LB's Rambles

"More Work for the Undertaker"

Margery Allingham was one of the great British "Crime Queens" whose enormous influence helped shape mystery fiction during the Golden Age of Detection and beyond. Her character, Albert Campion, was a marvelous invention, a character whose versatility let him be used in thrillers as well as detective stories.

One of my favorite Campion novels is "More Work for the Undertaker," originally published in 1949. It's the subject of this week's review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, which you may listen to here. It contains some of the most wonderfully eccentric characters in any of Allingham's novels. It's about the Palinode family, several aging siblings, the offspring of a prominent college professor and his poetess wife, both now deceased. The Palinodes have come down in the world, to the point where they are living as boarders in the house that their family used to own, located on a small London byway called Apron Street. And somebody may be poisoning the Palinodes.

But that's just barely scratching the surface of the peculiar events in this mystery, which is peopled by a number of other memorable characters. Perhaps most notable among them is the undertaker of the title, the unfortunately named Jas. Bowels, who moves through the novel apparently involved in something sinister - nobody seems quite sure exactly what he's up to. Certainly, something odd is going on in the neighborhood; Apron Street appears to have acquired a bad reputation among London's gangsters, who seem to be afraid of going "up Apron Street."

It takes Campion a while to get everything sorted out - and how he does so is delightful to read, for the book is filled with the kind of quirky humor we expect in an Allingham book. This was the novel that introduced the character of Detective Inspector Charlie Luke, who appears in many of the later Allingham mysteries. It also has a prominent role for Campion's aide and general factotum, Magersfontein Lugg, whose name is not his only peculiarity. "More Work for the Undertaker" is a delightful book. Don't miss it.

Back to Normal

Last week was quite a week for fun-loving readers and bloggers. At the same time and in the same place, there were three interconnected events: Book Expo America, the annual celebration of books, authors and readers; BlogWorld/New Media Expo, at the heart of social media; and the Book Bloggers' Convention, where several hundred dedicated book bloggers gathered to exchange ideas.

It was an amazing week.

I had never been to BEA before, and it was a revelation: more than a thousand exhibitors, including publishers, authors, influence groups, technical types, etc., all gathered in a hall more than large enough to hold a political convention. One separate area was set up as an organized place to collect autographs from favorite authors, many of whom also signed books at their publishers' exhibition spaces. I stood in more lines than I like to remember and came away with many, MANY autographed books and galleys. The galleys were probably the best part - free, advance copies of books to be published later this year.

I had been to past BlogWorlds, and I was glad to see it join forces with BEA this year. I ran into a couple of my social media cronies there and checked out those exhibitors as well.

And I probably had the most fun at the Book Bloggers' Conference. The panels, as always, were entertaining and informative, although the real fun comes at the breaks and meals, sitting around tables with several hundred other bloggers to talk about books and blogs.

Preliminary plans call for a repeat performance, complete with cohabitation, next year. If you're in the New York City area, it's worth being there. In the meantime, it's back to normal for these blogs.

(Co-posted at Classic Mysteries and LB's Rambles.)

This should be an interesting week. At the Javits Convention Center in New York, there are a couple of events going on simultaneously. It's Book Expo America week - BEA, as it's known - when book publishers and authors go all-out to promote their newest and best books to a huge crowd of visitors.

At the same time, the Javits Center will host BlogWorld/New Media Expo, which I've attended in the past. It's always exciting and interesting to meet so many other people who share a passion for new media. This year, a pass for one of these events gets you into the other as well. Not too shabby.

And then on Friday, in conjunction with BEA, comes BBC - the Book Bloggers Convention, for people like me who clutter up the Internet with blogs like this one. Some of my friends will be on panels there, and I'm really looking forward to meeting other book bloggers.

So it will be a good week for sharing passions. Blogging is likely to suffer a bit as a result, which sounds ironic considering the events. We'll see.

(Cross-posted to both Classic Mysteries and LB's Rambles)

"Three Witnesses"

If there's anything I like better than a good Nero Wolfe mystery, it would have to be three good Nero Wolfe mysteries. That's what we get in Rex Stout's "Three Witnesses," which is the subject of this week's review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. You can listen to the full review here.

"Three Witnesses" contains three Nero Wolfe novellas, "The Next Witness," "When a Man Murders..." and "Die Like a Dog." The last is one of my favorite novellas. The "witness" in this case is a Black Labrador Receiver. No, he doesn't do human detective work - he behaves as a normal dog would behave - and, by doing so, helps Nero Wolfe find conclusive proof against a murderer.

In "The Next Witness," Nero Wolfe himself is called as a witness in a murder case - but flees the courtroom in order to find the real killer. As for "When a Man Murders..." it's the story of a man who apparently comes back from the dead, only to be murdered - and, once again, the testimony of a key witness is central to the solution.

Rex Stout was the master of the novella form, the short novel, and "Three Witnesses" is an excellent collection. It's highly recommended.

Getting Social with eBooks

Perhaps I'm just old-fashioned, but I still don't pay nearly as much attention to how I'm reading a book as I do to what I'm reading. Maybe a lifetime of working in what is now grandly termed "content management" - meaning a career as a writer, editor and producer - makes me see my Amazon Kindle as just a useful tool for carrying and reading books.

