R. C. Rogers. Painting and Lining Railway Models (1976)

      R. C. Rogers. Painting and Lining Railway Models (1976) Retitled and revised and reissued, but why? Most of the book is a discussion of paint technology, with much talk about resins, solvents, and thinners. This material is useful, but though the author refers to incompatibilities, he gives no specifics. A chart or table would have done better. The chapter that deals with techniques says almost nothing useful, and those few nuggets must be excavated by the reader. I’ve read articles in Model Railroader that provided more information in three pages than this book achieves in 62. A nearly useless book, and somewhat of a curiosity. Bomb (2007)

A. C. Kalmbach, compiler. The Model Railroader Cyclopedia Sixth Edition (1950)

     A. C. Kalmbach, compiler. The Model Railroader Cyclopedia Sixth Edition (1950) Plans, plans everywhere, plus a couple of articles on modelling techniques. Kalmbach used the MR archives to put this book together, and while it is not up to modern standards of draftsmanship and information, it is more than good enough as a source of modelling inspiration. Most plans are to 1/8" or 1/4" scale, as architect’s scales were easily obtainable then. 27 large fold-out drawings finish the book. The photos are as good as the printing technology of the time permitted. The layout is haphazard, with photos and plans sometimes separated by several pages, and sometimes not matching at all. But it’s fun to look through all the same. The article on general techniques for building model railroad cars is worth a second look. A treasure. *** (2007)

Colin Dexter. The Secret of Annexe 3 (1987)

     Colin Dexter. The Secret of Annexe 3 (1987) The murder of a guest at a New Year’s event arranged at a hotel leads Morse and Lewis on the hunt for wild goose and fishing for red herrings. Dexter has a taste for overly twisty plots, but his narrative trick of short scenes and serial-like final sentence for each chapter keeps the pages turning.
     When I read these books, I see John Thaw and Kevin Whately, which probably enhances the reading. The characterisation is cardboard, even for Morse and Lewis, who are a more of a collection of character tics than fully realised characters. Dexter’s omniscient narrator whispers the characters’ thoughts and feelings like secrets not to be repeated to the unauthorised. This creates an illusion of reality that keeps you going until you close the book, then the artificiality of the concoction strikes you. It’s interesting how such merely average books became one of the best mystery series on TV. This one is more average than usual; a pleasant enough way to spend a couple or three hours. **

Ngaio Marsh. Last Ditch (1977)

 

     Ngaio Marsh. Last Ditch (1977) Ricky, Troy and Roderick Alleyn’s son, has gone to a Channel Island (carefully unnamed) in order to work on his novel. He makes contact with the Pharamonds, old acquaintances of Alleyn’s. A riding accident turns out to be a murder, and drug running and secret philandering complicate the case. Ricky falls in love, and suffers for his naive notions of detecting, Alleyn comes close to committing a serious offence after Ricky has been beaten up by the two prime suspects, and once again, the drug case doesn’t give the desired results. But the murderer is unmasked, which is some comfort. Better than average, with Troy and Alleyn plausibly concerned parents. *** (2007. This was then end of the |Ngaio Marsh binge.)

Ngaio Marsh. When in Rome (1970) & Black as He’s Painted (1974)

     Ngaio Marsh. When in Rome (1970) Alleyn joins a tour group in order to keep tabs on a suspected drug dealer and perhaps use him as a conduit to one of the big boys. A woman who hisses and spits at the dealer shows up dead, and a day or two later, so does the dealer. Alleyn and the Italian police do their best, but do not get any further with the drug investigation. However, the murderer of the woman was the dealer, and the murderer of the dealer was one of the tourists. Not that Alleyn passes on that discovery, if only because there isn’t enough evidence to charge the man, let alone convict him. As a puzzle, oddly satisfying despite its lack of resolution. As a character study, too many cliches, not one of Marsh’s best. **
     Ngaio Marsh. Black as He’s Painted (1974) The ambassador of an emerging African country is murdered at a reception for that country’s president. Alleyn was one of the people detailed to provide security, which is bad enough. Worse, he was at school with the president, who trades on their friendship. Two whites who are about to return to the African country also die by violence. The murder at the embassy is somehow tied in with a nasty little white-supremacy group, and orchestrated to remove the ambassador, an old rival of the president’s. The other two murders arise from hate within that group, and provide the link between the two events. Only the second murderer is brought to justice; the first one may or may not meet his fate in the African country when he returns there. A lovely puzzle, more careful characterisation than usual, and a little black stray kitten make for a better than average Marsh. **½ (2007)

