THE MUMMY, THE WILL, AND THE CRYPT by John Bellairs

The second Johnny Dixon adventure, The Mummy, the Will, and the Crypt, establishes the characters a bit more and introduces some continuing characters and elements.

Johnny is on a trip with Professor Childermass (which becomes an ongoing theme in the novels; the two are almost always going off on some jaunt or another), touring the mansion of late cereal magnate H. Bagwell Glomus, when they're shown the man's office and the clues he left to his hidden will left behind in his office....a chess set, a tavern sign, and a Greek newspaper. Johnny puzzles over this as a hobby, especially after learning there's a substantial reward going out to anyone who finds it. And he's given further reason to find it....his grandmother is taken ill, and it turns out she's got a brain tumor that requires surgery.

To get his mind off things, Johnny sent to a Boy Scout camp near Mount Chocorua (a real place, and it looks impressive), only to find that that Glomus' summer house is nearby....and it matches some of the clues left in his office. With his new friend Fergie, aka Byron Q. Ferguson, he slips out at night to investigate, where they meet one of Glomus' nephews, a rather strange and slightly disturbed young man. After threatening them, he then shows them a secret passage, and tells them a spooky story of a strange magical guardian who haunts the house. And then there's a hideous scream...

This is a fun tale, where Johnny gets in over his head when panic and anxiety take over and he's not able to think clearly. He ends up going off on a half-cocked quest to find the will, running afoul of Glomus' scheming family and the eerie guardian that tries to keep him away. There are a few contrived bits but the magic rituals involved in raising and controlling the guardian are interesting reading, with some fun little details that stick in the imagination. And yes, the title is given full relevance in the course of the story.

A good, solid entry in the Bellairs canon, if not as shuddersome and eerie as some of the others, but worth searching out.

A December Night at the Phantom Recital Hall

Tonight's concert is something new and different/ we're able to nab good seats because a few of the more staid types turned up their nose at the program. What we have is an evening of modern accordion music!

OK, I recently fount out about a new cycle of works for accordion dedicated to the works of Hans Christian Andersen, and it's rather nice stuff, a breath of fresh air. Especially if you're like me and love accordion music.

So, here's a musical interpretation of "The Little Match Girl."



OK, maybe it's not for everyone, but I like it. And it's different. Important to push your boundaries every once in a while.

So, let's get something to drink, shall we?

Two Gothic Novels

I've been slow to update, and have a stack of things I've read to review, so let's do some portmanteau blogging...

Rayland Hall, or, The Remarkable Adventures of Orlando Somerville is regarded as someone significant from a scholarly point of view. It's basically a chapbook of about 36 pages that's a plagiarism of a longer work, The Old Manor House by Charlotte Smith, a 1793 work that ran to thirteen hundred pages over four volumes. Some anonymous but enterprising hack chopped it down to novella length, changed some names, and made it a much more streamlined work. Published in 1810, Rayland Hall is technically a Gothic....but only technically so. While academically interesting, Rayland Hall isn't recommended for the casual D&C fan because, honestly, it's lack in Gothic thrills and chills. There are no ghosts or treasures, but instead a cross-class love affair and questions of inheritance. While offering up some critique of the British social order, and offering a glimpse of the country during the American Revolution, it's lacking in other departments. If anything, this can be viewed as a precursor to all those "gothic romance" novels that are long on the romance but short on the Gothic.

The Cavern of Death is more like it. First published as a newspaper serial in 1793/4, it's full of the castles, ghosts, and violence that one normally expects from Gothic fiction. Another anonymous work, it at lest is longer and not a plagiarism, but an original work. Set in a faux-Germanic land similar to the territory shown in Hammer films, it gives us the adventurous Sir Albert hoping to marry his lady-love Constance, and being thwarted by a wicked Baron. But there's also a murder plot, a clutch of assassins, and a trip to the cave of the title, where we encounter a ghost, a skeleton and a bloody sword, that lead to the revelation of dark secrets. While obviously crude and brief, with no room for any real grace in the style, it still manages to be a fast-moving and entertaining read at under 100 pages.

More on the way....

A November Night in the Phantom Concert Hall

Halloween is over, the cold weather is arriving in earnest, and we've bundled up and ventured out for a concert at that lovely old restored hall downtown.