But I do think that David Berkowitz of the digital marketing agency 360i makes some interesting points in an article on MediaPost's Social Media Insider blog, called "The Social Life of Books." He has some interesting statistics about the ways that some people appear to be choosing and using the books on their Kindles, including the ability to make highlighted passages and notes public.

I can also see why he feels that, to some degree, his social enjoyment of a book may be diminished because others riding on the subway with him can't see the cover of his book and know what he's reading! On the other hand, given my own preferences for old and classic mysteries, I'm not sure how useful or "social" it would be for others to know that I've been reading "At the Villa Rose" on my Kindle.

How about you? Do you use any of the Kindle's social features to share your reading or your notes? The comments are open...

"Rim of the Pit"

Our review this week on the "Classic Mysteries" podcast is of a truly classic "impossible crime" story, Hake Talbot's "Rim of the Pit." The story walks a very fine line between what seems to be a terrifying horror story - and what it really is, a brilliant, fair-play traditional mystery, where the "seemingly impossible" happens and - eventually - will be resolved. You can listen to the full review here.

The 1944 book is set in a remote lodge in northeastern New England, not far from the Canadian border. A small group of people is isolated there in a massive snowstorm - but that isolation merely adds to the overwhelming and eerie sense of claustrophobia and terror. It begins with a séance, designed to summon the spirit of a dead man, which quickly leads to all kinds of real and imagined horrors, including a couple of murders, apparent cases of possession, a flying monster, escapes from locked rooms, footprints that start and end in the middle of unbroken fields of snow - the apparent impossibilities seem to be nearly endless. But it is all done as a classic "locked room/impossible crime" story - and there will be explanations for the events in this first-rate mystery. For fans of John Dickson Carr and the impossible crime genre, Hake Talbot's "Rim of the Pit" is not to be missed.

Fun in Bed

You've GOT to be kidding me.

 Network World quotes a new study from telecom equipment manufacturer Ericsson as saying that the most popular activity in bed is...accessing social networks.

REALLY?

Even if, as Ericsson says, 35 percent of Android and iPhone users in the US use mobile apps such as Facebook before getting out of bed...is it really the most popular activity?

I can think of a few I'd rather be doing...

Either this survey is a bit...er...skewed or there are an awful lot of people out there in urgent need of lives.

Hat tip (if that's the right expression for it): MediaPost

Quotes, Punctuation and Logic

Okay, perhaps I'm just revealing the natural tendency of certain writers and editors to actually enjoy discussing punctuation. The rest of you might want to go back to some other website. But if you share a curiosity about commas, periods and quotes, then read on.

Like most writers of my generation (pre-stone age, to be sure), I follow accepted newspaper/news organization (Associated Press, for the most part) style when it comes to including punctuation within quotes. That style, which has been the rule in America for a couple of centuries, says that commas and periods should be inside the final quote mark, but that all other punctuation - question marks, semicolons, etc. - should be outside the final quote mark.

Thus, if I were quoting someone who said "I love onions," I would (as you see here) put a concluding comma inside the quote mark. Same is true if I quoted somebody who had said "I love onions." The period goes inside. But if I were emphatic about paying attention to it, I'd probably have to say "I love onions"! The exclamation point goes outside the quote.

Still here? Good.

Because, increasingly, more writers, particularly on the web, are putting all extraneous punctuation outside the final quote - including commas and periods. Ben Yagoda at Slate has an excellent and thoughtful article explaining why he thinks it's a good idea. It's called "Logical Punctuation." Or is that "Logical Punctuation"? The arguments for it are pretty good - I think, but a lifetime habit of punctuation is hard to change. Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Hat tip: Instapundit

A Bad Day

This is a very bad day for many of us who have worked for ABC News - both TV and radio.

First, we learned today of the death of Jeff Gralnick, at 72 (WAY too young), who was a mentor to so many of us. He was an amazing executive producer - of news broadcasts, of special events and politics - at so many different levels and different networks.

We could fill books with Gralnick stories; his presence will be sorely missed in television news.

And we are also told via former ABCer Ted David that radio news exec Kent Coughlin has died, at 78. Kent was the ultimate go-to guy at the radio news network when you needed something done.

I wonder if he and Jeff are perhaps working on putting together pool coverage on the other side?

Rest in peace, my friends. Rest in peace.

"Murder on the Matterhorn"

The wide open rocky spaces of a mountainside might seem like an unlikely setting for a seemingly impossible crime, unless you stop and think of it as a locked room without doors or walls. It's the scene for Glyn Carr's "Murder on the Matterhorn," a 1951 entry in his series of mountaineering murders. It's the subject of this week's review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the full review here.

Carr's amateur detective, Shakespearean actor and recreational mountain-climber Abercrombie "Filthy" Lewker finds himself puzzling over an apparently impossible murder on one of the Matterhorn's more dangerous faces. The victim had plenty of enemies, both personal and political, but how could he have been murdered during his solo ascent of one of the world's most famous mountains?

Carr's answer is quite ingenious - and it comes in a book that makes the sport of mountaineering sound truly enticing and enjoyable. I've long been a fan of the Abercrombie Lewker books, and "Murder on the Matterhorn" will help you understand why.