Norma Farnes, ed. The Compulsive Spike Milligan (2005)

     Norma Farnes, ed. The Compulsive Spike Milligan (2005) Excerpts from Milligan’s war memoirs, poetry, novels, and drawings. Most were selected by Milligan himself, or selected by Farnes as among his favourites.
     The overall effect is that of melancholy. The war did for Milligan; he never overcame its effects. Nonsense was his refuge, but a fragile one: working on The Goon Show triggered bouts of depression. Milligan’s friend Harry Secombe was able to find comfort in a Christian faith towards the end of his life. Milligan hated the Church for its complicity in too many evils of the world. And he could never sustain a normal mood or tone in his writing: any hint of sentimentality was ruthlessly converted in nonsense,  usually bizarre, sometimes surreally cruel. If ever a clown used his gifts to prevent himself from going crazy, Milligan did. That he failed intermittently only testifies to the depth of his horror at the human condition. He had many friends, which must have been a comfort to him.
     One Goon Show script is included, “The Battered Pudding Hurler of Bexhill-on-Sea”. Farnes says it’s one her favourites. It’s one of the best, perfectly plotted, and with nary a falter in the tone of surreal logic. *** (2007)

Faye Kellerman. Sacred and Profane (1987)

     Faye Kellerman. Sacred and Profane (1987) This appears to be the second in the Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus series. On a camping holiday with Rina’s two sons, the elder finds bones. Decker eventually uncovers a sleazy alliance of respectable citizens and makers of snuff films, and has the satisfaction of seeing some of them brought down. But along the way a teenage hooker who has fed Decker needed information is murdered by a pedophile john; a couple of suspects come to a bad end; and Decker almost loses Rina.
     Kellerman writes in the Hammett tradition, adding her own angle on the private life of her hero, who is perhaps too deeply affected by the evil he must fight. Decker’s studies in Jewish religion are well done, his moral and emotional conflicts with Rina sound true, as does the mix of cynicism and pain in his colleagues and himself. On the strength of this book I bought another one, Sanctuary, well along in the series. I think I’ll have a hard time collecting them all, if I decide I want to do that after reading that one. **½ (2007)

Sue Grafton. B is for Burglar (1985)

     Sue Grafton. Sue B is for Burglar (1985) I’ve been collecting the Kinsey Milhone tales for some time, after reading A is for Alibi, and J is for Judgment. Then I decided I would read them in order, so here goes.
     This time out, just two weeks after her first recorded adventure, Milhone is drawn into a missing person search that turns into a murder inquiry. A wife (psychopath) and her husband (obsessed by her) have murdered a friend with loadsadough, but made it seem the wife herself was done in by a burglar. Except that there’s no obvious motive, no clues, etc. Only the accident that the executor of a will needs a signature from a missing woman starts the unravelling of the case. Milhone is as obsessive as expected, but we don’t get much deepening of her character. On the other hand, a few unfinished plot lines in her personal life suggest To Be Continued in subsequent volumes.
     The writing is competent as ever (Grafton thinks in scenes), with believable dialogue and just enough quirkiness in the secondary characters to bring them to life as a competent character actor would. Occasionally, Grafton indulges in description of landscape and weather, and does so well enough that I suspect an unsatisfied urge to write more literary tales. **½ (2007)

Dorothy Sayers. Starkes Gift (tr. 1999)

     Dorothy Sayers. Starkes Gift (tr. 1999) A good translation of the story in which Wimsey first meets and falls in love with Harriet Vane. She stands accused of poisoning Philip Boyes, her erstwhile lover, with whom she broke up when he offered her marriage after having persuaded her, a vicar’s daughter, to live with him for several months. Wimsey finds out that Boyle’s cousin Norman Urquhart had been shortchanged in an aged relative’s will, which provides a motive; and then puzzles out the method, which involves arsenic eating.
     The beginnings of the love affair between Wimsey and Harriet is nicely handled. I don’t think Sayers knew exactly where to go with it, but she did not want Harriet to marry Peter out of gratitude, nor did she want Peter to accept Harriet’s offer of concubinage as any kind of payment for services rendered. By this time Wimsey had already morphed into a much more scholarly gentleman, with a sound grasp of moral philosophy, hence his admiration for Harriet’s refusal to marry the man who had seduced her. Her refusal of his offer of marriage is equally sound, so he does not pressure her, nor does he take up her offer to live with him, a good portent. But it does set Sayers an almost insoluble problem. If these two, destined for each other, are ever to marry, they must do so as equals, which they may be intellectually and before the law, but not morally, since there now exists an obligation between them. It will be Sayers’ task to remove that obligation, which she manages to do in Gaudy Night, but not without a deal more anguish than even fictional characters should have to endure.
Wimsey nags his good friend Insp. Charles Parker into marrying his sister Mary. Parker thinks he isn’t good enough to marry an Hon., an attitude that the Duke and Duchess of Denver approve of, but the Dowager Duchess does not. Sayers doesn’t show us Parker’s and Mary’s courting or married life, even though there is more than a hint that they were intended as a foil to  Pater and Harriet. Authors can be seduced by their creations, too.
     I like Sayers’ books, and have read several of them more than once. This German version is better than Keines Natürlichen Todes, perhaps because the style is less slangy. Slang is always a problem: what one culture finds worthy of slang another either ignores or can speak of only in hushed tones. Slang also dates quickly, so that it is difficult to recapture the intended tone when translating the text a couple of generations later. **½ for the translation. (2007)

Burger & Starbird. Coincidences, Chaos, and All That Math Jazz (2005)

     Burger & Starbird. Coincidences, Chaos, and All That Math Jazz (2005) The authors are profs, so the professorial tone and terrible puns should be no surprise. All in all, a nicely done tour of those parts of modern math that seem to the authors either most relevant to Real Life, or most interesting. They believe that math is fun, stimulates the imagination, and stretches one’s worldview. Correct on all counts. Recommended to mathophobes. **½ (2007)

Mike Bryant. The Ian Allan Book of Model Railways (1960)

     Mike Bryant. The Ian Allan Book of Model Railways (1960) Bryant writes in a chatty style clearly aimed at the younger modeller, whom he assumes to be a boy in middle school, or perhaps younger, with help from dad. He begins with references to adults, but quickly drops that. He produces a reasonable survey of model railway practice of the 1960s, with emphasis on the use of proprietary equipment. Here and there he gives clear enough instructions on scratch-building a few items, such as a country station, using card and printed brick sheet. The book would have been a good first book for a young modeller. Now, it gives us a glimpse of the way it was 50 years ago. Advertising litters the book, and no doubt made it profitable. Ian Allan also published several modelling magazines, and published books like this one as much to build his subscriber base as to help the readers. The photographs are small, and suffer from the limited technology of the time.** (2007)

Tony Koester. Realistic Model Railroad Design (2004)

     Tony Koester. Realistic Model Railroad Design (2004) Koester looks at just about everything. Since a lot of people freelance, he spends some time considering questions of believable graphics, logos, and such. He covers scenery, rosters, adaptation of prototype practices, and so on. The book is overwritten, partly because Koester tends to use three words where two will do, and partly because he belabours the obvious. He does help the reader consider the overall effect of the layout, and how various components and aspects contribute to or detract from it. In that sense, it’s a worthwhile book. ** (2007)