doing to their adult children. He spoke out of his grief.<br/><br/>I met Linkletter a month after his daughter had killed herself, when he had come to Kansas City to speak to the National Association of Farm Broadcasters convention. We sat outside the ballroom for 20 minutes and talked – he talked – while my tape recorder ran. That was a difficult interview to edit.<br/><br/>There was no laughter here.<br/><br/>Linkletter cut a record, <span style="font-style: italic;">We Love You, Call Collect</span>, before his daughter’s death. It featured a discussion of permissiveness in the society of the 1960s and included a rebuttal by Diane, called <span style="font-style: italic;">Dear Mom and Dad</span>. The record was released after her suicide and sold 275,000 copies in eight weeks. It won a Grammy in 1970 for Best Spoken Word Recording.War . . . in a booktag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-07-10:537324:BlogPost:2413142010-07-10T17:53:20.000ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPeterson
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Sebastian Junger, best known for his book <span style="font-style: italic;">The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea</span>, has a new book out – <span style="font-style: italic;">War</span>. In it he follows a platoon of the Army’s 173rd Airborne brigade in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, a killing zone for the Taliban and Afghan war lords who control the valley and the units of American soldiers sent in hold them off.<br></br><br></br>Junger…
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Sebastian Junger, best known for his book <span style="font-style: italic;">The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea</span>, has a new book out – <span style="font-style: italic;">War</span>. In it he follows a platoon of the Army’s 173rd Airborne brigade in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, a killing zone for the Taliban and Afghan war lords who control the valley and the units of American soldiers sent in hold them off.<br/><br/>Junger spent the better part of 14 months in 2007–2008 intermittently embedded with the platoon. He lived with them under fire and in fire fights, and in the long stretches of boredom between.<br/><br/>The soldiers were a scruffy lot who frequently went to battle in shorts and flip-flops. It was just easier than carrying a hundred pounds of body armor and battle gear . . . and they were far enough away from brigade headquarters that they could get away with it.<br/><br/>All the reviewers agree that <span style="font-style: italic;">War</span> is a superlative book because it’s the story of the soldiers, not the commanders and not the general staff back at the Pentagon.<br/><br/>After <span style="font-style: italic;">The Perfect Storm</span> came out 13 years ago, critics said of Junger that he was the new Ernest Hemingway in that he had helped create a new interest among readers in adventure non-fiction.<br/><br/>Junger’s storytelling skill and that reader interest continue in <span style="font-style: italic;">War</span>.<br/><br/>A side note: At one point, a soldier tells Junger that his base in the Korengal Valley is a big middle finger pointed at the Taliban fighters, to remind them that shooting Americans only makes the Americans fight harder.<br/><br/>In April, after four years in the valley, the 173rd abandoned it – pulled out – but only after the Army bribed the valley chiefs with 6,000 gallons of gasoline to not fire on the retreating convoys.<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tomorrow: Memories of Art Linkletter</span>A master of descriptiontag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-07-09:537324:BlogPost:2412512010-07-09T17:48:32.000ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPeterson
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A couple weeks ago, I told you about Gerry Spence, a master of our craft of writing, and I gave you an example of how he describes characters, drawing the example from Spence’s autobiography, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Making of a Country Lawyer</span>.<br></br><br></br>Today it’s back to Spence and his autobiography for an example of how he describes place, a setting. Spence’s father was a hunter. Every year, he would go into the Wyoming mountains…
