Dime Dancing in Noirville

I laugh aloud  sometimes at how I prefer detective noir stories and wonder how so many folks, degreed to the heavens, miss  or choose to ignore  some of the better writers such as Raymond Chandler or one of my current favorites Irishman Ken Bruen. Hemingway was the first author I read after all my schooling in medieval and Victorian literature to get to the point.

What it boils down to me is the  rapid fire wit between cops & crooks which is probably why Hollywood  couldn't get enough of the genre in the 1940's and 50's.

I prefer the fictional detectives to expose the contradictions in daily life w/o getting to deep into political agendas. Basically 90% of the world is crooked.

I just re-read Done for a Dime by David Corbett, an interesting book about the murder of a jazz musician and the explosions it sets off in a small California town.

The story was so well done that I survived the emphasis on class envy being a good thing and the underlying  theme that victims  can't  have some control over their lives

Arsonists are certainly a rare breed. Setting fires just to watch  will always puzzle me.

I'll return and try to pull this together but needed to get it out.

2/1/13

The character Malvaiso who masterminded the arson and recruited the firebug assistant in  in Done for a Dime re-surfaces in El Salvador in Corbett's next book Blood of paradise. Malvaiso was  a dirty cop in Chicago and he's been floating between the Americas doing whatever it takes for warlords and gangsters. He certainly has no trouble finding hungry kids to commit brutal crimes. The book was a little heavy with a lefty slant, but there's no doubt that I wouldn't want to live in El Salvador.

8/10/14

Maybe it was Charlie Watts paraphrase or the Scottish Independence Yes/No question, but I'm adding some  comments on Rankin second book, Saints of the Shadow Bible,  uniting his Fox and Rebus characters.Watts alleged comment on being a Rolling Stone:

fifty years in the band, ten spent drumming and the other forty waiting for something to happen

8/11/14

The ending to Saints of the Shadow Bible let us know Rebus hasn't changed too much. He's going to continue to wheel & deal with the bad guys.

9/18/14

Rankin's fictitious police dept was split 50/50 on Scottish Independence. Will today's actual vote be that close?

12/19/14

“It seemed to him a very Edinburgh thing. Welcoming, but not very.” 
― Ian Rankin, Exit Music

1/31/15

The Logan McRae series rolls on. Sometimes, the Scotch dialect is a bit thick and the plots  veer in every direction. Closer to the Bone has McRae talking daily to his comatose gal,   fending off the overtures of Hamish, the local gangster, and battling his dyke boss Steel who re-adjusts her bra straps proudly in public. I won't give away the Bewitching outcomes.

2/21/15

writing for charity lost sherlock holmes story discovered
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the story, titled Sherlock Homes: Discovering the Border Burghs and, by deduction, the Brig Bazaar, in 1904 to raise money for a bridge in Selkirk, Scotland.

3/7/15

Getting scotched up lately.  Nice mix of detecting and violence in the first three books of the Mc Nee series. Little less about McNee and Susan bright and a little more about Susan's dad Ernie would have been great. Good son, lost sister, father confessor

2/7/16

Rankin's latest, Even Dogs in the Wild, is a riveting read. great seeing rebus, siobahn , and fox together. I'm still behind on Scottish slang.

3/26/16

Serpents in the Cold (The Boston Saga) by O'Malley and Purdy is a bumpy ride through Boston's underbelly in 1951, but what caught my attention was a photo that showed a rowhouse building with a sign , entrance#3, over an upper floor door  . Was mail addressed to entrance # as common as apt or ste #?

2/15/17

#ianrankin refers to rock &rollers ( see #CharleyWatts quote) often in his detective stories so it's not surprising he was the guest DJ on Atlantic Tunnel last week.. 

3/5/17

I went old school with #ericambler 's travels from Istanbul to Paris with detours in Greece and Bulgaria. A Coffin for Dimitrios published in the late 1930's touched on the preWW2 intrigue in central Europe while describing heroin smuggling. Solid penny purchase.

3/14/17

#Scottish Independence is back on the table since the British Parliament finally OK'd the Brexit referendum vote. Scotland's First Minister #NicolaSturgeon wants the vote by late 2018.

2/3/18

clipped quote from #rankin 's Rebus character " and wished that he could turn to the last page and stop all his confusion"

3/25/18

#ericambler detective novel, a kind of anger, published in 1964,  provides a reminder that there is little new about the #Kurds battle to be an Independent nation.

4/22/18

#ericambler- You have to read every word, little to no filler. The Intercom Comspiracy. I've read about a third.

6/16/18

Back in my boozing days, this headline would've stirred my drinking mates and I to laughter:" #UK must protect #Scotch whisky post-Brexit." #EU 's current regs: alcoholic beverage must mature for at least three years in a barrel in order to retain the title of Scotch whisky.

11/25/18

Still pondering the second part of this comment by #ianrankin

"War created bizarre allies, while peace itself could be divisive."

06/18/20

From #IanRankin 's series:  Rebus:‘I just drink to be sociable.’
‘And when does it start working?’

3/17/24

No end in sight for movies about the Sherlock Holmes character. Mr Holmes is a 2015 flick about Sherlock Holmes at 93, dealing with creeping dementia, as he tries to remember troubling decisions he made over thirty years ago and finish writing a book. He befriends Kevin (Milo Parker), the young son of his housekeeper, who wants him to detect again. 

Good job of dealing with the importance of having companions, if you're unable to develop friendships.

Stellar cast: Laura Linney, Ian McKellen, etc.

An apiary is a big part of the plot.

4/7/2024

“Being a Berlin cop in 1942 was a little like putting down mousetraps in a cage full of tigers.”

 Philip Kerr

4/13/24

Taxi dance clubs were once abundant in Chicago, New York, Detroit, and San Francisco from 1910-1930.  "nickel hopper"- the taxi dancer usually earned five cents.