Stuff and Moonshine

Continuing to work my way through Craig Rice’s Jake Justus/Helene Brand/John J. Malone novels. Read The Wrong Murder and then went straight on through The Right Murder, as these really make one two-volume novel.

The Wrong Murder begins with the stabbing death of an unidentified man, on the busiest corner in Chicago, in the middle of a crowd of Christmas shoppers. It’s relentless and atmospheric and if this book were a movie it likely would have been done in one long tracking shot to rival the opening of Touch of Evil. 

We then jump back to the previous day, and Jake and Helene’s wedding reception. We meet Helene’s father, George Brand, and boy did the apple not fall far from the tree. Most of the other guests seem to be people from George's social circle, including Mona McClane, flamboyant millionairess and adventurer, who suddenly wonders out loud how it would feel to murder someone, noting that it’s one of the few things she hasn’t done or experienced. Soon enough she’s made a bet with Jake to murder someone “who won’t be mourned” in broad daylight, and in front of witnesses. If he can prove she did it, he wins her fashionable nightclub, the Casino. Jake, newly married, out of a job since his client Nelle Brown left radio for Hollywood, and more than a little insecure about his ability to support Helene, takes Mona’s bet. 

Jake's also quite drunk, but that’s the normal state for most characters in these books. Rice uses it as a plot driver sometimes, to explain them making rash decisions, or to keep them from recalling a clue from earlier until she needs them to. The plot is appropriately bonkers, we meet gangster Max Hook for the first time (he gets mentioned a lot in the short stories), and SPOILER after the murder is solved, it turns out the story is far from over.

The Right Murder picks up the tale a few weeks later, and continues to explore Malone’s character. By this time it’s very evident that emotionally at least he’s the third partner in this marriage—while Jake and Helene are away on their honeymoon they fight and Malone falls into a depression, only broken by a man staggering up to him in Joe the Angel’s City Hall Bar two minutes before midnight on New Year’s Eve and shoving a mysterious key in his hand before falling down dead from a knife wound. 

Malone’s only been embroiled in this new murder mystery for about twenty-four hours when Jake and Helene return, separately; both equally determined to prove themselves to each other by winning Mona’s bet. Malone finds himself helping both investigate, while trying to keep them away from each other. Luckily this state of affairs doesn’t last too many chapters before they run into each other and reconcile, and the reunited trio can get to work on this affair in which multiple men named Gerald Tuesday have been bumped off while trying to get in touch with Malone, and Mona McClane has a houseful of guests who mostly aren’t what they seem. 

I like the way this series gradually deepens, emotionally, while continuing to serve up fast-paced screwball plots. The Right Murder came out before Pearl Harbour, but the War in Europe is already affecting the plot, and I'm curious to see if this continues in the next book.

Dear Yule Writer— Thanks for volunteering to write a fic for me. I am moon_custafer on AO3 as I am here. Repeating the first part of this letter from past years:

General likes— Hurt-comfort. Conversation. Period-specific details. Ghosts or supernatural. Found family. Casefic or plotfic. I don’t mind explicit sex scenes, but I’m usually indifferent to them. OTOH kissing or touching hands, foreheads, stroking hair, etc, are great, as are descriptions of the characters’ appearance. I also find it interesting when the central character is offstage and we primarily see them through other characters’ PoV or references, so feel free to do that if it works for you.

General DNWs—AUs that deviate from canon to the point of being a completely different premise/setting, i.e. high-school/coffee-shop/ABO dynamics. Kinks involving pregnancy or bodily fluids aren’t really my thing either.


My requests for this year:

Hagar of the Pawn Shop—The book’s happy ending has Hagar and Eustace wed and travelling the country as itinerant book-sellers, which seems a perfectly good set-up for further storylines. Alternately, some of the recurring characters in the main story arc leave room for further development—Larky Bill and Goliath’s time as prison cellmates, for instance. Or Eustace’s reaction when he finally locates them, but doesn’t know of Bill’s previous run-in with the pawnshop.

Every Day Except Christmas—The Man In the Cravat, to my mind, looks like he might be cruising as he laughs and chats with some of the Market workers; but I’m not sure if he’s at the cafe to pick up rough trade, or if he is trade himself.

John J. Malone Mysteries—the two characters who really make this series for me are Malone and Helene; I’d enjoy a story that’s primarily about their interaction. Perhaps Helene’s reaction to Dolly Dove, Malone’s sometime-love-interest in the short stories who, like Helene is a beautiful blonde who enjoys driving recklessly. Additionally, or alternately, I’d like to dive a bit into Malone and/or Helene’s personalities and back-stories: Malone frequently catches the murderer only to offer to defend them in court, and there’s an ongoing subtext that he likes people but hates Society and the death penalty in particular. How much of Helene’s madcap-heiress persona is put on to allow her to get away with unusual behaviour, how much is neurodivergence? Also she  mentions in Eight Faces At Three that a few years earlier she was mixed up in something sufficiently serious that her letters could be used to blackmail her—and then she makes this enigmatic comment:

“Mr. Featherstone found them in the safe the day after the murder, and sent them to me with a note of apology for reading them. I don’t think he needed to apologize.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t think he understood them. Anyway they’re burned now.”

The Green Hills of Earth—Rhysling comes off as a bit of a benign trickster figure, living off his wits and scruffy charm as well as his talent with words. Plotfic imagining one of his adventures during his decades of wandering would be welcome, points if we get a verse or two.