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A couple weeks ago, I told you about Gerry Spence, a master of our craft of writing, and I gave you an example of how he describes characters, drawing the example from Spence’s autobiography, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Making of a Country Lawyer</span>.<br/><br/>Today it’s back to Spence and his autobiography for an example of how he describes place, a setting. Spence’s father was a hunter. Every year, he would go into the Wyoming mountains for a week, to shoot elk and deer for the family larder – <br/><br/><br/>The first day of the season he had taken off on foot in the dark of the early morning. He hunted alone. He said other hunters made too much noise. But the real reason he liked to hunt alone was because alone, an ineffable sense of being filled his experience. One is keenly aware of every movement, the needles of the lodgepole pine flitting in an errant breeze when all else is still, the small shadow of a mouse scampering. One sees everything, the eye-drop rust-colored petals of the kinnikinnick, its berries red, the imprint in the tall forest grass where an animal has lain, the ferns growing out of a rotten log, proclaiming that life is the fleeting product of death. Alone, one experiences the total feast, and looks for more, feels for more in the holiness there, in that sanctuary more perfect than a cathedral. Alone and silent in a forest, one dissolves into the forest. One would never speak out, never even whisper there any more than one would stand up on a pew in church and shout. Walking softly, one looks ahead to spot where each foot will meet the ground so that no crunch of crumbling twigs or crushing needles will sully the silence.<br/><br/>. . . To him [Spence’s father], Mother Nature was a friend, and the wilderness a place of peace, and if there were a God, which I suspected he privately questioned – at least a God with a long white beard – God would be in the mountains.<br/><br/><br/>Makes you want to be there, doesn’t it?<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tomorrow: Going to war . . . in a book</span>An Allen Ginsberg storytag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-07-08:537324:BlogPost:2411052010-07-08T13:25:27.000ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPeterson
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Two weeks ago, I posted a piece on Allen Ginsberg and the stories he wrote on the pictures he took. For Texas crime writer David Hansard, that brought back a memory:<br></br><br></br><br></br>I once spent three days escorting him around the University of Wyoming and surrounds. On our way to the Denver airport he signed my copy of Howl. It echos his photo stories in that he drew a picture and created a succinct narrative out of it– time, place and what was…
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Two weeks ago, I posted a piece on Allen Ginsberg and the stories he wrote on the pictures he took. For Texas crime writer David Hansard, that brought back a memory:<br/><br/><br/>I once spent three days escorting him around the University of Wyoming and surrounds. On our way to the Denver airport he signed my copy of Howl. It echos his photo stories in that he drew a picture and created a succinct narrative out of it– time, place and what was happening. In case it's hard to read it says,<br/><br/>for David Hansard<br/>en route<br/>Highway to Denver airport<br/><br/>April 19, 1971<br/>Allen Ginsberg<br/><br/>In the upper left corner is a sun with rays shining on the flower he made from the O in <span style="font-style: italic;">Howl</span>.<br/><br/>The most memorable hour I have ever spent in a classroom was in a graduate Pound seminar that was going on during his visit. When he heard about it, he asked if he could attend. Of course, he took over the class and everyone there – including the teacher – learned more about Ezra Pound in 90 minutes than they could in ten seminars.<br/><br/>The time with Ginsberg was most memorable because I got to absorb a little of what it is to be a real poet and genius. He was on a different plane than most other people, at least the ones I know. <br/><br/><br/><br/>Wow. If you have a great author experience you’d like to share, send it on.<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tomorrow: Meet a master of description</span>Goodbye, Orphan Annietag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-07-05:537324:BlogPost:2407132010-07-05T20:42:15.000ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPeterson
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<span style="font-style: italic;">Little Orphan Annie</span>, a staple of newspaper comic pages for 86 year, is gone.<br></br><br></br>The last strip ran last month, ending with Annie kidnapped –again, she was kidnapped so, so many times – and lost in Guatemala.<br></br><br></br>You didn’t miss her departure, did you?<br></br><br></br>I didn’t.<br></br><br></br>I only learned about it while listening to a business story on NPR’s Morning Edition. Annie appeared in fewer than 20…