It's that in-between time...orchestras no longer need to do spooky-music programs and won't have to do any Christmas music for a while, so they can actually be a bit adventurous in the repertoire. One of the highlights of tonight's program is this piece by Hungarian composer Zoltan Kodaly...



This 1933 piece is based on actual Hungarian folk music, harvested by Kodaly and his friends as they traveled around the country gathering music that had never been written down. (In addition to being a composer, Kodaly was a notable educator and musicologist.) There's something lively about it that gives a little excitement to a cold night, eh?

After the concert, we slip out for a drink and a discussion of what we've been doing lately...and our plans for the holidays approaching....can they be here again so quickly?

Back to Bellairs: THE CURSE OF THE BLUE FIGURINE

It's the Halloween season, and THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN ITS WALLS is playing in theaters (I haven't seen it yet, sorry, my budget is tight and I don't get out to the movies much anymore), so it's a good chance to get back to John Bellairs' works.

The Curse of the Blue Figurine introduces his third hero, Johnny Dixon. It's the 1950s, and Johnny is living with his grandparents in Duston Heights, Massachusetts, while his father is in the Air Force in Korea. His mother died a few years before.

In the course of the novel, Johnny makes his first friend in his new town, Prof. Roderick Childermass, a crabby old gent who lives across the street. (Bellairs enjoys these young/old friendships; these days, it would raise eyebrows.) Johnny is also having a problem with bullies at his school, and one day, to avoid them, he ducks into the nearby Catholic church. Feeling mischievous, he sneaks into the basement, and while down in there, stumbles on a hollowed-out book that contains a blue Egyptian-looking figure and a scroll.

The church is supposed to haunted, by the ghost of Fr. Remigius Baart, who supposedly sold his soul to Satan. Johnny is thrilled by his discovery; maybe this proves the legends real? Johnny investigates further, hiding his treasure at home. The figurine, however, turns out to be a replica, and Johnny befriends another older man, a Mr. Beard, who listens to his problems and gives him a ring as part of a joking game.

However, the ring has supernatural powers, and soon Johnny is living in a nightmare.

It's an effective, eerie tale as the ghost of Father Baart seeks some goal through Johnny, and just when you think things are resolved, there's more shocks to be had.

It's a pretty solid tale, although some revelations at the end seem to come out of nowhere. The resolution of the story comes from finding Father Baart's remains in a remote corner of New England, with no explanation as to why they are there.

Still, with its flaws, it's a good solid Bellairs tale, and it kicks off one of his longer-lived series.

October in the Phantom Ballroom!

So, let's gather in that new ballroom/dance hall that's opened, and have a spin around the floor! There's a live orchestra playing, the whiskey is flowing, the cava corks are popping (because who can afford champagne these days?), and everyone is having a blast.

I've been in a 30's mood lately, and remembered this lively novelty tune from famous bandleader Ray Noble and one of his groups, the New Mayfair Dance Orchestra. This is just right for the Halloween season....



Fun, isn't it? A jaunty tune with a few comical shivers, just right for the season.

And how is YOUR season? Where I am, it's still unseasonably warm and humid, but there's hopes of cool temperatures to come this weekend...

Some of What I've Read Lately

So...things have calmed down, Mom is back home after hip replacement surgery and a stay in a rehab home (not Amy Winehouse rehab, physical rehab), and I've dealt with the grief of her giving her sweet cat up to the Humane Society...an understandable decision, she can't care for him anymore, but still, it was like a kick in the chest for me. Hopefully the sweet little boy will be adopted soon.

So...here's a sampling of some of the stuff I've read lately...

I've heard so many people praise Edmund Crispin to the rafters, and I heard a review of this that made it sound intriguing, so I finally picked up a copy. I have to say it....I wasn't impressed. This isn't quite the puzzle mystery I was hoping for, more of a thriller, and it's full of self-referential humor and meta-zaniness that I find offputting. A man, wandering lost in town one night, enters a toy store that's mysteriously open, and finds a dead body. When he tries to go back with the police the next day...the body is not only gone, but the building is now a grocery store. What's going on? Well, it's a fairly complex story, and not very plausible, but at least it keeps moving. There's a lot of comical goings-on, a car chase, and other crazy stuff, but after a while I was almost screaming for the book to get to the point. (I had a similar problem with Charlotte McLeod as her series ran on, and devoted more time to comical zaniness than to things like story, plot, and character, to the point I walked away from her works, gave away the ones I owned, and wasn't even aware when she died from Alzheimer's.)

