Death By Water, A Phrynne Fisher Mystery

I'm currently reading Death By Water, by Kerry Greenwood.

The nice men at P&O are worried. A succession of jewelry thefts from the first class passengers is hardly the best advertisement for their cruises. Especially when it is likely that a passenger is the thief.

Phryne Fisher, with her Lulu bob, green eyes, cupid's bow lips, and sense of the ends justifying the means, is just the person to mingle seamlessly with the upper classes and take on a case of theft on the high seas-or at least on the S.S. Hinemoa-on a luxury cruise to New Zealand. She is carrying the Great Queen of Sapphires, the Maharani, as bait.

It's a well-written book, by its Australian author. I'm actually only half-way through, but it's enjoyable. You like the character of Phrynne and her maid, Dot, and the 1920s milieu is well drawn.

However, as is my way when reading a mystery, I have peaked at the end, and while it is a satisfactory ending in many ways (as two plots are entwined in one), one of the two is illogical, although I can't explain why without giving the plot away.

I shall put a spoiler and then explain the problem.



SPOILER



The jewel thieves go on cruise after cruise, robbing people...but someone on board knows that they are the jewel thieves, and forces them to hand over the jewel, which they then sell and give the proceeds to a needy person (done dirt by the person who originally owned the jewel.) It's uncertain, to me, anyway, whether the 10% handling fee referred to is given to the thieves, for their trouble, or taken by the person who knows about them. Presumably the 10% fee goes to the thieves...why else would they continue to steal jewels on the cruises when they weren't allowed to keep the proceeds????

Goldfinger: Anthony Newley vs Shirley Bassey

I've just discovered that Anthony Newley - who co-wrote the Goldfinger them, and who was a friend of Shirley Bassey's, actually did a demo tape of the theme... before being beaten out by Bassey to do the actual movie version.



Compare this to Shirley Bassey's version:



and here's Bassey live

The Fuller Brush People

A couple of Lucille Ball movies were on today, ones from the 1940s before she became a sitcom star as I Love Lucy.

I missed most of Miss Grant Takes Richmond, and I regret it, as I like both Ball and William Holden. Then came The Fuller Brush Woman. I didn't watch it, just DVD-Red it, but I saw the opening credits of it and it shows a woman's heels walking along, knocking on people's doors, getting water tossed on her, and doors slammed in her face, because she's a door-to-door sales person.

After that was The Fuller Brush Man, with Red Skelton. And that opens the exact same way, except of course it's a male's shoes gettng the brush off. And I though, ah hah, Fuller Brush Man is going to be an exact copy of Fuller Brush Girl. Not so, as I found out when I checked the IMDB... Girl was a remake of Man.

Anyway, the bumbling central character gets involved with gangsters, and there's lots of slapstick until the finish.

Who knew audio performers used pseudonyms?

I was looking for audio books to listen to on a long drive, a couple of days ago, and came across The Masque of the Black Tulip. The author is Lauren Willig.

It sounded like another DaVinci Code or National Treasure type of thing, where investigators today accidently come across information that will alter the course of history in the future...

Turns out it wasn't like that at all.

Nevertheless, it was serendipitity - I quite like the book. It takes place in the "real world," but in a real world where the Scarlet Pimpernel actually existed back in the 1700s, and after he was unmasked the Purple Gentian and then the Pink Carnation took his place, meantime they had to battle the Black Tulip.

Okay, the names are amusing, but it's really good, light-hearted, funny, and exciting...

It takes place both in present day England and in Napoleonic France and England.

The performer is "Kate Reading", an "accomplished member of a London theatrical family."

Well, that's not really true. The performer is Jennifer Mendenhall, who had a brief TV career from 1992 to 1994 (if the IMDB is to be believed) and now works on stage in Washington DC and does auiobooks, of which she's done dozens. (Interesting pseudonym.... Reading...because she's a reader... get it?)

And I really like her voice and am impressed by her range. She starts out as the narrator, an American woman, and then segues into various British accents for everyone else in the book. Turns out in real life she was born in the US but raised in Britain.

The first book in this series by Lauren Willig is The Secret History of the Pink Carnation (I love her titles). Check it out - but go the audio book route!

Bones and Bathwater

I have only recently started watching the TV series Bones, starring Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz. Thanks to holiday marathons I think I've seen most of the episodes now, and they're quite enjoyable.

However, I do have to question some of the science.

For example, the episode I'm watching right now, "Mother and Child in the Bay", has the plot (based on the Lacy Peterson disappearance) that a women's skeleton is found in some water. She's been in the water for a year. Yet the "squints" are able to find DNA material under her fingernails.

But the body was not just dumped into the bay... it actually apparently came down a stream over the course of the year... to the bay.

So, first off... there would be no fingernails, so there could be no DNA.

Secondly, even if there were fingernails, there would be no way that DNA could remain under the fingernails for a month.... let alone a year.

I mean... we've all done it. Had dirty fingernails and gone swimming, and gee, at the end of an hour your fingernails would be perfectly clean! And after a year in water...

The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax

The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax, by Dorothy Gilman, first published way back in the 1960s, is one of my favorite books, and frankly rather an inspirational one.

The 60-ish Mrs. Pollifax is all alone, her husband dead, her children moved away, and she's feeling unwanted and unused. After reading about a 60-year old woman who finds a new career as a character actress, Mrs. Pollifax decides to follow her own dream - to be a spy.

She goes to the office of the CIA, and is ushered into a room where she is interviewed. However, her interviewer leaves the room, and the next man who enters mistakes her for the woman he's asked for - someone to act as a courier to bring some microfilm out of Mexico.

From there, Mrs. Pollifax is sent on a deadly (if light-hearted) adventure, in which she finds out that life is indeed worth living, and women in their 60s "still" have much to give.



I tried to listen to the audio version of this, narrated by Barbara Rosenblat (who also does the Elizabeth Peters books), but I confess I couldn't. Oh, there was nothing in particular wrong with her voice. Although she really didn't "gruff up" her voice when doing male characters, she did use diffent tonal inflections, etc. etc., so that part was all right. The problem is... she pronounces Mrs. Pollifax.... Mrs. Pollyfax, and I just couldn't stand it. (It's Poll-eh-fax, as far as I'm concerned!) Once or twice per chapter would be fine... but Mrs. Pollifax is referred to as Mrs. Pollifax on every single page, and I just couldn't stand it!

Mystery books read by Robin Bailey

Actually, I supposed "performed" is the better word.

Robin Bailey, whom I first saw over twenty years ago as Charters on Mystery! in the 6-part serial Charters and Caldicott, has a great voice and is able to do a wide range of accents.

I first came across his audio work in Agatha Christie's Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and thought he did a great job in this, one of my favorite Christie novels.

He also seems to have been the performer of choice for the Catherine Aird novels, featuring Inspector C.D. Sloan, which I quite enjoy.

Indeed, I now have quite a collection of audio books on tape by Bailey, unfortunately because libraries are de-accessioning them. I've been able to pick them up on Amazon.com, cheap.

Some of his Agatha Christie ones, at least, have been transferred onto CD. And then again, some haven't! (You can tell by the width of the "cover" - if its square, it's now on CD, if its rectangular, they are still cassettes.)



Catherine Aird




However his Catherine Aird ones appear not to be reissued in that format, which is a pity.