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<span style="font-style: italic;">Little Orphan Annie</span>, a staple of newspaper comic pages for 86 year, is gone.<br/><br/>The last strip ran last month, ending with Annie kidnapped –again, she was kidnapped so, so many times – and lost in Guatemala.<br/><br/>You didn’t miss her departure, did you?<br/><br/>I didn’t.<br/><br/>I only learned about it while listening to a business story on NPR’s Morning Edition. Annie appeared in fewer than 20 newspapers this year – and none in my area – down from its peak of 200 or more three-quarters of a century ago. <br/><br/>Cartoonist Harold Gray created the character and the first strip in 1924, not as <span style="font-style: italic;">Little Orphan Annie</span>, but as <span style="font-style: italic;">Little Orphan Otto</span>. It was Chicago Tribune publisher Joseph Patterson who changed the name of the comic strip to <span style="font-style: italic;">Little Orphan Annie</span>. Hang onto the Trib connection for a moment.<br/><br/>Gray wrote and drew the strip until he died in 1968. Annie lost audience under succeeding cartoonists, so much so that the Tribune Syndicate fired the new cartoonists in 1974 and reran Gray’s strips.<br/><br/>That changed after the success of <span style="font-style: italic;">Annie</span>, the Broadway musical, in 1977. Two years later, the Tribune Syndicate hired Leonard Starr to write and draw a new Orphan Annie strip. Starr had a record of success. He had created the strip <span style="font-style: italic;">Mary Perkins, On Stage</span>.<br/><br/>Annie again took off.<br/><br/>The Post Office honored her in 1995 by including Annie in its Comic Strip Classics series of commemorative stamps.<br/><br/>Starr retired in 2000, and the Tribune Syndicate hired new writers and cartoonists, but the stories didn’t have the panache of those of Gray and Starr, and the strip went downhill. Not even a new hairdo and jeans could save Annie.<br/><br/>Remember I said hang on to the Chicago Tribune connection. The Trib, back in 1930, spun the strip into a six-day-a-week, 15-minute show on its radio station, WGN. Annie aired for 12 years, going out to a national audience in 1931 on NBC’s Blue Network and moving to the Mutual Network in 1940.<br/><br/>If you’re an Annie afficionado, you should come to Wisconsin – to Door County – and stay a night or two, or a week, at Orphan Annie’s Schoolhouse Inn.<br/><br/>As Dave Barry would say, I’m not making this up.<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tomorrow: An Allen Ginsberg autograph</span>Peter Sellerstag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-07-02:537324:BlogPost:2404172010-07-02T13:09:48.000ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPeterson
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My mention yesterday of the movie <span style="font-style: italic;">Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb</span> got me to wondering about Peter Sellers. Sellers played Strangelove and two other characters in that 1964 Stanley Kubrick film.<br></br><br></br>Was Sellers a writer? Did he write any books?<br></br><br></br>Sadly, no.<br></br><br></br>He did write his own material in his early days as a stand-up comedian and for his records. And he…
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My mention yesterday of the movie <span style="font-style: italic;">Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb</span> got me to wondering about Peter Sellers. Sellers played Strangelove and two other characters in that 1964 Stanley Kubrick film.<br/><br/>Was Sellers a writer? Did he write any books?<br/><br/>Sadly, no.<br/><br/>He did write his own material in his early days as a stand-up comedian and for his records. And he was a quick wit at ad-libbing. But in radio, television, and the movies, he looked to others to provide his words. What he did with them and the characters and the scenes those writers created for him was pure Peter Sellers – laugh-out-loud, roll-in-the-aisles funny.<br/><br/>His Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther series of films was . . . well, all I need do is mention Clouseau and we all relive our favorite scenes. Mine were his return to his apartment to be attacked by his house boy, Cato Fong. It’s a running joke that Cato is told by Clouseau to jump him without warning, to keep Clouseau’s combat skills and vigilance sharp. Cato does, and the catastrophes that follow are slapstick genius.<br/><br/>Sellers’ son, Michael, also an actor, was the writer in the family. He wrote three biographies of his father: <span style="font-style: italic;">P.S. I Love You</span> (1981), <span style="font-style: italic;">A Hard Act to Follow</span> (1996), and <span style="font-style: italic;">Sellers on Sellers</span> (2000).<br/><br/>The two did not get along well, but the younger Sellers defended his father whenever public disputes arose.<br/><br/>Curiously, Michael died on the same date that his father died – July 24 – only 26 years later. Both men went out with heart attacks, Sellers senior in 1980 at age 54, and Sellers junior four years ago at age 52.Got a minute?tag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-07-01:537324:BlogPost:2403092010-07-01T15:59:51.000ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPeterson
