The Gist Hunter and Other Stories collects nine stories set in Matthew Hughes’s universe of The Archonate, plus four non-series stories. My favorite stories feature Henghis Hapthorn, Old Earth’s “foremost freelance discriminator” (aka, private eye). The second set of three stories follows another popular Hughes character, Guth Bandar. Bandar is an adventurer inside the realms of the collective unconscious. I like the way Bandar is amusingly logical (think Spock) about breaking down what’s happening to him in terms of stories, metaphors, and archetypes. If you like analytical stories, you’ll en ..read more

Glen Powell plays college professor Gary Johnson who moonlights as “Hit Man” for the New Orleans police. Powell’s character helps the police by wearing wigs, applying makeup, using accents, sporting fake tattoos, and dressing for the role of Hit Man that the suspects who want to hire a Hit Man expect. Clearly Powell likes to play Dress Up. Director Richard Linklater co-wrote the script for Hit Man with Glen Powell. The action picks up speed when a beautiful wife, Madison Masters (Adria Arjona), asks Powell to kill her husband. Powell talks her out of this extreme decision and later the two be ..read more

Pizza, green salad, veggie platter, carrot cake, ice cream, and apple pie ..read more

The Acolyte, a new 8-episode series on Disney+, is set 100 years before Star Wars: Episode 1: The Phantom Menace (1999). The series opens with an intense fight between Jedi knight Indara played by Carrie-Anne Moss–you might remember her from The Matrix–and assassin Mae Aniseya played by Amandla Stenberg. Why does Mae want to murder four Jedi knights? Who trained Mae? Can Jedi knight Sol played by Lee Jung-jae (you might know him from Squid Game) investigate the murders and discover the power behind the deadly plot? These and other questions will be answered in the next six weeks. Right now, t ..read more

I read my first Matt Helm spy novel when I was 11 years old in 1960. Matt Helm works for a super secret spy agency and specializes in assassinations (he’s great with a rifle!), a master of hand-to-hand combat, and a stone-cold killer. I enjoyed Matt Helm novels more than James Bond novels…at least for the first 10 books in the series. The novels got longer, Matt Helm didn’t crush as many enemy spy kidneys, and there was more and more blah, blah, blah in the later books. I stopped reading Matt Helm novels in 1977 with The Terrorizers. And, don’t get me started on the goofy Matt Helm movies sta ..read more

It’s hard to believe it’s been almost 15 years since these songs competed for Grammy Awards. As you might recall,  Robert Plant and Alison Krauss were the biggest winners of the night, winning five awards, including Album of the Year for their critically acclaimed album Raising Sand. Krauss became the sixth female solo artist to have won 5 awards in one night, joining Lauryn Hill, Alicia Keys, Norah Jones, Beyoncé Knowles, and Amy Winehouse. Katy Perry made waves with her “I Kissed A Girl.” Duffy’s “Mercy” was the last nomination for ..read more

I’m a big fan of Martin Edwards’s anthologies (you can read some of my reviews here and here). The Measure of Malice: Scientific Detection Stories (2020) presents 14 stories that use scientific and technical know-how to solve crimes. The anthology starts out with one of my favorite Sherlock Holmes stories: “The Boscombe Valley Mystery” where the crime is solved with a focus on footprints and Holmes’s monograph “on the ashes of 140 different varieties of pipe, cigar, and cigarette tobacco.” (p. 2) L. T. Meade is a writer new to me, but her two stories–with different partners–impressed me. “The ..read more

“A desperate father, alongside a tenacious cop, battles his own demons on the streets of 1980s New York as he searches for his missing nine-year-old son.”–Netflix Benedict Cumberbatch plays Vincent Anderson, an alcoholic puppeteer, whose marriage is failing. His TV program Good Day Sunshine–think Sesame Street–is suffering from lower ratings. Then, his 9-year-old son, Edgar (Evan Howe), disappears–a parent’s worst nightmare! Set in the 1980s and based on an actual case, the series of six episodes asks the audience to follow Cumberbatch and a hallucinatory big blue puppet named Eric as they t ..read more

Check out the cast of Unfrosted: Jerry Seinfeld: Plays Bob Cabana and also directed and co-wrote the film Melissa McCarthy: Plays Donna “Stan” Stankowski Jim Gaffigan: Plays Edsel Kellogg III Amy Schumer: Plays Marjorie Post Hugh Grant: Plays Thurl Ravenscroft as Tony the Tiger James Marsden: Plays Jack LaLanne Thomas Lennon: Plays Harold von Braunhut Jack McBrayer: Plays Steve Schwinn Bobby Moynihan: Plays Chef Boyardee Bill Burr: Plays President John F. Kennedy Christian Slater: Plays Mike Diamond Other cast members include Max Greenf ..read more

For 30 years or so, I’ve seen books by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child in Book Sales and on remainder tables. I have never bought one of their many books nor read their work…until I read the first review of their books that I’d ever seen. The brilliant David Vineyard, who contributes frequently to Steve Lewis’s excellent blog, Mystery*File, wrote a review of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s The Cabinet of Dr. Leng–the 21st book in the Special Agent Pendergast series. Not only did the review highlight elements that intrigued me, David’s comment to me gave me direction and motivation: D ..read more