Book and a Movie: Kick in the Pance

 The Benson Murder Case by S.S. Van Dyne, Charles Scribener's Sons, 1926

The Benson Murder Case, Directed by Frank Tuttle, Paramount Pictures, 1930

Provenance: Picked this up at the Page Turner, Kent's expansive used and new bookstore. It particular book also happened to be of the collection of Sacnoth, who had been cleaning out his shelves over time. He in turn had purchased the book in 1996 in Madison, Wisconsin (he tends to annotate all his books). This book was one of my "waiting books" - read when I'm waiting for an appointment, or for friends to show up at a restaurant. As a result, I may get two or five pages in before I have to put it aside. So the "waiting books" will be carried around for a while in a deep-pocketed jacket before finally getting finished.

As for the movie version, Sacnoth and friends watch old movies on Saturdays when we are not playing Call of Cthulhu, and have gone through all four of the William Powell Vance movies. While the book is the first of the Vance Vance novels, the movie version was the third starring William Powell. 

Reviews: As the first Philo Vance novel, and it is interesting in what it shows and what drops away later in the series, as well as changes made for the movies. Philo Vance is one of the elite dilettante school of detectives (Lord Peter Wimsey beats him out, since he first showed up in 1923 and who, like Vance, has a friend in law enforcement that allows him access to ongoing cases. 

In the case of the book, Vance's bud, District Attorney Markham is approached by an old and respected friend to investigate the death of his brother, who was his partner in a stock firm. The brother was found seated in his chair in his living room, dressed in his smoking jacket, shoeless and without his toupee, shot through the head. There was a large amount of evidence cast about, and the DA and police go through several suspects, all of which get proven innocent in turn by Vance.

Vance rejects such trivialities as facts and evidence and concentrates on the psychological nature of the killer - what sort of person would kill Benson in this matter? He claims to know the murderer from the get-go, but dances about, demonstrating to the DA that the latest prime suspect fails the test for some reason or another. In fact, he seems to delight in proving the agents of law enforcement wrong, all the while concern trolling their predicament. He's a bit arrogant about the whole thing.

The Van Dyne who is the narrator claims that position as being Vance's lawyer, and is only telling the tale now because Vance has retired to Europe. In the book, he serves no purpose as a character but to declare Vance as being brilliant and noting the growing frustration of the DA as Vance shows off one blind alley after another. Vance in this initial book comes off as insufferable, such that the DA (and the reader) just wants to shout "give us the answer, already". He actually becomes more likeable in later novels, but still absolutely sure of himself.

The movie, on the other hand, junks about everything except the title, Vance, and some of the supporting cast. Our invisible narrator did not make the transfer. In addition, the movie version riffs off the recent stock market crash. Benson is confronted with a bunch of clients who have lost money and are fed up with his shenanigans. Benson then retires to his country house and is shot. And it turns out Benson lives right next door to his good friend DA Markham, who brings along Vance to investigate. And one of the suspects says that Vance just got lucky in a previous case and challenges him to find the real culprit.

Which of course, he does. But he does it with a bit more grace than his novel incarnation, and more attention to the little facts and clues. He uses less psychobabble in his  explanations (I swear, the last chapter of the book is filled with his explanation of why the killer HAD to be a certain suspect, in part because women are not cool-headed enough to shoot a man accurately in the head). The movie version really hinges of William Powell's performance, who makes Vance actually likable. You can see the bits and bemused  mannerisms that he will bring to the Thin Man movies (and yeah, he's more likeable there than in the original book version as well).

So yeah, the novel is a time capsule - Vance was incredibly popular in his time, and the line "Philo Vance needs a kick in the pance" from Ogden Nash (of limerick fame) in 1931 just underscores the both the character's popularity and division he presented to readers. The movie version is traditional for its era as well, but a lot easier to swallow and worth hunting down if you're a fan of old pre-code Hollywood.

So yeah, check out the movie if you have a spare afternoon. The book? Only if you have a deep interest.