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Then you can read <span style="font-style: italic;">War and Peace</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Great Gatsby</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Fahrenheit 451</span>, or just about any other book . . . as long as it’s on Book-A-Minute’s website.<br></br><br></br>Can’t believe it?<br></br><br></br>Here’s Book’s one-minute summary of <span style="font-style: italic;">One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest</span>:<br></br>Nurse Ratched: I destroy my patients…
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Then you can read <span style="font-style: italic;">War and Peace</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Great Gatsby</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Fahrenheit 451</span>, or just about any other book . . . as long as it’s on Book-A-Minute’s website.<br/><br/>Can’t believe it?<br/><br/>Here’s Book’s one-minute summary of <span style="font-style: italic;">One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest</span>:<br/>Nurse Ratched: I destroy my patients psychologically so I can have power and control. <br/>Randall P. McMurphy: But freedom and happiness are good things. <br/>Nurse Ratched: Lobotomy time for you, buster. <br/>(McMurphy DIES but inspires HOPE so OTHERS may LIVE.)<br/>THE END<br/><br/>Want Book’s Movie-A-Minute summary of <span style="font-style: italic;">Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb</span>? This is my favorite:<br/>Oops.<br/><br/>You want more? Here are the sites where all the one-minute goodies reside:<br/>A Book-A- Minute Classics: <a href="http://www.rinkworks.com/bookaminute/classics.shtml">http://www.rinkworks.com/bookaminute/classics.shtml</a> <br/>A Book-A-Minute Bed Time Stories: <a href="http://www.rinkworks.com/bookaminute/bedtime.shtml">http://www.rinkworks.com/bookaminute/bedtime.shtml</a> <br/>A Book-A-Minute Science Fiction/Fantasy: <a href="http://www.rinkworks.com/bookaminute/sff.shtml">http://www.rinkworks.com/bookaminute/sff.shtml</a> <br/>A Movie-A-Minute: <a href="http://www.rinkworks.com/movieaminute/">http://www.rinkworks.com/movieaminute/</a> <br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tomorrow: Peter Sellers</span>Next on televisiontag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-06-30:537324:BlogPost:2401392010-06-30T15:01:30.000ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPeterson
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Let’s be honest. We writers, we all want our books to be turned into movies or television series. A degree of celebrity and a lot of money come with it if the movie or the series is a hit.<br></br><br></br>It happens for few of us. Charlaine Harris a couple years ago with the <span style="font-style: italic;">True Blood</span> series on HBO – vampires on the loose in Bon Temps, a fictional town in Louisiana. Sookie Stackhouse, a telepathic waitress in a bar,…
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Let’s be honest. We writers, we all want our books to be turned into movies or television series. A degree of celebrity and a lot of money come with it if the movie or the series is a hit.<br/><br/>It happens for few of us. Charlaine Harris a couple years ago with the <span style="font-style: italic;">True Blood</span> series on HBO – vampires on the loose in Bon Temps, a fictional town in Louisiana. Sookie Stackhouse, a telepathic waitress in a bar, is the character who makes the series work just as she made Harris’s books work.<br/><br/>The show, in its third season and renewed for a fourth, collected a Golden Globe and an Emmy in its first season.<br/><br/>Harris had been writing for 20 years before Hollywood lightning struck. Sookie first appeared in <span style="font-style: italic;">Dead Until Dark</span>, Harris’s first book in her Southern Vampire series. That book won an Anthony Award for best paperback mystery in 2001. There are now 10 books in the series with Sookie solving mysteries that involve vampires and werewolves and other supernatural critters.<br/><br/>I admit it. I’m not big on vampire fiction, so I’ve not watched the series. I’m big on police fiction, so I never miss a Tom Sellick/Jesse Stone television movie. That series is based on Robert B. Parker’s Jesse Stone novels. Stone is the chief of police in the small Massachusetts town of Paradise.<br/><br/>Parker wrote nine books in the series. The first, <span style="font-style: italic;">Night Passage</span>, came out 13 years ago; the last, <span style="font-style: italic;">Split Image</span>, this year, shortly after Parker died.<br/><br/>And soon I may be watching a series on TNT built around Craig Johnson’s Walt Longmire Mysteries. Longmire is a Wyoming sheriff. Six books in the series to date, <span style="font-style: italic;">Junkyard Dogs</span> the most recent.