Edmund Crispin was really Robert Bruce Montgomery, a noted composer of film music. He died in 1978, but all his mystery novels were written in the 40s and 50s. He apparently had some serious drinking problems that got in the way of his writing, which is too bad. But while his style certainly wasn't for me, he still has fans galore, so don't let that stop you if you want to check it out. It's not a bad book, per se, just not for me.

Elizabeth Peters (real name: Elizabeth Mertz, and she also wrote as Barbara Michaels) was a friend of mine. I would hang out with her at Malice Domestic and occasionally when she did book signings near me, and I was stricken when I got news that she had passed away some years ago. Although her works are technically "romantic suspense", I enjoy them, because let's be honest....sometimes the difference between being classed as "romantic suspense" and a regular "mystery" or "thriller" or "spy novel" is the sex of the author. Really...read some Helen MacInnes and Robert Ludlum back-to-back. They're in the same style with similar content, but MacInnes' work was always classed as "romantic suspense" because she was a woman. Like how Mary Renault's historical novels of ancient Greece would be stocked as "romance" because...well....the obvious reason. OK, I'll stop ranting...

Published in 1968, The Jackal's Head is her first novel as Elizabeth Peters, and while it's rough, it's got a lot of her strengths in place. I love books with a sense of place, and Peters was great in giving life to her settings, which range from Egypt to Mexico to Scandinavia. Her books also generally involved archaeology and/or art history, topics I enjoy. And she's one of the more feminist of romantic authors as well, at least for the time. (Again, we're not in an eternal present.)

Althea Tomlinson, in need of a job, gets one accompanying a spoiled girl on a trip to Egypt. She holds back that she grew up there, the daughter of a controversial archaeologist. And as the plot proceeds, she runs into old friends and her father's colleagues, and slowly discovers that the treasure her father had claimed to have discovered is actually real, although he was forced to say it was fake. But the forces of evil are gathering....

It's nonsense, but it's slick, fun, nonsense, although it lacks polish. (Then again, I think it was only her third work of fiction. She was still developing her skills.) The denouement is a bit abrupt and I sat there for a while questioning why the villains did X when it got them nothing....but I just shrugged it off. The description of the final treasure (Spoiler: the tomb of Akhenaton and Nefertiti) is gorgeous and rings of expertise; Peter/Mertz was Egyptologist, and wrote two standard works on the subject, Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs, and Red Land, Black Land.

All in all, an enjoyable entertainment. You learn a little bit from it and have a fun, exciting story. My kind of thing.

Here's another comedy-thriller, from someone who normally wrote very serious thrillers. Published in 1944, Fire will Freeze is a classic tale of an ill-assorted group of travelers stranded by a snowstorm in a ramshackle old house...I mean, really, this sort of thing had been a staple of thriller novels and films since the 20s. But Millar seems to be having fun poking fun at the genre conventions, and it works better for me than Crispin's zaniness. Millar had remarkable ability with character, and this book's humor comes mostly from character rather than zany situations. The murders are treated with tragic seriousness, and the menace is always real. When murders start to happen, the reactions are plausible...for the most part, and the rationale behind it all is realistic. The characters are all drawn well, and the chilly confines of the house are truly menacing as the travelers, all driven by a distrust of each other, try to make sense of the bizarre situation they're in.

It's a fun read, and would be good for a cold snowy afternoon this winter, I'd guess. You can pretend to be an in an old-dark-house mystery of your own...

So, pick your favorite of the three...one wasn't for me, but I enjoyed the others.

A September Night at the Phantom Concert Hall

We're kicking off the fall season, and thumbing our nose at the dreary, rainy weather, by heading out to the concert hall again. Tonight's performance...Rheinberger's roiling, romantic piano concerto!



Isn't it great? One of those lovely pieces that flies under the radar. I love finding these obscure little gems.

Sorry to be late with this and not posting for a while. My elderly mother took a fall and broke both her shoulder and hip, and my sister and her husband have moved cross-country to Seattle. I had to be on hand when Mom underwent surgery and helping arrange for assistance while she's in a rehab facility. And then Mom decided she couldn't take care of her cat any longer so she had him surrendered to a local shelter, which upset me quite a bit as he's 10 years old and shelters have problems adopting out older cats. And I haven't talked about this on the blog, but over the summer I was hit by an unexpected depression and I went into therapy. I'm slowly coming out of it but it's taking a while, as it usually does.

