R. D. Wingfield Night Frost (1992)

 

R. D. Wingfield Night Frost (1992) A serial killer, a suspicious suicide, a missing girl who turns up dead, and Division Commander Mullet, a self-important prat who straightens his tie when he phones the Chief Constable to take credit for the work other people have done. Frost has a lot on his plate, but of course muddles through and comes up trumps. I recall this story from the video series. Complications include some nasty porn videos, a Det. Sergeant who yearns for promotion and despises Frost, assorted  suspects who divert attention, and the usual assemblage of damaged, hurt, vicious, pathetic, and merely decent and respectable people.

     The book is a workmanlike job. Wingfield’s bio says he preferred to work on radio and TV drama scripts, and it shows. Still, I kept turning the pages. I’ve read a couple other Frost novels, all of them only because I saw the TV series. 

     A re-read. A good entertainment. **

Blade Runner (1999) (Movie Review)

     Blade Runner (1999) [D: Ridley Scott. Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young. Based on Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?] This is the third or fourth time I’ve seen this movie. The first one was the original release, and I remember very little of it. Even this time I was surprised by a few details, and was once again impressed by the thorough design of the movie. Lighting, settings, artefacts, pacing of the scenes, repeated motifs, soundscape, characterisation: this is one of the best movies I’ve seen. Just whose is the single vision that informs and guides every aspect of this movie, I don’t know. It’s customary to credit the director, but this movies feels like an ensemble production. Everyone, from the actors to the most humble technician, subscribed to the same dystopic vision and elegiac ironies of the story.
    That story is well known. Deckard (Ford) must track down and kill four replicants that have come to Earth illegally in order to find some way to extend their built in self-destruct date. That’s enough to guarantee action, and the trick is to make this more than an action movie. Scott and his script writers managed that trick. The story raises serious questions about human rights. The replicants may be manufactured to specifications that natural humans can’t meet, but they are human in every other way.  Even Leon, a labourer type with limited insight, shows a completely human grief for his dead comrade, a grief that drives him to attack Deckard.
     Deckard does what he’s ordered to do, but he doesn’t like it. Maybe he suspects he’s a replicant himself (I think he is). Certainly Rachael (Young) is one. Maybe Deckard just doesn’t like killing people whose only crime is that they were made, not born. They are tools, instruments specially made for specialised jobs in environments where ordinary humans would be ineffective or likely to be killed before they earned the cost of  tranportation. They are the property of the Tyrell Corporation, the company that made them.
     Philip K. Dick’s story then is about the ethics of making artificial humans; or more generally, about demanding that humans shape themselves to suit a particular role they did not choose and which benefits someone else. What’s the difference between a biologically engineered worker and an educationally engineered one? Either way, the worker’s value consists in what he can perform as a tool or instrument. He has no inherent value as a human being. If some object such as a robot can do the work better or cheaper, the worker’s value is zero.
     A great movie, and a great story of ideas. It’s to Scott’s credit, and his team’s, that abstract ideas have been transformed into a story of individual experience and actions that embody those ideas. ****

Ngaio Marsh. Spinsters in Jeopardy (1953)

     Ngaio Marsh. Spinsters in Jeopardy (1954) On a trip to the French-Italian border area for a summer holiday with his family, Alleyn happens to see what appears to be a murder as he looks out of the train window. A fellow passenger falls ill, and Alleyn arranges for emergency treatment at the same chateau at which he, perhaps, saw the murder. His son Ricky is kidnapped; a mysterious cousin of Troy’s turns out to be a surprise, and the drug trade and international police co-operation all figure in an entertainment that doesn’t reach Marsh’s usual level of subtle characterisation, but does serve to pass some time pleasantly enough. ** (2006)

Ngaio Marsh. Overture to Death (1930)

     Ngaio Marsh. Overture to Death (1939) A committee of do-gooders put on a play, but at the first performance, the lady who substitutes at the last minute to provide the opening music is shot dead by the booby-trapped piano. The social comedy interests Marsh more than the crime solving, but the plot is solid enough, and the added mix of melodrama and love romance makes this a satisfying read. *** (2006)

Frank Herbert. Whipping Star (1969-77)

    Frank Herbert. Whipping Star (1969-77) Herbert has the knack for making an alien culture seem alien, yet accessible. His readers must work hard to imagine what he tells them, and even so his worlds retain that not-quite-intelligible strangeness that convinces. Abnethe, the universe’s richest citizen, has captured a Caleban in order to whip it; she cannot stand to see suffering, but she craves its appearance. Jorge X. McKie, Saboteur Extraordinaire, has the assignment of finding out what he can. He finds out that all sentient life will die if the Caleban dies. Finally, the forces of good triumph over the forces of evil (and stupidity: in Herbert’s world the two are twins). McKie manages to establish something resembling correct communication with the Caleban, and Abnethe’s plans are thwarted. A bonus is that McKie solves a few riddles, too: The Calebans are multi-dimensional sentients who manifest in our universe as stars. They also run the S’eye, a system of instantaneous transport between any two points in the human universe. True simultaneity has at last been achieved, despite Einstein’s discoveries.
      This book appears to antedate the Dune series, in which Herbert constructed a complete civilisation. In this book, he has certainly imagined one, but he leaves out almost all of the details. Nevertheless, well done. *** (2006)