More later,

Faceplant

You know, I don't talk a lot about my personal life around here, but this one was an adventure, so I'll share.

Last Saturday, the Lovely Bride and I went to Bainbridge Island, which is across the Sound from Seattle. We were invited to a friend's housewarming party and decided to make a day of it. So after our Saturday morning Tai Chi class we changed out of our uniforms and headed into downtown Seattle to catch the ferry. There was no FIFA soccer game that day, and the Pride parade was going to be Sunday, so it was a pretty straight shot, and after about an hour's wait on the Seattle side, we drove onto the Wenatchee ferry and headed to Bainbridge.

And Bainbridge was pretty classy, though we only saw a small fraction of it this time. We had lunch at poke place in a converted gas station not too far from the ferry docks, and took in the Bainbridge Island Art Museum, a small museum with very nice paper and fabric art.

And then ...

I missed stepping up onto a curb while crossing back to the parked car. I pitched forward, and had my hand in my pocket, fishing out the car keys so I could not catch myself. I went down like a sack of wet cement at the side of the road, my head bouncing off the asphalt and driving the frame of my now-broken glasses into my eyebrow. 

There was blood. A lot of blood. And a lot of concerned, helpful passers-by who helped me to my feet and suggested calling an ambulance. The LB and I got back to the car, and I ruined one of her handkerchiefs mopping up blood while she found the nearest urgent care on her phone. We went there, expecting to get cleaned up and maybe a few stitches for the eyebrow.

Instead ...

Due to my age and the fact that I had a bit of resistance turning my head to the right, they put me into an immobilizing collar and popped me into an ambulance bound for Silverdale, which was the closest ER. That took about twenty minutes, and was the first time I was conscious in an ambulance. Not bad. At the ER, they did a battery of tests on me - an MRI which showed I had no concussion, an x-ray that said I had extreme arthritis in my right hand, and an ultrasound that determined I had no blood clots in my right leg (though I still have a pain in the front quad muscle there, but I had that before I stage-dived on the road). And then they cleared the asphalt fragments out of my wounds, closed the eyebrow gash with some glue, bandaged me up and sent me on my way.

At this point, the shortest route home was south through Tacoma, so we stopped at the Lobster Shop for a pleasant meal (The LB had refitted my glasses together enough that I was presentable, though of course she was driving by that point). And since then, I've been at home, self-medicating on Tylenol and rum & colas and taking my meetings in on slack and zoom.

And that's about it. The only interesting note was that the Lovely B was really impressed with Bainbridge, and liked the idea of "island life", right up to the point that she found out the nearest hospital was a half-hour drive away. That cooled her ardor a bit.  But in the mean time, I'm still working from home and concentrating on healing up.

And that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. 

More later, 

Book: Women in Their 20s

 Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties by Marion Meade, Harcourt Books, 2004

Provenance: Unsure, but from the pencil marking on the inside cover, I'd guess Half-Price Books. It looked like an overstock as opposed to a truly used book. 

Review: First off, bad title. The hair style of the title make is only glancingly noted, and references to bootleggers and speakeasies are mostly incidental. It doesn't exactly scream 1920s, but maybe. The secondary title is kinda incomplete as well, since we're going to be talking about four women who write as opposed to everyone else in the field. Only when we get to the third sub-title down do we address who we are talking about - Edna St. Vincent Milay, Edna Ferber, Dorothy Parker, and Zelda Fitzgerald. Important female writers of the era.

OK, quick summary for those under 100 years old: Edna Ferber was a popular and award-winning novelist who is best remembered for her Broadway adaptations (like Showboat, which you may have seen in high school productions). The other Edna - St. Vincent Milay, known here as Vincent, was a popular poetess. Dorothy Parker made her way on essays, short stories and sniping reviews in the nascent New Yorker. And Zelda labored in the shadow of her husband F. Scott, who wanted to be more successful than he was. 