So, the past couple months have been difficult, to say the least, and while I slowly get my groove back, bit by bit,I hope to get back to regular posting.

THE HORROR CHAMBERS OF JULES DE GRANDIN by Seabury Quinn

Finally, the last volume of Popular Library's reprint series! And just in time as the complete ebook reprints are now available....making these books pretty much obsolete. I spent years and tons of money hunting these down, and now...well, at least I enjoyed the chase, I guess.

Seabury Quinn apparently was a bit of a progressive in some ways, as you may have seen from my previous reviews of his works. He's sympathetic to minorities (sometimes) and some of his stories have centered on sexuality. And that continues here...

"The Gods of East and West" concerns a woman under the influence of an idol of Kali, and de Grandin, not able to help her out himself....so he brings in a Native American shaman to exorcise the spirit. The story leaves one with an odd feeling; Quinn may have been trying to be pro-Indian but at the same time it comes across as a sort of fetishization of the Noble Savage sort of thing. A strange story.

"The Poltergeist" has another young woman be the center of poltergeist activity. It turns out to be the work of a ghost, namely that of another woman who was plainly a lesbian and in love with the living woman, and who is now jealous of her upcoming marriage. OK, kinda homophobic, to be sure, but that's pretty much to be expected from a story written in 1927.

The story after that, "The House of Golden Masks," is a non-supernatural tale of white slavery. But after that is an eyebrow-raiser, "The Jest of Warburg Tantavul." A young couple are being tormented by the vengeful ghost of the husband's guardian, an eerie phantom whose malice is palpable and who is handled memorably...and even dispatched in a rather modern way. But the thrust of the story, that the man in life had sought revenge on someone else through the couple, is made clear when the reader realizes (and is finally revealed) that the couple are unknowingly brother and sister. And at the end, de Grandin remains silent, seeing that they are happy together. A weird way of ending a tale, and definitely not something that would work today, but oddly compassionate.

"Stealthy Death" is another non-supernatural tale, but with a weird element. A series of people are murdered, and a strangely beautiful but robotic woman keeps cropping up. Who is responsible and why? It turns out the murderer is a Hindu man avenging his sister, who was seduced, robbed, and sold into prostitution by an American missionary. The man's deeds are heinous but it's clear that he has a legitimate gripe.

The final story, "A Gamble in Souls," is a weird sort of tale in which the soul of a man being unjustly executed is put into the body of his evil twin brother. Again, we have some exoticism here as a Middle Eastern "philosopher" is brought in to effect the changeover. It's progressive in a tiny way, but also dripping with pulp-fiction nonsense.

So...are these good? Well, they're fun, to be honest. I'm probably being a little unfair as my modern eyes and modern sensibilities aren't the target audience. It's important to remember the times in which something was written, and the audience it was intended for, when reading older works. We don't live in an eternal present. And while the exaggerated exoticism that goes on in these tales may seem cheap and offensive to many readers today, at the time this was exciting and novel to many American readers. And also, Quinn introduces elements that rouse the reader's sympathy, in taking a brief look into the evils of imperialism in "Stealthy Death" or introducing powerful minority sorcerers in "The Gods of East and West" and "A Gamble in Souls." Even the homicidal lesbian spirit in "The Poltergeist" would at least introduce the concept to people who might not have even been aware such people existed. (And let's be honest...we're in an age now where we can acknowledge that LGBTQ people are just as capable of being dark and twisted as anyone else...) So, really, the fun is in the chills, and there are chills to be had, especially in "The Jest of Warburg Tantavul" which is one of the more dark and twisted pulp tales outside of the exploitative "weird menace" genre. This is pulpy fun and recommended if you can get into the mindset.

A Steamy August Night at the Phantom Concert Hall

We're out at the symphony tonight! And as it's a hot night, we're going to listen to some pretty hot music...de Falla's remarkable "The Three Cornered Hat"!



"The Three-Cornered Hat"is actually a ballet, a rarity for its time for working mainly with traditional Spanish styles of dance, rather than classical ballet. But there days, it's mostly known as a concert piece. I love the use of castanets and all the ways in which the music disdains the conventions of the normal Western classical tradition, while at the same time being an exceptionally lovely piece on its own.

Let's have a drink after, shall we?