M. J. Adamson. A February Face (1987)

     M. J. Adamson. A February Face (1987) Balthazar Marten, delayed in the Phillippines, is asked to investigate the dead bodies washing up on the beach. Trouble is, they were dead and embalmed before they were shot. A plot to scare away the squatters? Yes, it turns out, as the shore-line real estate is valuable only if owned as a single large parcel, and they are in the way. So are a couple of other people who also die, and the putative murderer is found floating in an ancient but still very wet cistern. Pleasant but forgettable entertainment. ** (2006)

Marcia Muller, Ask the Cards a Question (1982)

     Marcia Muller, Ask the Cards a Question (1982) McCone’s neighbour, Molly Antonio, is found strangled with a broken bag of groceries and a piece of McCone’s recently replaced sash cord next to her body. McCone eventually unravels a plausible tale of freight theft and pushing of stolen goods, but the murderer is a blinded man who wants his money back. McCone is smart, telling her tale in short takes (tailor-made for a scenario), and neither the reader’s imagination nor intellect suffers from overwork. A pleasant but forgettable entertainment. ** (2006)

Alexander McCall Smith. The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs

 Alexander McCall Smith. The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs (2003) Another entertainment about Prof. Whatsisname, an academic resident at some German university. McCall Smith must have something against German academics. True, they are easy to satirise, but so are other academics, and for the same reasons. Chief of which is their conviction that all other mortals are lesser beings. Mildly amusing, but I’ve had enough of this series. I’m going to try the Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency series. * (2006)

Gerry Lieberman. 3,500 Good Jokes For Speakers (1976)

     Gerry Lieberman. 3,500 Good Jokes For Speakers (1976) A compilation of jokes originally published in the 1950s. Categorised, a mix of one-liners, short setups, and stories, of varying quality. What’s interesting is how taste has changed: many of the jokes wouldn’t fly these days, too sexist or racist. The style of sexism and racism has changed: mostly, only women can makes jokes about women, only blacks about blacks, etc. The other interesting aspect is how topical humour is. References to the garment district of New York just don’t work as well today, for example, nor do jokes playing with good girl/bad girl contrasts.References to the Cold War are unintelligible to anyone under 30 and dated to anyone under 50. As customs and values change, so do jokes. Jokes depend on a shared cultural context between teller and audience. Much of that context has changed or disappeared in the 60-odd years since these jokes were first collected. Thus the book provides data for a study of humour, which I will not, however, undertake. **

H. E. Bates. The Triple Echo (1970)

     H. E. Bates. The Triple Echo (1970) Another book I didn’t finish (although I did read the final episode). Alice, a farmer’s wife alone during WW2, takes in Barton, a deserter. Inevitably, the MP catch up with them. She shoots her lover and his captor as they approach the house. Bates’ attempt at writing a D. H. Lawrence love tragedy, perhaps. In any case, the prose, while sufficient for the job, doesn’t rise above the ordinary. The characters are well enough drawn to attract interest, but not to sustain it.
     I’m tired of these gloomily passionate stories. They seem to me to be a sort of slumming. These people don’t deserve their fate, and absent the war, they would have managed to disentangle the woman from her marriage and live more or less happily ever after. It’s the soldier’s refusal to return from leave that precipitates the deception and the final hunt, so I suppose Bates may intend this novelette to be his anti-war story. As such, it would have had relevance when it was published, at the Vietnam war’s inglorious winding down, but now it is, as the academics say, of scholarly interest only. The cover photo shows Glenda Jackson in the role of Alice; Michael Apted is named as director. I suspect that the film is quite good; weak books often make good movies. * (2006)

W. Heath Robinson. Absurdities (1975 reprint with alterations)

     W. Heath Robinson. Absurdities (1975 reprint with alterations). Robinson selected the images in this book himself, but the publishers have replaced some that were reprinted in another book with new images. No matter, the drawings are charming and wonderfully bizarre, and the book is well worth this second look through. My copy is ex-North York Public Library; I can’t recall where I found it, or else someone gave it to me. It prompted me to do a web search on Robinson; I found a number of sites and images I hadn’t seen before. I’ve not explored all the available material (most of the hits were for used book shops), but will eventually save what I find on a CD. **** (2006)

Gore Vidal. Dark Green, Bright Red (1950)

     Gore Vidal. Dark Green, Bright Red (1950) An early work by the master of the louche and creepily pornographic. Peter, a cashiered ex-Marine, drifts into the party planning and executing a coup in the stereotypical Latin American country. The evil General’s daughter supplies the sex interest, according to the blurb, but I didn’t get that far. -1 star (2006)

Dennis Reid. The Snowman Cometh (1966)

     Dennis Reid. The Snowman Cometh (1966) A Sexton Blake mystery. Adolescent fantasy of the worst kind, with noble noblemen (except when they are utter dastards), salt of the earth lower orders, maidens that chastely love from a distance, femmes fatales of unspeakable (and actually unimaginable, on the evidence) sinfulness, and so on. Workmanlike writing of its kind, but the puzzle isn’t interesting enough, and there is no doubt it will be “solved” by some insight of Sexton Blake’s that the reader cannot even guess at, there being no clues to support it. I never took a fancy to Sexton Blake when I was younger, and I couldn’t get through the book now. -1 star. (2006)