Ngaio Marsh. Hand in Glove (1962) & Clutch of Constables (1968)

     Ngaio Marsh. Hand in Glove (1962) The glove of the title is a clue to the identity of the murderer, who kills from misplaced love and an appalling lack of insight into both herself and her adopted ward. Along the way we meet a clutch of more or less unsavoury types, except of course the young lovers, who represent moral purity, even as Alleyn and his crew represent the avenging Furies who unmask evil. The red herring this time is snobbery, which has moved a central character to revise his past so that he can claim descent from a very old family.**½

     Ngaio Marsh. Clutch of Constables (1968) Troy, fatigued from the opening of her one-man show, decides to join a river cruise when a vacancy opens up because of a cancellation. The cancellation occurs because of a murder; the murderer is seriously wanted by the police; the cruise is a test of a new scam (the “discovery” of a [faked] Constable), and triggers another murder. Troy writes to Roderick, and her letters, Alleyn’s lecture on this very case (to a class at a police academy), and Marsh’s narrative interweave to produce a nicely varied point of view. Technically, Marsh’s most ambitious novel. Thematically, fairly straightforward, with a nicely done fusion of plot, character, and the themes of racism and mixed moral feelings and attitudes.

     One of Marsh’s best. ***½

2007: I went on a bit of Ngaio Marsh binge. ;-)

Ngaio Marsh. False Scent (1960)

     Ngaio Marsh. False Scent (1960) From the blurb: “Mary Bellamy, ageing darling of the London stage, holds a fiftieth birthday party: a gala where she has assembled everyone who loves her and fears her power....”
     Nevertheless, one of them dislikes her enough to off her, using a scent bottle filled with pesticide. Alleyn solves the puzzle in his usual unorthodox way. The whole action takes place in about 24 hours, making the novel a classic Greek tragedy. The theme is also tragic: the murderer is Bellamy’s husband, who cannot stand the thought that she is becoming something less than the perfection that she embodied when he married her. He dies, too, so all is (tragically) well.
     Some good bits of satire on theatre people, as well as the formulaic romantic subplot: a playwright and a ingenue actress fall in love despite themselves. Marsh does this subplot more than once, which suggests that she (or her audience) likes the idea. Wonder how it relates to her own love life (on which her bios are curiously discreet). Nicely done entertainment. Alleyn, Fox, et al. are as always too good to be true, but that’s what we want from them.**½ (2007)

K. K. Beck. Murder in a Mummy Case (1986)

     K. K. Beck. Murder in a Mummy Case (1986) I did find another Iris Cooper/Jack Clancy case. This one’s set in a California mansion to which Iris has been invited by a college guy who wants to marry her. The period setting (1928) is a bit off, as is often the case when a writer can’t get the language quite right. It’s really quite difficult to mimic the usages and registers of a bygone age.
     The body of a pretty girl is stuffed into a mummy case, but the obvious suspect turns out to be innocent. As usual, money is the underlying motive: her husband wanted to marry the college guy’s sister, a ditzy pseudoblond with altogether too high an opinion of herself. Iris recovers from her initial infatuation with the college guy and ends in Jack Clancy’s arms. Is this a conclusion or a beginning? I don’t know, as I’ve not seen any other books by Beck. Harmless and pleasant confection. ** (2007)

Blackberry (Commentary)

Update 2020-02-23: Blackberry has survived, a gaunt shadow of its former self. Meanwhile, what the Playbook should have been has appeared. The  Surface tablet (now in its 7th iteration), does everything that I expected the Playbook to do, and more besides. Smartphones exceed Playbook's capability, too. Many kinds of tablets, some better and some worse than an iPad, clutter the shelves. The iPad has been hugely improved, but Appple has not yet made it an true alternative to its notebooks and laptops. The latest high-end Windows and Android tablets are also phones. They have sufficient connectivity, wired and wireless, that they can function as desktops when hooked up to real keyboards and monitors.We're only a step or two away from a single, OS-neutral device that can do anything, either natively or via links to other devices.

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Blackberry, formerly RIM, has tanked. On Friday 27 September 2013, its stock was selling under $8. Its sales of the new phones are well below expectations. People just don’t want Blackberrys any more.