THE EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES OF ARSENE LUPIN, GENTLEMAN-BURGLAR by Maurice Leblanc

This is it. A landmark work, not only in crime fiction but also in the Dust & Corruption pantheon. Arsene Lupin's first published adventures. It doesn't get any better than this.

First published in 1905 (and now public domain) this sets the standard. Sure, other sympathetic crooks were around before. most notably A. J. Raffles, but Lupin was much better written and simply more fun. The stories were originally published in the magazine "Je sais tout," starting in July of 1905 (113 years ago!) and grew to encompass 24 novels and short-story collections. I want to read as many as I can.

I mean, how can I resist a burglar who leaves a note in a noble's home, reading, "Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar, will return when the furniture is genuine"? On one hand, it's almost a parody of the snobbish criminal who won't stain his hands with reproductions....but it's also a blast at the vulgar wealthy who try to maintain an appearance of taste and culture. I get a sense that Lupin wouldn't have mocked him if the noble had been more honest about himself.

So, to run down...

The first three stories make a trilogy. "The Arrest of Arsene Lupin" introduces the character and has him sneaking aboard a cruise ship from France to America, and also makes it clear that he's got a weakness for beautiful women. (But of course....) "Arsene Lupin in Prison" has him announcing a daring burglary while in prison, and actually pulling it off despite everyone's doubts. "The Escape of Arsene Lupin" has one of the more amusing, and more complicated, prison-escape plots I've ever seen, and makes for zesty reading.

"The Mysterious Traveler" is a first-person story from Lupin's viewpoint, in which he captures a murderer on a train. "The Queen's Necklace" is intriguing as it gives us a potential origin story for Lupin, and has him committing dashing thefts even as a child.

"The Seven of Hearts" is one of my favorites, as it introduces us to a narrator (presumably Leblanc himself) who tells of how he first met Lupin, and also gives us a bizarre and intriguing mystery with Gothic overtones. Who's breaking into the journalist's apartment? What are they seeking? What's the meaning of the playing card poked full of holes?

In "Madame Imbert's Safe," Lupin meets his match in a pair of con artists. "The Black Pearl" has him starting on a daring jewel robbery....only to find himself in the middle of a murder. And the last story, "Sherlock Holmes Arrives Too Late" is perhaps one of the more interesting of the bunch, in that it's good and early example of the literary crossover, in having Lupin go toe-to-toe with the Great Detective himself. There were copyright issues, though, and in future appearances he showed up as Herlock Sholmes, fooling nobody but appeasing the law. Imagine...all that crossover fanfic on the web has a legit source...

This is an excellent read, and on the Required Reading shelf. This is available in cheap editions, and can be downloaded for free from the 'net. There are also good audio versions available. "The Classic Tales" podcast did a version a while back that may still be available. You owe it to yourself to become acquainted with Arsene Lupin. Go do it now.

THE MANSION IN THE MIST by John Bellairs

I'm back!

Ah, that wonderful Edward Gorey artwork! A Gorey cover, and the Bellairs name, are almost a guarantee of a good time.

At the beginning of The Mansion in the Mist, Anthony Monday, Miss Eels, and her brother Emerson are vacationing on an island in a lake in northern Canada. One night, Anthony finds a wooden chest in a back room of the house they're staying in, and feels a strange urge to get in. The lids snaps shut, and when he opens it again he's in a misty, twilight world of moving plants and a huge, menacing mansion. He makes his way back, and at first his friends don't believe him, as the chest is now gone from the room. But after a while it shows up again, and other sinister things start to happen....

This is late Bellairs, and has some of his strengths and some of his failings. It's got atmosphere to spare, and some quirky humor, and the Canadian lake setting is reminiscent of Algernon Blackwood. But it's got too-convenient coincidences, a ghost showing up where the person is alive and with no explanation, and a plot that needs more background. As it is, the villains of the piece are great. They're a group of wizards who call themselves the Autarchs, who inhabit a vast mansion in a parallel pocket dimension, who plot to draw our world into it so they can rule it. One weakness they have is that the Autarchs are powerless in our world, which makes for some interesting intrigue.

I have to admit...while I found the story wanting in some ways, the ideas behind it are interesting and linger in my mind. The misty, shadowy pocket dimension is a great setting and could be expanded. This would be good for someone doing a role-playing game or something.

This is the last Anthony Monday book; unlike his other two series, this was not extended after Bellairs' death. Soon, I plan to start on his third series, about New England adventurer Johnny Dixon.

