Tag: books

Doctor Who Audio Review: Even The Short Trips Can Be Hazardous

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Doctor Who: Short Trip Rarities is a collection of audio short stories featuring the Eighth Doctor, as played by Paul McGann. McGann isn’t really in these since they are narrated by a pair of compelling performers. These stories were previously released only to Big Finish Productions subscribers. Hugh Ross narrates the first one while Stephen Critchlow relates the remaining three.

Late Night Shopping by Matt Fitton has the Doctor and Lucie Miller help a shop worker fend off some peculiar alien tomatoes or something like that. It’s a strange yet amusing tale. There’s not much very notable here, but at least it wasn’t terrible.

The Caves of Erith by Alice Cavender has the Doctor and Lucie spending Christmas at a remote village. There are some strange bats living nearby, and the innkeeper has a secret of his own.

This story was a little better. Steven Critchlow is a talented enough narrator. He has shown up in much of Big Finish’s works.

Tuesday by Tony Jones has the Doctor reunited with an old friend in the shape of Harry Sullivan, however Sullivan has no recollection of his previous encounters with the Time Lord. Also, this is no ordinary Tuesday. It is supposed to be Christmas, but that doesn’t appear to exist either.

I am not one who needs to have old companions revisited all the time, but I sort of liked this meeting. Harry is older and maybe a little wiser but still familiar. Jones did a good job imagining Harry at a different stage in life than what was seen onscreen.

Finally, Paul Starkey’s An Ocean of Sawdust brings this set to a close. The TARDIS brings the Time Lord to a young boy’s bedroom where a wooden eel acts as the flooring, and the boy won’t get off his bed, which he treats as a life raft. The Doctor may be trapped in someone’s imagination and is not sure how to return to reality.

A rather imaginatively surreal story is presented here that is a little hard to conjure in one’s mind.

This is a reasonably entertaining release, but there is nothing that really stands out here.

Book Review: Sit And State Your Case To Nero Wolfe

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Three for the Chair by Rex Stout is a small collection of three interesting stories featuring the sedentary yet brilliant detective, Nero Wolfe. Archie Goodwin, the more than capable assistant and narrator, is also there to guide the reader through these various conundrums.

The title is a little misleading since two out of three stories take place outside of Wolfe’s famous New York brownstone. Wolfe did manage to find a seat in all three stories, so I guess it still works.

A Window for Death is the better of the three, in my opinion. A prodigal family member has returned with a vast fortune. He later dies of pneumonia, but Wolfe is asked to take a second look into the circumstances where he finds a clever murder has indeed taken place.

Stout’s choice of weapon is rather hard to believe, but it seems pretty original. Wolfe once again gets to show off his genius from the comforts of his office.

In Immune to Murder, Wolfe and Archie head to a hunting lodge due to Wolfe being invited to prepare his special recipe for freshly caught trout. A foreign ambassador has a small gathering in mind and is familiar with Wolfe’s talents as a gourmand as well his nose for detecting crime. One of the guests is murdered by the riverbank, and Wolfe’s departure is delayed by the subsequent, inconvenient investigation.

This was a pretty good addition. Nothing too spectacular about it other than we have something take place outside of the brownstone, and Wolfe has the rare occasion to be on scene for the crime. There is a political backdrop that is kind of interesting as well. Stout does have a talent for finding some unique motives for murders. Of course, the banter between Wolfe and Archie is what keeps me engaged here.

Finally, this little collection closes with Too Many Detectives. Wolfe and Archie are being questioned alongside other private detectives by state authorities about the particulars of various wiretapping operations. The murder of a man, who was once a client of Wolfe’s, has occurred in the New York state capital building. Suspicion falls on Archie and his sizeable employer. It is kind of amusing to read of Wolfe’s stay in a jail cell. He handled it better than I would have thought.

I was also amused by Archie Goodwin’s somewhat politically incorrect opinions on female investigators. I may have actually applauded if Goodwin was a real person. I don’t have any real strong opinions on the subject myself, but anything that gets some uber liberal feminist outraged is something that will likely appeal to my sometimes-neanderthal funny bone.