<br/><br/>Two weeks ago, Johnson confirmed that Warner Horizon Television and TNT have hired a production company and a director to develop a pilot for a television series based on his books. And they’ve brought Johnson on board as a creative consultant.<br/><br/>Johnson is a genuinely nice person as well as a superb writer, as is Harris. Both have earned the success that has come their way.<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tomorrow: One-minute book summaries</span>What makes a good read . . .tag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-06-29:537324:BlogPost:2400212010-06-29T13:31:43.000ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPeterson
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Scott Turow, that Chicago lawyer who has written nine superlative legal thrillers, was first an academic.<br></br><br></br>He studied creative writing at Stanford University. He and his fellow students were expected to come away writing literary novels.<br></br><br></br>“In the late 1960s and early 1970s,” Turow said in a recent essay for the NPR news program All Things Considered, “most English departments exalted modernism, modernism whose innovations and defiance…
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Scott Turow, that Chicago lawyer who has written nine superlative legal thrillers, was first an academic.<br/><br/>He studied creative writing at Stanford University. He and his fellow students were expected to come away writing literary novels.<br/><br/>“In the late 1960s and early 1970s,” Turow said in a recent essay for the NPR news program All Things Considered, “most English departments exalted modernism, modernism whose innovations and defiance of literary convention were thought to advance culture, but that meant by definition those books were not intended for a broad popular audience.”<br/><br/>Turow wanted to be read by more than several handfuls of people. Graham Greene’s 1940 novel <span style="font-style: italic;">The Power and The Glory</span> provided the direction. It was a popular thriller, a story of suspense, and – most important to Turow – a novel of ideas.<br/><br/>Turow followed Greene’s pattern with that book. He wrote, not literary novels that few would read, but novels of ideas that used the thriller format to assure that they would be read by millions.<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tomorrow: To be seen on television</span>Lilies of the Fieldtag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-06-28:537324:BlogPost:2399822010-06-28T22:09:45.000ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPeterson
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Wow, what a response a couple weeks ago to my posting of pictures of flowers on Facebook.<br></br><br></br>The Asiatic lilies are blooming here in Marge’s garden in southern Wisconsin, so I shot a series of pictures and put them up in an album I titled “Lilies of the Field.” In the blurb, I said the album title came from the 1963 Sidney Poitier film of the same name.<br></br><br></br>Said Jean Dregne, “Love the film.”<br></br><br></br>Mary Ann Macomber: “That was a fantastic…
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Wow, what a response a couple weeks ago to my posting of pictures of flowers on Facebook.<br/><br/>The Asiatic lilies are blooming here in Marge’s garden in southern Wisconsin, so I shot a series of pictures and put them up in an album I titled “Lilies of the Field.” In the blurb, I said the album title came from the 1963 Sidney Poitier film of the same name.<br/><br/>Said Jean Dregne, “Love the film.”<br/><br/>Mary Ann Macomber: “That was a fantastic movie and one I will always remember. Thank you for reminding us of that movie.”<br/><br/>Sean Patrick Little: “GREAT film. Poitier is so great in that one.”<br/><br/>Sean must have gotten his hands on a DVD. He couldn’t have seen Lilies of the Field when it was first released because, well, he hadn’t been born yet.<br/><br/>Poitier won a Best Actor Academy Award for his work.<br/><br/>But there would not have been a movie had not William Barrett first written the book. That book came out in 1962.<br/><br/>Everybody has to have a day job, and Barrett (1900-1986) worked as an aeronautics consultant for the Denver Public Library. He also wrote novels – 21 of them, and three became the basis for movies – <span style="font-style: italic;">The Left Hand of God</span> (1955), starred Humphrey Bogart; <span style="font-style: italic;">Lilies of the Field</span>, with Poitier; and <span style="font-style: italic;">Pieces of Dreams</span> (1970) based on Barrett’s 1968 book <span style="font-style: italic;">The Wine and the Music</span>.<br/><br/>If that were not enough, he also wrote a handful of scripts for television and a bushel of short stories.