Crazy Saturday—we were to meet Mom at the art gallery and then have lunch, and while we were running late she called to say she’d fallen in the street and was “in an ambulance” (based on what happened later I think she meant paramedics had arrived) and trying to decide whether or not to go to the hospital, but that we should keep going to the art gallery for the time being.

We arrived and were trying to call her when she walked up, looking frail and shaken and with a bandaid across the bridge of her nose. Also a bruise starting to form over one eye. She said she hadn’t been walking especially fast or carelessly. “Sometimes the pavement just attacks,” I said. I think she was extra concerned because she’s 80, also Dad had Parkinson’s in his last years.

Anyway she still didn’t feel bad enough to go to the hospital, so we skipped the gallery and got lunch. She seemed perfectly coherent, so I don’t think she was concussed. Andrew said she could stay with us if she didn’t feel up to getting back to Hamilton on her own, but she wanted to get home, so we went with her to Union station and made sure she got on the train ok. She texted and emailed later to say she was home. I emailed her again this morning and will keep in touch.

ETA—Mom reports that her eye looks like it belongs to George Chuvalo after a match with Ali, but that it’s not painful.

Well, seems to be working ok.

I'm barely on Facebook any more, but I still get email notifications when at least some of the people I'm friended to post anything--except usually they haven't made a post, they've commented on one of their friends' posts. The email, however, leads with an abbreviated version of that original post, so my eye gets caught be news of death or illness only to click thorough and realize my friend is fine, they're just offering sympathies or advice to someone else.
( cut for meanderings about death, mental health, etc )

While looking into Craig Rice's works, I came across The Invisible Event, a blog dedicated to golden age detective fiction, and also some newer stuff that homages it. I'd known Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was a big Sherlock Holmes fan, but I didn't know (or had forgotten) that he and Anna Waterhouse had co-written several novels focussed on a younger Mycroft Holmes. According to The Invisible Event they're really good, too.

adverbian recently posted a fic (possibly the first chapter of multiple) in which Lord Peter Wimsey gets isekai'd to twelfth-century Shrewsbury. Good thing his Lordship and Brother Cadfael are both fluent in Latin.

For a complete change of pace, here's Mojo Nixon telling us why he's the Perry Mason of Love.

OK, fine YouTube. You win. I will fixate on Rory Gallagher for a while. Here's a live version of Bullfrog Blues on the Old Grey Whistle Test in 1979 which made me understand what people mean by terms like "guitar god." The rest of the band are fabulous too.

…and I’m putting my guess behind a cut for later:

(spoilers and a possibly wrong guess at the solution to a mid-century mystery novel)
( Read more... )

Our seamstress Colleen mentioned to me at Thursday night's rehearsal that she was going to the Textile Museum's mini fabric sale on Saturday, so I decided to give it a look as well. I was fairly restrained, but picked up a couple of balls of yarn and some rayon scraps I can make use of.

On the way there, I looked out the window of the Queen streetcar and thought "That man looks just like Tom Scott." I looked several more times and concluded that he was in fact YouTuber Tom Scott. No idea if he was in town to film a video, for TIFF, or just visiting.

Saturday night's painting session produced portraits of Andrew, a reworking of an old painting I'd done of Narly that I'm very pleased with, and this advice to CONSIDER THE CUBE that for some reason my mind thought it important to get down on paper.

Dropped by Sunday's rehearsal long enough for people to try on some things. Brought home some costume pieces to work on, including a kimono that I'm reassembling--its sleeves had been removed, for what stage production, and what reason, i don't know.

More work adventures: Didn’t quite realize we had two meetings lined up for the day, and that the delegation from the French production company were to came in the afternoon, so when two men with vaguely-British-sounding accents arrived, I thought to myself “huh, guess they learned their English from UK speakers? Makes sense I suppose, it’s closer to France than North America is.” Fortunately I kept this thought to myself, not did I try to greet them in French.

Or perhaps unfortunately, as either action would have given two Australians a hilarious story they could tell everyone for years to come.

When later, the French visitor arrived, I did risk my French to ask if he knew whether his colleague would be along soon; but I didn’t know the gender of said colleague, so I couldn’t ask “Votre collegue arrivera-t-il bientôt?” or Votre collegue arrivera-t-elle bientôt?”

So I said “Votre collegue arrivera bientôt?” But he didn’t hear the question mark, and just smiled and nodded. Oh no, I thought. Now he thinks I’ve told him a colleague’s coming soon.

Mind you, the same misunderstanding would likely have happened in English. When one of my bosses came out to greet him, she asked where his colleague was and it turned out there wasn’t anyone else coming.

I think I managed to redeem myself in my own eyes afterwards, when he asked me to call him a cab to the hotel as he was having trouble with uber.

Finally had my first encounter with somebody saying “oh, just ask the AI!” when I tried to get her to make a decision on something. The frustrating thing was that I already had done all the work for her—spent a half-hour looking up storage bins on various online stores, and double-checking that they really were the right size to fit on her office shelf. All I wanted was for her to pick one of the options I’d brought her, before I went back to my desk and placed the order.

“She doesn’t like making choices,” my co-worker whispered once we were out of earshot.

“OK, I’m getting the beige one then.”

I did get an apology afterwards for her brusqueness, but I’d already decided that in future, I’ll just choose for her, present the results as a fait accompli and if she doesn’t like them, I can claim AI told me to do it.

Which will probably make us both happier, actually.

On the way home, I decided I’m going to be a cheerful cynic about the whole thing: from now on, anybody who tells me to use AI is giving me blanket permission to act, plus a get-out-of-jail-free card.