The Nero Wolfe mysteries are not terribly complex most of the time, but I think most readers appreciate the dynamic between Wolfe and Archie. Archie respects his boss, but he is not really in awe of him unlike most fictional narrators alongside some eccentric, brilliant, and pompous sleuth. They argue and needle each other.

Even though the title of this small volume seems a little misleading, it’s still a fun diversion and worth the effort to add it to the bookshelf.

Things are about to get bloodier with my next read, which features Don Pendleton’s Mack Bolan. Flight 741 is about to be hijacked, but the culprits are about to find out that a passenger who is more dangerous than them is also aboard. The author isn’t listed on the cover, but a small inscription on the copyright page thanks Mike Newton for his special contribution, which likely means he actually wrote the book. Anyway, that is what was selected from the Reading Queue, so I will get back to you.

Film Review: The Strangest of Invitations

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Invitation to a Murder is a pretty obvious homage to Agatha Christie plots and is directed by Stephen Shimek. Brian O’Donnell wrote the screenplay while story credit goes to Gerard Miller.

Mischa Barton is in the lead role of Miranda Green, a florist who is a major Agatha Christie fan, and also has her own talent for observation and deduction. Other cast members include Chris Browning, Seamus Deaver, Bianca A. Santos, and Grace Lynn Kung.

Miranda gets a sudden and peculiar invitation to a remote mansion on some island. On the way there, Miranda meets five other guests. Their host known as Lord Findley is apparently delayed due to poor weather. It seems that no one is too sure as to why they are there and how they should know Findley. The butler is not going to be the culprit since he is murdered. Miranda and the other guests are trapped together with the knowledge that one of them is likely a killer, and they are also apparently connected to each other in the most unexpected of ways.

Okay, so this genre of film is a favorite of mine, and it’s not terribly done. It’s also not that great. It leans too heavily on the cliches and tropes at times. Barton is okay, but her character is not that memorable or interesting. Miranda supposedly has a formidable memory and a gift for deduction, but it does not come off as anything unique when it comes to her other fictional detective counterparts.

The other cast members were fine. I thought Chris Browning as a somewhat cynical American journalist was kind of interesting too, but his performance was not that much help to the film as a whole.

This is another film that turns out to be disappointingly average but not terrible. Some revelations that are revealed are somewhat creative. The motive behind the murder was actually not that mundane either.

Anyway, the movie isn’t a total dud, but neither is it a grand slam.

Book Review: A Talent For Killing

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Open Season is a recent addition to the Alex Delaware canon written by the prolific Jonathan Kellerman, and this is one of the better installments in recent years.

This case begins with a young woman who was drugged, killed, and abandoned at a hospital. Detective Milo Sturgis enlists the insights of his best friend, Dr. Alex Delaware. A trail has found its way to the doorstep of a predatory party seeker who is shot in his apartment. Alex and Milo find a string of similar murders where a sniper has been busy. It takes some skillful investigating, but an unusual connection has emerged among the victims, and a killer with a rather unique motivation has no plans to stop carrying out his ghastly executions.

Kellerman has been writing this series for about forty years and at times seems to be going stale, however this novel seems to have brought some new life into the exploits of Dr. Delaware. There is no real change in the dynamic between the main characters or the manner in which the plot infolds. I just found the clues to the identity of the killer and what was motivating him to be more captivating than I remember Kellerman creating in some time.

Kellerman often takes the more realistic approach to not introducing the culprit until much later in the story. I think that is partly why I still appreciate his works. Milo and Delaware don’t come up with these sudden moments of brilliant deductions. They just talk to people enough to unearth a true path to the solution of the crime. It gives an otherwise outlandish plot some sense of credibility.

Even if Kellerman can sometimes exasperate me with some of his plot repetitions, I still enjoy the series as a whole. My criticism of his recent works does little to dampen my overall affection for Kellerman and his characters.

Although there were plenty of familiar elements in this novel and no earth-shattering changes occurred to our dogged heroes, something did seem a little fresher in this particular entry.