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic;">The Lilies of the Field</span> is a short book at 128 pages, short but hardly minor.<br/><br/>Said one reviewer, “Ask yourself this: how many books have you read in your life that actually made you feel more optimistic about the prospects of the [human] species? If it’s really that easy to create sympathetic characters and write a story that uplifts the spirits, why haven’t more authors written them? Isn’t it fair to conclude that the paucity of such stories, and the memorable nature of this one, indicate just how major an occurrence it is when one gets written?”<br/><br/>The New York Times Book Review described The Lilies of the Field as a contemporary fable. “What joins these unlikely forces [Homer Smith, Mother Maria Marthe and her nuns, and the diverse people of the community] in a plausible miracle [building a church in the desert] is the vein of basic goodness Mr. Barrett sees in all men.”<br/><br/>If you loved the movie, you owe it to yourself to read the book.<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tomorrow: Scott Turow on what makes a good read</span>Why there are no James Bonds in Alan Furst's bookstag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-06-25:537324:BlogPost:2394862010-06-25T16:26:00.000ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPeterson
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After 10 books writer Alan Furst set in the 1933-1942 time period in Europe, he discovered he was writing spy novels.<br></br><br></br>But you won’t find a James Bond or a Jason Bourne in one of them.<br></br><br></br>Furst prefers characters who struggle with huge moral questions, just as his readers would if they were there in that period just as the Germans were about to invade their country, their city.<br></br><br></br>“Those are the people who are going to say, well,…
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After 10 books writer Alan Furst set in the 1933-1942 time period in Europe, he discovered he was writing spy novels.<br/><br/>But you won’t find a James Bond or a Jason Bourne in one of them.<br/><br/>Furst prefers characters who struggle with huge moral questions, just as his readers would if they were there in that period just as the Germans were about to invade their country, their city.<br/><br/>“Those are the people who are going to say, well, what would I do – and no kidding, what would I do? What would I really do?” Furst said in a recent NPR interview.<br/><br/>“It’s always nice to think that you would be a hero. On the other hand, that might have something to do with what’s going to happen to your wife, what’s going to happen to your children, what’s going to happen to your parents. It’s not a clean business. You know a lot of books, which are in one way or another action books, the hero has none of these concerns, nor would the heroine have any of these concerns. They’re loners completely. There is no Mrs. James Bond. There is no Mother Bond for him to worry about. And there is no little Junior Bond playing on the soccer team. I prefer to have the people who play the lead roles in my book to have lives, just like the readers have lives.”<br/><br/>That holds true in Furst’s newest book, <span style="font-style: italic;">Spies in the Balkans</span>.A series that never moves ontag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-06-24:537324:BlogPost:2392642010-06-24T14:40:23.000ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPeterson
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Alan Furst has written 11 novels set in the beginning years of World War II.<br></br><br></br>Eleven novels.<br></br><br></br>Most of us who write series work a period for a couple years, a couple books, and move on. We let our characters age because either we’ve mined out the stories of that period or we’ve become bored with the period.<br></br><br></br>Says Furst he doesn’t write anything after 1942 because then the story becomes how can we survive until the end of this…
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Alan Furst has written 11 novels set in the beginning years of World War II.<br/><br/>Eleven novels.<br/><br/>Most of us who write series work a period for a couple years, a couple books, and move on. We let our characters age because either we’ve mined out the stories of that period or we’ve become bored with the period.<br/><br/>Says Furst he doesn’t write anything after 1942 because then the story becomes how can we survive until the end of this war? But in the period before, the story is, my God, we’re going to lose, what shall we do? That, to Furst, is far more interesting.<br/><br/>“What I like to say about this period is that you didn’t have a lot of choices. You could be a hero. You could be a coward. You could be a villain or you could be a victim. Pick,” he told NPR’s Steve Inskeep in a recent interview.