I'm back! A Phantom Serenade for July

Sorry to have been away for the last month. Some work-related anxiety issues, and some on-and-off health issues, and gay pride, and a few other things, kept me from concentrating on blogging. But here I am!

It's a lazy summer evening; we've had a lovely light dinner at a friend's house and lingering in the back yard, chatting and catching up while the sun slowly sets. And from nearby, we hear someone playing the piano with their window open, as if serenading us. We all pause in the conversation to listen...



Lovely piece, eh? And just the thing for a quiet summer evening....

June at the Phantom Concert Hall!

So, it's a June night, and there's a new program at the concert hall, with some interesting modern music.

Here's a great part of the program; this was composed by Angelo Badalamenti as part of the soundtrack for the David Lynch film "Wild at Heart," and it deserves notice on its own.



Perfect for a summer evening, eh? Lots more to come!

TALES OF MYSTERY AND CRIME by William Wallace

I know, I swore I was back, but I've been sidetracked this month by a big spring cleaning project at home and a bustling new life at the job. But now things are going well, and the kitchen floor is clean enough to eat from, so I can get back to blogging.

This was a gift from some friends who went on vacation in London. And damn, that cover!

William Wallace is credited as "Sometime Undersheriff and Deputy Coroner for the County of Leicestershire" and very little else is given out about him. There's a forward by George Pleydell Bancroft, and I think that dates this book to the late 30s or 40s, as no publishing date is given. Plus, the overall look of the thing is very early 20th century.

So how is it?

Well, Wallace was not a gripping writer. At his worst, he's turgid and melodramatic. His first story, "The Manley Mystery," is a bit of a slog as dissects a rather unintereating crime, the murder of a former soldier in the 1860s. It's got a framing story of a doctor reading an old manuscript at Christmastime, but the framing story serves no purpose and adds nothing to it. It's followed by "The Monk of Millford Abbey" which is a pure fiction about a monk who seeks to avenge the dissolution of his abbey by getting close to the king and assassinating him. It inspired the cover but it drags a lot, and it has a horrible "it-was-all-a-dream" ending that infuriated me.

"The Mystery of Melton Wood" is another slog, this time the murder of a young woman, complicated by the execution of an innocent man. The last story, "The Ghost of York Minster," is the best, largely because it's the shortest, and it has a genuinely macabre resolution in its story of a haunted choir loft in an old church. Again, this isn't brilliant, but an amiable read on a slow winter afternoon.

So....great cover....so-so execution.

May at the Phantom Concert Hall!

Brush off that old jacket! Shake our that vintage gown! We've got concert tickets again!

Our connection at the concert hall downtown got us tickets to a big event, with a tribute to Paganini, that devilish master of the violin. A couple of violinists will be playing Pagainin's pieces, and then a noted pianist will be playing Rachmaninoff's "Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini," which is just amazing...



His ability is almost supernatural, isn't it? Simply amazing stuff.

How about a midnight supper after the concert? I've got something in the slow cooker that'll be ready by the time we're done at the concert...

Happy Walpurgisnacht! And Happy 10th Birthday!

Dust and Corruption is 10 years old!

Sorry I haven't been blogging much lately. I'm glad to have a permanent job but I'm learning new stuff and it's taking up a lot of mental energy. And in the evenings and weekends I'm giving my apartment a good going-over. I'm a lousy housekeeper and have let things go for far too long.

Plus I'm in a play in June, and rehearsals and learning my lines are also eating into my time.

I've got a stack of books to write about, though. I'll continue post the musical interludes but I've decided to drop the "virtual movie nights." And maybe once things calm down a bit I'll prowl around Baltimore and do some more photography.

Keep moving forward!

WHOSE BODY? by Dorothy L. Sayers

In my teens, when other boys were reading Playboy or Penthouse, I was reading Dorothy L. Sayers. That explains a lot about my adolescence. Lord Peter Wimsey was my sort-of-role model for a while, although it never quite fit...I got tired of him after a while.

Lord Peter hasn't aged well...many modern readers find him annoying. And, I have to say, he kind of is. In the 20s we had a rash of aristocratic detectives, like Wimsey and Philo Vance, who would adjust their monocles and say a problem was "quite vexin'" and all that. It probably seemed terribly sophisticated and up-market at the time, but now seems cheap.

Still, Sayers had her strengths, and while Lord Peter is grating at times, there's enough here to draw a reader.