Kellerman is pretty long in the tooth, so who knows how many more Delaware escapades are forthcoming, but Open Season helped ensure me to stay up to speed.

I think it’s time to get a little more retro in my crime novel reading. Nero Wolfe is testily waiting for clients to present their conundrums to he can unearth a solution and return to his orchids and gourmet meals in Rex Stout’s Three for the Chair.

Book Review: Winter Finds Love And More Murder

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

After That, the Dark is quite the compelling addition to the Cameron Winter mystery series penned by Andrew Klavan. This is the fifth novel in the series and was released late last year.

Things are looking up for the former assassin and current English professor, Cameron Winter. The ongoing depression that sent him to therapy some time before seems to have lifted. He is falling in love with a woman who seems to really want to be with him. Of course, that doesn’t mean that dangerous men have decided to let the good professor live in peace. Cameron’s girlfriend, Gwendolyn Lord, tells him of a locked room mystery in which a rather unconventional murder suspect was himself dispatched by an unusual projectile. Cameron Winter decides to make a few inquiries and learns that the man who was killed in Oklahoma had inexplicably murdered and child. Winter also learns that an old adversary is stalking him once he learns that some troubling experiments may be in the works stemming from a mysterious billionaire who has some connection to his mentor known only as the Recruiter. Winter finds that his tendency to amateur sleuthing may lead to a violent end for a blossoming romance that bring him a peace that he has never known before.

This has been an interesting series so far, and this novel brings the development of Cameron Winter’s character to a critical point. The structure of the novels was a little unique in that Winter’s past comes to light during the scenes when he is in therapy. The reader gets to know of the Recruiter, a man of deep faith and deadly cunning. The Recruiter has his own enemies closing in, and Winter has to determine if his trust and faith in him has been misplaced or not.

Klavan has often claimed that this is his best novel in this series. I am not sure about that, but I can agree that it’s quite good. There is a bit of a twist that dips into some science fiction elements, but it still works. I also like that Cameron seems to be evolving as the series moves along, and the introduction of Gwendolyn Lord raises the stakes quite a bit if he continues to probe the oddest of misdeeds on the side.

It’s a little debatable for me if this is the best novel in the series, but there is no question that reading it is time well spent for mystery fans. I am quite ready for the next installment to be released later this year.

In the meantime, I return to a recent addition to a much longer running range written by Jonathan Kellerman. Alex Delaware and Detective Milo Sturgis find another potential killer is stalking the streets of Los Angelos as if it’s Open Season.

Film Review: An Android Named Alice

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Subservience is a very mediocre science fiction film directed by S.K. Dale and written by Will Honley and April Maguire. This is another film which delves into the potential troubles of having a synthetic caretaker in the household. Megan Fox is in the lead role as the android who is given the name Alice.

Other cast members include Michele Marrone, Madeline Zima, and Matilda Firth. The actors were reasonably well cast. I never considered Fox to be a uniquely memorable actress, but she does well enough in this role.

A husband and father is needing a little extra help caring for his daughter when his wife is in need of a heart transplant. He goes to the local android dealership and finds a hot-looking brunette model that should stir up no temptations. Anyway, the young daughter likes her immediately and names the artificial aide Alice. Alice starts to develop something resembling an obsession for the husband. She offers to help the hapless guy named Nick with stress relief of the most carnal kind which leads to more confusion. Then, the wife finally undergoes the heart surgery which actually turns out to be successful. She makes it home which really makes matters more awkward, bringing out Alice’s more homicidal urges.

The film is nicely shot, and the performances were not noticeably lacking. The plot is just too familiar and tediously predictable. Megan Fox wasn’t given much material to have her seductive android character stand out.

I did find that having the wife go through a heart transplant was something resembling originality. Really, Megan Fox was the only actor I actually recognized. I was pleasantly surprised that the other cast members weren’t really bad.

The problem, as usual, lies in the writing and tapping too much into a very familiar trope of science fiction.

Yet again, I have to conclude that this film manages to avoid being utterly terrible without much else to give it merit. Nothing extraordinary to see here, even with a steamy Megan Fox sex scene.