Why?

Thinking back to introduction of the Playbook may provide a few clues. At the time, the iPad was cool, but for many people the cool factor wasn’t enough to justify an extra $100 or $200. When I heard that RIM would offer a tablet, I expected something new and better than an iPad. More power. An OS that would run 3rd party programs. More connectivity. A better camera. But mostly,  I expected the tablet to be a phone.

I think that Blackberry didn’t realise is that there’s a non-Apple market out there. A market that wants something more versatile than an iPad. Apple’s products have always been very good at what they do, but they’ve also always done very little for the price. So, what we got was a slightly better iPad that synced to a Blackberry phone.

What drives the tablet market is the dream of a single device that will do everything. Hence the huge number of “apps” available from the Apple store, and now also available “for your Android device”. Most of these apps merely link to websites, but many do real work, and of course there are lots of games.

Since Blackberry didn’t have the time or expertise to develop a slew of apps, it really had only two doable tasks:
     One, develop “apps” for the basics, such as web surfing and email. This could have been done by buying and improving a couple of available products.
     Two, build the OS so that the user could install any 3rd party program or app that they wanted. A Linux-based OS with a Windows virtual machine would have worked well for this.

And of course, make the tablet a phone, too. To do this comfortably would require a device with a 5" to 6" screen. The latest Superphones with 4.5" screens are creeping up to that size. The mini-iPad is approaching it from the other end. I think we’ll end up with tablet phones. Or maybe we’ll end up with Skype and texting as the preferred phone modes, which will make a 9 to 10 inch screen just right.

There were voices that expressed a wish for a small, powerful tablet that could be used as a phone. Mine was one of them. But I guess these desires were too blue-sky for Blackberry. Or else they were so focussed on beating Apple at its own game that they didn’t have enough attention left over to think about alternatives. Pity. Blackberry could have taken the tablet-phone a leap or two ahead of the competition.

2013-09-20

Ngaio Marsh. Off With his Head (1957)

     Ngaio Marsh. Off With his Head (1957) An oddity: a remnant pagan dance and drama becomes the occasion for murder. Alleyn’s restaging of the Sword Dance shows that the murderer acted without planning, but managed to obscure his trail enough to make his unmasking uncertain, except, of course, that Alleyn always gets his man. A bit creaky in places, with deliberately stereotyped characters, but a good entertainment nonetheless. ** (2007)

Colin Dexter. Death is Now Thy Neighbour (1996)

     Colin Dexter. Death is Now Thy Neighbour (1996) A woman is shot, by mistake as it turns out, because the killer miscounted the addresses from the back alley. The motive was a desperate desire for respectability and class, to be gained by killer’s husband achieving the Mastership of Lonsdale College. The incumbent Master, a nasty piece of self-satisfied work, fucks the wives of the candidates, promising his vote, and causing suicide and breakdown. A bleaker than usual book. Its presentation in short scenes shows that Dexter was thinking of the TV adaptation that he expected. However, the video doesn’t follow the book all that closely, which I think was a wise decision, as the video has more depth than the book. ** (2007)

Sue Grafton. H is for Homicide (1991)

     Sue Grafton. H is for Homicide (1991) Kinsey goes undercover when she’s stumbles into an insurance scam after one of California Fidelity’s claims investigator ends up dead in the parking lot. Her friends in the police department want her to help them nail the gang, which she does, eventually, but as usual at great risk to her life. Another nicely done entertainment, but rather forgettable compared to the others. It feels like Grafton is writing to formula. ** (2007)

Fodor’s Railways of the World (1977)

     Fodor’s Railways of the World (1977) “Frimbo” (Roger E. M. Whitaker) contributes a pleasant narrative to this overview of passenger travel in the late 1970s. But the overview of railway travel is too vague and general to be of much use. There are no timetables whatever, so I wonder who’s the intended audience. The tone of the entries suggests the armchair traveller, but the dearth of interesting or curious details makes that unlikely. I haven’t seen Fodor’s Guides in years; perhaps too many people found them as pointless as I find this one. For the historian of passenger travel, the book may provide some useful data, since it lists classes and types of trains run, thus indirectly providing dates for these services. Jon found this book in a Toronto Public Library sales bin, but I don’t think I want to keep it. * (2007)