<br/><br/>To come up with new story ideas for this period, Furst reads.<br/><br/>“I read a lot of books by foreign correspondents,” he told Inskeep. “They would have a three-year stint in Budapest or a two-year stint in Bucharest. And when they finally got back to London or Chicago or whatever it was, they would always write a book. The book was always called <span style="font-style: italic;">Flames Over Europe</span>. They always told people exactly what was going to happen and they were never believed.”<br/><br/>So the ideas are there in the books for Furst to run with. An example – <br/><br/>“This one guy in Bucharest went out one night and met a young woman,” Furst said. “And they went off to her apartment to spend the night. And when he got home the next morning, he discovered there was a black hole in the middle of his mattress and that during the night somebody had fired a pistol up through the ceiling . . . where the bullet went through his bed.”<br/><br/>True story.<br/><br/>“You know, the human spirit was at its worst and at its best. Don’t ask me why. It just was. And this period, 1933 to 1942, I’ve begun to think of it as an enormous room with a thousand corners. There are so many stories and so many places, all of them so different. So it’s always up to me to find another great story.”<br/><br/>In 11 books – <span style="font-style: italic;">Spies of the Balkans</span> the latest is – Furst has done that.<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tomorrow: Why there are no James Bonds in Alan Furst’s books</span> <br/>A master of descriptiontag:crimespace.ning.com,2010-06-23:537324:BlogPost:2391192010-06-23T17:42:53.000ZJerry Petersonhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JerryPeterson
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I admire craft.<br></br><br></br>A lot of books you and I have read are just not very good, and often the failure can be chalked up to the writer having failed to master the craft of writing.<br></br><br></br>So when we read a good one, we say, wow, this story sings . . . it’s a real page turner . . . I wish I could write like this, she/he makes it look so easy.<br></br><br></br>Gerry Spence is a master of our craft of writing. When he describes a character, whether…
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I admire craft.<br/><br/>A lot of books you and I have read are just not very good, and often the failure can be chalked up to the writer having failed to master the craft of writing.<br/><br/>So when we read a good one, we say, wow, this story sings . . . it’s a real page turner . . . I wish I could write like this, she/he makes it look so easy.<br/><br/>Gerry Spence is a master of our craft of writing. When he describes a character, whether fictional or real, that person comes alive right there. Here’s an example from Spence’s autobiography, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Making of a Country Lawyer</span> . . . his grandfather on his mother’s side of the family – <br/><br/><br/>The Pfleegers were strong, square-made people: Grandfather with that broad, powerful chest and strong arms and large square head and dark hair with a bald spot in the back. . . . He talked to people as if they were a couple blocks away instead of standing next to him. Even his pats hurt. His hands were so hard he could rasp with them, every one of his fingers had been broken and had healed crookedly, and their tips, covered with fingernails as thick as shoe leather, pointed in every which way.<br/><br/>. . . Grandpa lifted our large tin suitcase with one hand and flung it into the trunk of his old black Buick. Then, aiming the car down the yellow center line of the road, he drove the old wreck back to the farm with his oldest daughter, Esther Sophie Pfleeger, and his only grandchild, this boy, Gerald Leonard Spence, who bore his given name as a middle name, aboard. The highway, yes, the whole world belonged to Leonard Pfleeger. When he met a car, only reluctantly and at the last moment did he pull over to his side of the road.<br/><br/>“Why don’t you drive on your own side?” this plucky daughter of his demanded.<br/><br/>“I know how to drive the car,” he answered in his heavy German accent. “I don’t need no help from you.” He spoke in a way that there would be no discussion about it. He would not brook such questions. All creatures, man or beast, got out of his way. He was not in awe of preachers; he had no insurance, because the devil himself was afraid of Grandpa Pfleeger. He had no respect for bankers, and he wasn’t afraid of the Depression. He wasn’t even afraid of God.<br/><br/><br/>You can see the old man and hear him. That dryland German farmer out by Limon, Colorado, is as alive in Spence’s book as the man was when he worked his farm three-quarters of a century ago.<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tomorrow: A series that never moves on</span>