Book Review: Bolitar In The Rough With The Wrong Club

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Back Spin by Harlan Coben is another satisfying thriller featuring that sleuthing sports agent Myron Bolitar, and sees him unearthing secrets and scandal in the supposedly civilized world of professional golf.

The teen-aged son of a pair of prominent golfers is apparently abducted. The husband was on the verge of a comeback after losing the US Open several years ago under some questionable circumstances. Myron’s peculiar and dangerous best friend, known as Win, is strangely reluctant to lend. Not only Myron is finding out long buried secrets of the family, but he learns something of Win’s troubled past that could explain his unique emotional detachment from most people and strange, strict code of ethics. A kidnapping is always terrible and traumatic, but Myron is finding this situation more complicated than most.

This novel was first published in 1997.

Coben delivers a pretty solid suspense story with a healthy collection of red herrings. He does a pretty good job ratcheting up the tension with the questions concerning whether this kidnapping is some kind of hoax or something even darker than it seems.

Myron is a pretty interesting protagonist on the whole. He seems to be on a roller coaster relationship with a woman he cannot quite shake in spite of her history of flightiness. He is a sharp investigator even though that isn’t his profession. His ethics as a sports agent seem a little too perfect to be believable, but that’s kind of understandable. Myron is a flawed but reliable character. His friendship with Win is the winning ticket as far as holding a reader’s interest. Windsor Horne Lockwood III is one of those sidekick characters that could seem to overshadow the main hero at times since he is so complex and fun to follow.

There is a lot to like about Back Spin. It’s not exactly going to be the brightest star of the mystery genre, but it will be a solid, reliable distraction from the pressures of everyday life, which is something Coben is trusted to deliver consistently.

Next up on the eternal literary journey is an anthology that is published annually. I am going to see what works were selected by John Grisham for The Mysterious Bookshop’s The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2025. This is one of the many publications presented by series editor Otto Penzler.

Book Review: Grace In Space

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Project Hail Mary is Andy Weir’s most recent science fiction novel which was published in 2021 to well-deserved acclaim.

Dr. Ryland Grace wakes up with no memory of how he got aboard a spaceship many miles from Earth. He has to piece together clues that will reveal the nature of the mission he was on to save the planet. His other two crew members died while in an induced coma for the trip to another solar system. As Grace races against the clock, he soon discovers that he is not alone in the system, and an unlikely alliance is forged with a being from another civilization trying to solve a similar catastrophic threat facing its own homeworld.

Weir continues to demonstrate a talent for making the science in his works seem plausible. It’s easy to determine that he actually does quite a bit of research.

Some of the scientific jargon and exposition does slow the pace of the story somewhat, but that’ problem’s something that seems kind of expected and hard to avoid in a work such as this.

Weir’s previous two novels, The Martian and Artemis had protagonists who were persistently sarcastic in their narration. Although this novel has much of the familiar sort of humor, the blatant sarcasm is a bit more restrained which I: appreciated. I don’t necessarily mind sarcastic heroes, but when two different characters share that trait, it does make me wonder about the author’s ability to come up with more diverse personalities.

Anyway, the film adaptation of this novel is just a few days away, and I wanted to read the book before I would make my way to the cinema, so that mission is accomplished.’

I expect the novel will be better as usual, but this is also basically a very enjoyable and thought-provoking read. In spite of a bit of slogging through some technical exposition, I still appreciated the plot and the grit exhibited by Grace and his alien companion who is dubbed “Rocky”. I did appreciate the detail that went into explaining how Grace and Rocky would eventually be able to communicate. Weir is a talented and imaginative enough of a writer to make the technical jargon tolerable.

Although this is clearly a pretty fantastical situation, Weir’s obviously careful research into the possibilities is much respected and appreciated. It does lend some kind of credibility to the tale when some actual scientific theories seem to be genuinely considered in the real world.

I have now read all three of Andy Weir’s current works and hope to hear some news about his fourth contribution before too long.