Lord Peter Wimsey gets a call one morning; a friend of his mother has a rather bizarre problem, in that there's a body in his bathtub, wearing nothing but a pince-nez. Peter joins with a policeman friend to look in on the situation....at first, they think the body is that of missing financier Sir Reuben Levy, as it really looks like him...but then closer examination reveals that the body is that of a poor man with bad teeth, not that of a wealthy upper-class gentleman. (A deleted bit of dialogue has Lord Peter glancing at the nude body and saying at once that it couldn't be Levy, as the man was clearly not Jewish...at the time, a reference to the foreskin's presence was considered too racy.)

Thus follows an investigation all over 1920's London to discover the identity of the corpse, and what really happened to Levy. Lord Peter is quite bright in spots, and has a temporary attack of PTSD (his "shell shock" is mentioned here but I don't recall it popping up later in the series). It's also here that one of Sayers' signature touches comes into play....Lord Peter identifies the killer at about the 2/3 or 3/4 mark in the book, and then spends the rest of the novel piecing his case together. No last-second revelations here!

So, despite an annoying central character, it's still a worthwhile read. There's some uncomfortable anti-Semitism here and there, but it's in the mouths of some unlikable people, so I'm willing to put that down to characterization. (In fact, anti-Semitism was one of the motivators for the murder.) Sayers has been accused of anti-Semitism in the past, although at least in this book she doesn't seem to paint all Jews with the same stereotypical brush.

I think I'll try to go through all the Wimsey books, in time. It'll be interesting to revisit them, and read the one or two that I missed so long ago...

April in the Phantom Recital Hall!

We're back!

And tonight we're honoring the fits and starts of spring. It's been a rough season, with a few warm, pleasant days being followed by weeks of cold, dreary, rainy weather. And even occasional snows!

But tonight we're bundled up and visiting that old restored concert hall for a recital of some modern and ambient pieces...like Aphex Twin's "Avril 14th."



A rather nice piece, isn't it? And appropriate to this difficult season we're in...

I'm back for more fun, folks! I start my new job as a permanent employee on Monday! I've got a stack of books to review and I'm rarin' to go! So hang on tight...

A Quick Personal Note

Sorry to not be around much lately....my non-blog life has been a bit crazy, in a good way. The company I've been temping with for the past year has extended a permanent job offer, so I'm eagerly waiting for HR to dot all the i's and cross all the t's. At the same time, I'll be put in a new part of the department, so I'm learning a bunch of new stuff. I'm excited and happy but also a bit stressed and anxious, as you can imagine. But seriously....health insurance! paid time off! job security! 

At the same time, I've been physically run down; sinus troubles, coughing, and a general malaise that strike every so often. I haven't felt seriously sick, just "off" as the saying goes, and I haven't had much energy to devote to writing for the past few weeks. I had my flu shot in the fall but wonder if I'm not fighting off something.

And, I'll be honest...the job offer is great but I've also found myself full of self-doubts and concerns that it's all a mistake and other people are more deserving....impostor syndrome and all that. It's made me realize that maybe it's time for a mental and emotional tune-up, so maybe I'll look into therapy once the insurance is up and running.

I'm not going away; I definitely will be back. I'll probably take another week or two before returning to all you nice people out there who read me. I have a growing stack of books to review so I'll definitely be doing them! Thanks for bearing with me.

THE LAMP FROM THE WARLOCK'S TOMB by John Bellairs

Anthony Monday and Miss Eells are back!

Anthony and Miss Eells are browsing an antique shop when the owner mysteriously shows Miss Eells an old oil lamp, one that gives Anthony the willies but Miss Eells buys for s suspiciously low price. Anthony later borrows it from her to use as part of a science fair project...and he sees a gruesome phantom at the school (the illustration above) and a night watchman dies a bizarre death. More ghostly happenings, the theft of the lamp, and another bizarre death happen before they figure out what is going on and why.

This is one of the better works in Bellairs' world. The plot is a little wobbly at times but still makes sense, and the menace is real. The villain has a truly heinous plot in mind, but there's another factor that could do them in, that's not a deus ex machina but something lurking in the shadows from the very start. There's also some good, real detective work, some weird murals and artwork, an old house on an island, and a wintry setting. There's a fiery climax like something from one of Roger Corman's Poe films, but also a very nicely creepy denouement that I greatly appreciated.