They were not a group. They were not a movement. They worked in different spheres. They attended some of the same parties, but direct encounters between them were few and unmemorable. They all worked in the hothouse environment of New York City literati in the 20s, a neatly-compacted decade that ran from the creation of Prohibition to the Crash. 

And we have a lot of information about these writers because they were wrote everything down - diaries, notes, letters, and stories on things based on their lives. Moreso, since they ran about with a bunch of other writers, we have all of their notes, diaries, letters, and stories as well. The end result here is a chatty, gossipy, personal, and in places honestly bitchy presentation of the 20s in New York City. And Europe. Because post-war France was a great, cheap place to escape to if you were a member of the Lost Generation and had the petty cash. 

The book itself travels through the decade year by year, and concentrates on the lives and adventures of its subjects. Alcohol and abortions. Insights and illnesses. Trysts and travails. It gives a good scan of their growth and success as writers, but also the pitfalls of their craft - writer's block and problematic relationships and too many house parties and summer homes. 

All of the writers have their own arc and some sense of resolution. Ferber got a Pulitzer and showed you could succeed both commercially and literarily and ended the decade hosting small parties at her penthouse. Milay ascended into poetic godhood, retreated to the country, and pursued a young muse with her husband's permission. Zelda suffered under F. Scott (who comes off as complete asshole here), who only started to support her when she went into physical and mental decline. And Dorothy kept plugging along through boom and bust times, just writing. Of the group she's probably the best-remembered, owing the wit and meme-worthiness of here poems and short works.

The past is a foreign country - they do things differently there. I'm a fan of the 20s, which dovetails neatly with my interest in the Call of Cthulhu RPG. From this volume I've picked up that a trans-Atlantic cruise was not THAT big a thing if you had the money, and at the time, writers were actually being paid more (An easy conversion was to multiply any figures within by ten). There are a lot of bits and bobs here that I may find use for elsewhere, and you might as well. 

In the meantime, I've excavated a collection of Dorothy Parker's short stories from the basement library, and intend to curl up with that. 

More later,

Book: Timestop

 The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley, Avid Reader Press (Simon & Schuster), 2024

Provenance: World Con was in Seattle last year, and though I did not attend, I resolved to read the Hugo novel nominees for that year. And I failed, bailing out halfway through one of the Adrian Tchaikovsky novels. But I did get a copy of The Ministry of Time front the local Barnes & Noble, which has, it should be noted, very much improved over the past couple years.

Review: This book was well-lauded before I even reached it. It is a New York Times bestseller, a pick for the Good Morning America Book Club, a monthly pick for Barnes & Noble, a Best Book of the Year for NPR, Vanity Fair, Good Housekeeping, and some 25 more outlets. Oh, and Obama liked it as well.

I liked it. It didn't win a Hugo. And yeah, I think I understand why.

So here's the skinny. Our unnamed narrator/protagonist works for government ministry in London, and discovers, after she has been hired, that it has a time machine. Sort of. They have access to a "time door" that they can open into other eras. And not to mess up the timeline, they are taking/kidnapping people from the past near the end of their lives in situations where they would not be missed. One of these is Graham Gore, one of the crewmen on the Franklin Expedition. 

Now, the Franklin Expedition rates up there with Nikola Tesla in the things-nerds-care-about-department. The Franklin Expedition consisted of the ships Terror and Erebus, which were dispatched with two years of supplies to find the Northwest Passage. They didn't find one, but instead got trapped in the ice for a couple years, and its people (including Gore) died either on the ice or trying to escape it. Including Gore. Except Gore got kidnapped and was brought to this near future London where the effects of climate change is already starting to flood the city. 

Our unnamed narrator serves as a "bridge" for Gore, along with some fellow workers for other expats from the past. And "bridge" is a good title for combination minder/agent/guide to the modern world. She and Gore fall in love, discover a conspiracy from their future that intends to capture or destroy the time door, and their allies start dropping like flies. 