There are plenty of options in the reading queue, but I have decided to return to the works of Harlan Coben for my next indulgence. This time, it appears that even a relatively quiet and civilized game such as golf has its rough players. Everyone’s favorite sleuthing sports agent, Myron Bolitar is going to learn that very thing in Back Spin.

Film Review: Agatha In Disguise

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Agatha and the Truth of Murder is a television movie which speculates how Agatha Christie herself would solve a murder. It takes place during the time of her eleven-day disappearance in 1926 and revolves around the murder of Florence Nightingale’s goddaughter which actually did take place in 1920.

Ruth Bradley leads the cast as the Queen of Crime herself. Other cast members include Pippa Haywood, Bebe Cave, Blake Harrison, and Ralph Ineson.

Tom Dalton penned the script with Terry Loane calling the shots as director.

In 1926, Agatha is facing the dissolution of her first marriage as well as frustrations of her mystery novels being found to be too predictable. A long-time nurse has come to Agatha to ask for her assistance in solving the murder of her friend, who happens to be the goddaughter of Florence Nightingale. The woman was beaten to death while riding a train. Her own private investigations do happen to lead to a small group of suspects. Agatha disappears for a time and goes undercover as a legal representative to look into some of these people who knew the young nurse.

Another murder occurs at the estate, and Agatha finds herself working alongside a detective who is short-handed due to the authorities frantically trying to locate the already renowned author herself.

This was actually a pretty fun movie, and Ruth Bradley seems to be a pretty solid casting choice. It’s still a somewhat predictable British murder mystery with all of the usual tropes, but it was still entertaining.

The disguise Agatha adopts is pretty simple but still rather effective. It works because this version of the writer is still recognizable in spite of the change in hair style and glasses.

I do not know much about Ruth Bradley, but she is a compelling actress. I was kind of aware of her because she had performed in the Big Finish Doctor Who audio dramas a few years ago.

I also found Ralph Ineson to be a great addition to the cast as Detective Inspector Dicks. There is a kind of a sweet moment when Agatha and the inspector bond over their failed marriages.

The plot is a little too much like one of Agatha’s novels at times and could have benefited from something a little original than the expected comparison.

Anyway, it was a bit more enjoyable than I expected. I think most Agatha Christie devotees would get a kick out if it.

Book Review: Nothing Like An Icepick Through The Eye

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

A Stab in the Dark is a pretty engaging mystery from one of the considered masters of the genre, Lawrence Block. It features the unofficial private eye, Matthew Scudder and was first published in 1981.

Nine years previously, a serial killer with an icepick terrorized New York City and then disappeared. The police have made an arrest, but the father of one of the victims believes that he did not commit the brutal murder of his daughter. Charles London comes to Matthew Scudder to take another look into his daughter’s death to see if the truth is something more her falling victim to a maniac. Scudder is an ex-cop who sometimes works for a fee or a favor. He dusts off his investigative skills and starts examining facts that are almost a decade old. Of course, Scudder unearths some uncomfortable secrets from the neighborhood where Barbara Ettinger met her tragic end. One killer is in custody, however someone even more cunning may be waiting in the shadows to savagely protect their secrets from Scudder’s prying eyes.

It’s a pretty straight-forward, tightly written novel that is not very long. Scudder is a bit of a train wreck with his alcoholism and cynicism, but he is still a capable and interesting investigator. He does have scruples and is a little more civilized at times then Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, but he can handle himself in a fight if needed.

Block also creates a dubious set of suspects who are pretty compelling. The red herrings and clues are pretty well planned out as well.

I haven’t read a whole lot of Block’s works, so I am not sure where I would place this one in the rankings, but I did find that I enjoyed this one well enough to keep returning to the world of Matthew Scudder.

Block is a talented writer who keeps the story moving pretty well. Scudder gets a lot done between working his case along with some personal encounters in something that comes in under two hundred pages.

For those who like the old-fashioned, hard-boiled private eye novel where the protagonist is about as messy as those he meets, this one is a pretty good addition to the bookshelves.

I think more poor decisions and ultimately murder is called for when I return to the works of John Sandford. Deadline is the lucky winner for my next literary diversion.