W. J. Burley. Wycliffe and the Guilt Edged Alibi (1971)

    W. J. Burley. Wycliffe and the Guilt Edged Alibi (1971) An unpleasant woman’s corpse dragged up by a cable-ferry’s chain, another murder, and a suicide; not a large body count. Wycliffe’s thinking meanders, his vague impressions coalesce as he discovers the family secrets that prompted the deaths.  Like most of Burley’s books, more of a meditation on crime than a strictly police procedural mystery. Character as always counts for more than technical detail. People’s unwillingness to reveal disreputable facts gets in the way, but Wycliffe’s talent for waiting in silence unnerves the suspects (and others) so that they talk just to fill up space. I like this series, partly because the TV shows based on it were so well done. Burley has the knack of hinting at the back stories of the secondary characters, so that the world of these tales seems richer than it is. **½

Will Stanton Once Upon A Time Is Enough (1969)

     Will Stanton Once Upon A Time Is Enough (1969) Stanton takes a literal and realistic view of some familiar fairy tales. E.g., Hansel and Gretel are grilled by a prosecutor who wants to convict them of the maliciously planned murder of a sweet little old lady. Bluebeard occasions a riff on Can This Marriage Be Saved? And so on. Well done, in a manner that, alas, may seem too bland for many readers these days. It’s Stanton’s deadpan assumption of normalcy that carries the satire. Victoria Chess’s drawings, reminiscent of Edward Gorey, help out. If you find this book at a yard sale somewhere, buy it. It’s a keeper. ***

Dicey Deere. The Irish Manor House Murder (2000)

     Dicey Deere. The Irish Manor House Murder (2000) Dr Ashenden, respected surgeon, dies when his horse throws him. The horse dies, too. A few days earlier, his granddaughter tried to ride him down, an event witnessed by Torrey Tunet and the local constable. A piece of knitting needle found in the horse’s rump implies murder. Torrey, the series hero, interferes of course, and the page-turner gallops along until the final double twist reveals the true murderer. Dr Ashenden was a psychopath, so justice of a sort has been done. The book is a well-done product of its kind: short (sometimes very short) chapters, each dealing with one scene, a format that just begs for conversion to the screen. This is the 2nd of a series; I didn’t search online to find out if there were any more. Pleasant enough time waster. **

Marvelous Pilgrims (Play)

     Stewart Lemoine, Marvelous Pilgrims. At the Walterdale Playhouse. Directed by Stewart Lemoine. A low-key fairy tale about magical waters, a witch that tries to undo a curse, a personality swap, and of course a love story. Staged using four areas to represent four locales, supposedly set in 1936, but the costumes were more 1906.
     The play’s a fantasy, and such a play succeeds or fails by moving us along briskly so that we accept its premises. The timing of entries and exits, of the switching between locales, and of course the dialogue, must be sharp and precise, and too often it wasn’t so, especially at the crucial plot points of personality swap (which doesn’t have the desired effect and so must be undone before the play is properly done). The script was good enough to engage my interest, though it could have been stretched to explore questions of personality, and/or of the ethics of interfering in other people’s lives, and such. I think the story would have borne the additional weight. Music propelled the story effectively, unusually so in my experience, for playwrights tend to use it to create a mood when the words fail to do so. Here, it was used operatically, to add depth to character and to point the plot. I wouldn’t have minded more music. The overall tone was light, here and there verging on farce. The love story was what it should be: the right people fell in love.
     But the magic hinted at more serious themes: Swapping personalities has heavy implications, and sticking to the merely humorous ones I think was a mistake. Good theatre (which this was) can take us anywhere. In some ways, the play felt unfinished, as if workshopping had stopped because it was time to produce the play. Nevertheless, overall it was a pleasant way to spend an hour and a half. **½

Burt Wetanson and Thomas Hoobler. The Treasure Hunters (1983)

     Burt Wetanson and Thomas Hoobler. The Treasure Hunters (1983) Humans hunted by aliens, a tired cliche, maybe. In this young-adult fiction Wetanson and Hoobler do a good job of putting a new twist on it: The Hunters have psychic powers, which they must not use. But one of the humans, Billy Miller, a teenager with self esteem and girl problems, is on the verge of the Discovery. How he learns of his powers, and why the Aged Master decides he must be initiated into their full use, forms the backbone of the story, which  is a pretty straightforward quest. The perils and encounters are well enough told that they ring true, but the characters are explained rather than shown. As SF, the book rates a solid ** (2007)

Gary Larson. Bride of the Far Side (1985)

     Gary Larson. Bride of the Far Side (1985) Larson’s genius is finding the mundane in the bizarre and the bizarre in the mundane. Animals, alien life forms, the stereotypical monsters of the movies, all have the same concerns, worries, and ambitions as ordinary suburban human beings, whose secret desires and naive common sense lead them into lethal choices. Two alien kids with three eyes each taunt a school chum wearing glasses as “Six eyes.” A Viking opens his lunch box, and complains that his wife has given him a tuna fish sandwich. A man and his boy watch riff-raff (lounging smokers and streetwalkers) displayed at the zoo.
     I like Larson’s drawings a lot. **** (2007)

Garrison Keillor. We Are Still Married (1989)

     Garrison Keillor. We Are Still Married (1989) I know Keillor’s breathy, hesitant, ruminative style of story telling from NPR’s The Prairie Home Companion, and that voice sounds in my imagination when I read these pieces. Keillor’s trick is to combine the mundane with the bizarre, the everyday respectable life with the occasional escape into the disreputable. He tends to melancholy, a gentle nostalgia for the good things of life which we will leave behind when we die, but that should be enjoyed while we still can. And while he never delves too deeply into his character’s or persona’s motives, he hints at depths that we can barely perceive, let alone understand.
     The title story illustrates this nicely. A couple, Earl and Willa,  becomes the subject of a reporter’s investigation into the effects of the death of a pet, Biddy, their dog. But the dog recovers, and Blair’s presence alters their relationship, so that Willa becomes an emblem of the ignored, taken for granted, oppressed wife, and makes her mark in print and on TV. Yet in the end they reunite, not because Earl changes, but because Biddy gets sick again, and Willa wants Earl’s company. Earl “takes her back”, with no recriminations, no demands. They get two new dogs, and soon, when spring breaks up the ice on the lake, things “will be as if none of this has ever happened.” Which is of course not true, since Earl has changed despite himself. Most of all, he has accepted Willa as she decides she wants to be. That, I suppose, is why they are still married.
     Good book. *** (2007)