So the novel veers from dark workplace comedy into rom-com, then slingshots into a thriller, and finally sticks the landing in a science fictional space. Our narrator is relating what she knows of the story, which is more about the effects of time travel on a relatively small group of people - the bridges, the ex-pats, the management, and the assassins from the future.  Early on, she lays down the absurdity of the situation.

"How does it work? How can it work? I exist at the beginning and the end of this account, which is a kind of time travel, and I'm here to tell you: don't worry about it. All you need to know is that in the very near future, the British Government developed a means of time travel but had not experimented with it."

That's a pretty piece of writing, with tenses spilling all over the place. But what its talking about, the nature of the document you're reading does get explained, and it makes sense by the end. At the time, I thought it was going to be a denial of the SF tropes we all know - paradoxes, grandfather clauses, alternate futures. But you're going to run into them, but from the ground-level view. So we embrace the tropes, but not the way you might think.

The book is really good, and deserves to be a Hugo nominee, but I can see how it didn't make the final cut, and much of that is because of the nature of genre. As noted above, the book refuses to "stay in its lane", and while I like that, I understand that it might not resonate elsewhere. But also its part of its own provenance, and how it entered the market. Ministry of Time first showed up in the new fiction release as opposed to the SF areas of bookstores. Most of its high praise comes from traditional/mainstream sources. It was therefore "not of the body" of SF-Dom. Genre can be both a leg up (a "guaranteed" customer base) and a limitation (reaching out beyond that "guaranteed" base). 

Still, Ministry of Time is worth considering on the quality of its writing, and I recommend you check it out. 

More later,

Book: Dreams of a Strange House

 Strange Houses by Uketsu, translated by Jim Rion, HarperVia, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2025, original Japanese 2021.

Provenance: Browsers Bookshop in Olympia. A nice, well-staffed bookstore in downtown Olympia. Purchased on a whim, in part because the front cover had a house blueprint on the front with Japanese icons on it.

Review: Long ago, before I became a author, game designer, and general worldbuilder, I was a civil engineer. And as a result, I have always had a fascination with buildings and how they work and grow over time. In particular, I find blueprints and floor plans interesting, in what they say about the house and people who live there.

Strange Houses is set in modern Japan. The narrator, an author of macabre fiction is approached by a friend who is homebuying with his spouse. And they found a excellent modern house, but there was just something off-base about it. And they sent the floor plans to the author, who quickly noticed some things that were off-kilter. He brought in an architect friend and together the two start unspooling a mystery, which quickly turns disturbing and horrific. 

The book produces the house plans, as well as other house plans as the story unfolds, along with family trees and timelines. And these are presented in the running text as well, allowing the reader to discover the evidence as the author does.  Now, I read a lot of old detective novels from the 20s and 30s, and in such venerable tomes by Christie and Van Dine, they provide floor plans as well. In fact, putting a map or house diagram on the back of paperback editions was a thing back there. So that's not much of a surprise, but what the book does is that was they learn more about the house(s) they make changes to the house plans to reveal new ideas. 

So there are clues in the house plans, which is cool, and I noticed most of them before the two investigators spelled them out in text. But, I also noticed stuff that they left uncommented-upon. In the plans, there is one large room on the second floor without any exterior windows. OK, that's odd (though my first thought was to ask if there was a skylight). But (and this is the weirdness they don't address) there also is one toilet on the floor, and you'd have to pass through the windowless room to get there. It is a little strange that the investigators that are looking really, really hard at the house don't call it out. 

I've mentioned this before in my comments on various Call of Cthulhu products, where the maps don't line up with the text, or have their own discrepancies,  like chimneys that are prominent on the first floor and disappear on the upper floors, or locations of kitchens and bathrooms that would be logistical nightmare regarding the pipes. So I'm sensitized to such things, and in this case seeing stuff that the (real) author would prefer me to miss. And if fact, at the time I wrote it off as simply "Well, they lay out houses differently in Japan", but I went to the trouble of looking up Tokyo floor plans (thank you, Internet), and nope, the ones here look like they make no sense.