There's a major nod to M. R. James in this one, specifically "The Tractate Middoth," in that you have a ghastly spectre of a bald man with cobwebs over his face, and a strange tomb. And there's a touch of the Lovecraftian universe as the Lamp of Alhazred, a relic from the Cthulhu mythos, is mentioned.

All in all, a fun read, and a worthy part of the Bellairs canon, probably the best book of the Anthony Monday series....and there's only one left...

A Phantom Symphony for February!

As an early February treat, we've scored tickets to the symphony. That old concert hall has finally been restored to its best self. We've got good seats and we're all happy to have something to do that isn't all wrapped up in Valentine's Day...which we're all hating for one reason or another this year. An evening of music is just what we need to kick off the month.

And tonight we've got a sinister chamber symphony from Shostakovich!



Catching our collective breath once it's over, we agree this is just up our alley, and just the thing to get February off on the right foot...

A Slightly Late January Night at the Movies!

OK, it's been a few months since we got together. Blame the holidays. But now the new year has started, and we're settling back into the groove of our workaday lives. We're dining at that little restaurant we love, joking with the waiter, sampling each others' dishes despite protestations of being on various diets, discussing our planned adventures for the year, our hopes for spring, our dreams of what the year may bring.

After settling up the bill, we head up the street to that old movie theater we love. They got a new coat of paint, and the carpet has been cleaned, and the ticket-taker with the biceps and tattoos is glad to see us.

The movie tonight is the 1937 thriller SKY RACKET!



SKY RACKET is an odd combination of aerial piracy thrills with screwball romance; the producer was mixing two then-popular genres. Whether or not it works is up to you...

The show over, we amble up the street for a final drink at that small cafe....the night is cold, and the stars are bright. We'll make it through another winter...

PANIC by Helen McCloy

Alison is afraid. Her uncle Felix has died mysteriously. WWII is in full swing and he was doing some confidential work for the War Department. She's taking off for an isolated country house to spend some time alone....but every time she turns around there's another eccentric or creepy neighbor showing up, making threatening remarks. What's going on?

Published in 1944, Panic is one of the few non-series works by Helen McCloy, who frequently featured psychologist sleuth Basil Willing. Panic isn't a straightforward whodunit, though. One of the interesting aspects of it is that it's a mix of genres. There's elements of the analytical, as Alison puzzles her way through a complicated cipher that her uncle left behind. There's elements of espionage, as Uncle Felix's cipher is sought by domestic supporters of the Nazi cause. And there's lots of elements of the gothic damsel-in-distress, as Alison is alone in an isolated house in the Catskills, being stalked by what she thinks may be a supernatural being.

Does it work? Well, kind of. As a contemporary portrait of WWII-era America, it's pretty interesting. (It was later rewritten to reflect the Vietnam era, but I'm glad I found a WWII era edition.) There's quite a bit of discussion of cryptanalysis, to the point I mentally skipped over a few paragraphs as they were obviously the author lecturing the reader. And all the cipher involved in the story is there for the enterprising reader to analyze on their own, if they so care.

I also saw this as a precursor to many of the modern romantic-suspense damsel-in-distress thrillers that are all over the place. Alison is being stalked and harassed by multiple people, including a woman who may be a man in drag, and a strange being who leaves footprints similar to a goat's, making classically-minded Alison to think she's being stalked by Pan.

The solution is no big shock, and much emphasis is placed on physical deformity, especially one that the book says is exceedingly rare but in the real world is not all that unusual. And in the end, the differing aspects of the story don't always hang together well.

In the end, Panic has some interest as history and as a minor landmark in the development of romantic suspense. But it's not a great thriller,and sometimes the heroine is a bit annoying with her dithering and fear of supernatural creatures. Worth reading if you stumble on a copy, but I wouldn't recommend tracking it down unless you're a scholar of romantic suspense, cryptanalysis, or both.

January in the Phantom Recital Hall!

We're finally starting to come out of the dire cold that's been keeping us inside and huddling under blankets since Christmas, and a friend told us about a performance going on at the university...so why not dress up a little, put on our warm coats, and hear some music?

It's a program of mostly new works, and this piece by Nils Frahm isn't exactly sinister, but it's appropriate for January...



Ah, that's nice. And afterwards, let's go get some hot soup or something at that little bistro in town, shall we? It's nice to be out again...and hope for a brighter new year.