In any event, the investigators make some immediate assumptions, which turn out to be mostly true, but the logic leaps are a bit much. And then they find a second house, where the family had previously lived, which also had some odd features. And then there's the family house, of more traditional design, which had its own sense of weirdnesses.

And all of this is presented in drawings and conversations between the investigators, and interviews with various people. It is all presented as evidence, in a fairly bloodless fashion (though there is blood in many of the descriptions and conclusions). In this way it feels a lot like Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu", where nothing really happens to the narrator as he goes through the files of his deceased uncle and comes to a chilling conclusion. Same here, though there are more questions than answers in the final tally.

The clinical approach of the investigators left me cold, and the fact that things are (maybe) not wrapped up neatly bothered me. The (real) author is a mystery figure whose photograph is a black robe and a white mask (very Studio Ghibli). The books (there are more in this style) are huge in Japan. I want to say that it is the cultural differences that ultimately frustrated me, but I think the translation is on-target.

It is ultimately a case that I bring too much to the book. I know too much about a subject and it brought me in conflict with the reality presented in the novel. And the ultimate loose ends and unreliable testimonies frustrate me, particularly in comparison with the venerable "The Call of Cthulhu". Strange Houses is a short, compact read (given all the house plan illos), but I can't really recommend this even to friends who have spent time in Japan. It was a misfire, though apparently a very successful one.

More later,

Theatre: Life in Wartime

 Wish You Were Here by Sanaz Toossi, Directed by Nagmeh Samini, a co-production with Seda Iranian Theatre Company, Arts West, through 5 July.

There's a weirdness in watching a play about Iranian women during wartime at the moment in time where we're at war with Iran (or we're not at war. Or we are and its not a war. Or its a ceasefire but we're still shooting missiles at each other. Or, wait, it is a war after all, depending on what day you're reading this). 

But its a play about war as a backdrop - actually its a play about friendships, and women and how time claims all those forced to live in it. Five close female friends are together on one of their number's wedding day, making final preparations, fretting about beauty, and being intimately raunchy about their vaginas. There's the religious one, the nerdy one, the dumb one, the stylish one, and the exotic (Jewish in a mostly-Muslim state) one. And they preen, hug, insult, and argue their way through the wedding prep. They have a moment. They hug. And then the news comes in that Shah has booked out, and a little later that Iraq has invaded. 

And the world changes around them, and little by little their world collapses on them. The Jewish one disappears and may/may not have fled with her family. The nerdy one goes to school in Indiana and does not return. The religious one dies in a horrifically ironic manner. And with each loss the survivors cling to each other, break up, have more weddings and funerals, argue, drift together, drift apart and bemoan the lack of the others as connective tissue. The revise their feelings and histories in real-time as they pick their way through a now-uncertain world. 

And as a play, it is really, really good. Sanaz Toossi wrote English from a couple seasons back, which was also performed in in this space in conjuration with the Seda Iranian Theatre Company, and with the same director. The dialogue was natural and honest, though with the cross-talk you're often catching up on what they're really talking about. The five actresses (plus a sixth, who is the new one) are excellent in defining their personalities, differences, and unities. Yeah, I can see these five women coming together as force, with their future ahead of them, and what happens next. Think of the Big Chill with a more authoritarian state. 

I liked this so much I didn't lead with talking about where we ate before the show. This time, we returned to Phoenecia, an excellent Lebanese place a block over the the theater. It was a warm Friday here, and so we sat on the small patio and had too many small plates, great entrees (The Lovely Bride brought her seafood back in the doggie bag) and too many drinks (The LB experimented with mocktails, while I had to abandon my last of my second Moscow Mule in order to make the show on time). It was a good start to the evening and very good show.

More later, 

Scams

 We are awash in scams these days. Mysterious Docusign demands. Emails claiming to be from the Geek Squad or PayPal announcing that someone purchased a iPad in your name. Other emails that claim to be from the Lovely Bride, saying "Here are the pictures you wanted!" with emojis and an unknown link (and the sender has a Bulgarian email address).

In addition to the cybercrime, we recently had some physical burglary activity in the neighborhood, in an empty house across the street. Some folk in a white truck boosted a construction trailer from a site in the valley (They have videos of the theft), stashed it there overnight while they emptied the trailer of equipment, and for good measure, broke into a shed on the property and took some other, older tools. I saw the truck at the time but did not think twice, because the previous owners had a white truck and had been emptying the house, but since finding out about the break-in I've been keeping an eye out ever since (and chatting with the original owners whenever they WERE on the property).

That's all background for the new scam we encountered. The Lovely Bride got a phone call on her phone, asking for me, under my rarely-used first name (which I only use for official documents). The caller claimed to be Sgt. Jason Cooke of the King County Sheriff's office, and would I call back. She called back and after a rather suspicious phone tree, got ahold of that officer, who wanted me to call him back as soon as possible. The Lovely Bride had some very pointed questions and he was not forthcoming as to reasons.

And there were a buncha flags here, so the Lovely Bride called a friend of ours who IS a King County Sheriff, and he determined that no, there was no one on the force by that name. And he called the number in question and they hung up on him. Twice. So, yeah, it sounded extremely some scam we had not heard about yet. 

In any event, just in case it was legit, I did call the number back, got the sketchy phone tree (which identified itself as being the King's County Sheriff), went through another secretary and got ahold of Sgt. Cooke. And he said I had a federal affidavit in my name and I should have gotten a letter. I informed him I had received no such letter and pointed out that I had a colleague who was a REAL Sergeant in the King County Sheriffs, and that he would be interested in talking to him. And Sgt. Cooke explained that they were in different divisions and shifts, which sounded just barely credible to be true.

And we chatted some more and he asked if I would come downtown to provide a signature. Again, weird but just borderline credible. He gave me an address and an office number, and the address was the King County Courthouse (I checked while I talked to him). So took a long lunch and drove downtown, trying to go over in my mind any sin, crime, or misdemeanor which would require a federal affidavit and a visit to the police (and why King County was dealing with federal affidavits was yet another red flag, but there were more red flags here than May Day during the Khrushchev era). Oh, and I could come down anytime during the day - he'd be in (Ding! another red flag).

So I went downtown, paid too much for parking, and went through the metal detectors at the courthouse, and found the office, right there on the first floor by the entrance. Couldn't miss it. And rang the bell. No one answered, but one of the people on the front desk came by with lunch. And I explained the situation, and that person explained that no, there was no Sgt. Cooke there and yes, it probably was a scam. 

So I went to Pike Place Market, bought some Earl Grey tea from Market Spice and a loaf of sourdough from Three Sisters, and some hum bao from Meesum Pastries for lunch, so the trip wasn't a total loss. 

But I have to admit that Sgt. Cooke and company really committed to the bit. The fake phone tree, the waiting music, the conversation all sounded reasonable at first blush if you didn't have any interaction with the King County Sheriff's Office. And he was extremely calm and well-mannered when confronted with the fact that no one seemed to know him. Didn't spook him for a moment, and he gave himself a good escape from the conversation. 

AND after this is all said an done, I did an internet search on Sgt. Jason Cooke. And it looks like he's a very busy officer, with reports coming on all over the country of this scam, where the bogus officer named Jason Cooke calls up and says there is an arrest warrant out for you but you can avoid it by sending him a gift card. 

The only question in this case is ... why? I mean, it was a pretty elaborate setup, and nothing was ultimately asked of me other than to come downtown for a fictitious appointment. I wondered if the thieves wanted me out of the house when they came back to the empty property across the street. That sounds really Nero Wolfe, but when I returned, the shed door was open again, which I didn't notice it at the time when I left. I called the former property owners (they're local), and they found out that the NEW property owners had stopped by and left doors open. So, nope, no prob.

But still -  I'm a little nervous about the whole thing, and keeping my eyes even further open, but frustrated that this sort of thing is ongoing.

More later,