In The Area of Critical Commentary....

Some quickie critical commentary as The Grandstander still tries to catch up from vacation.....

We saw the new "Wonder Woman" movie last week, starring the incredibly beautiful Gal Gadot in the title role.

You have heard me say time and again that I am not a super-hero, comic book movie fan, but something drew me to this one, and, yeah, maybe it was the chance to see a beautiful actress in a skimpy outfit, but Mrs. Grandstander attended as well, and we both liked this movie quite a bit.

If you can accept the idea that there actually ARE super-heros, then this was a pretty good story.  There were a lot of neat special effects and slow motion filming that I enjoyed, and Miss Gadot was charming and delightful as the kick-ass amazon warrior princess.  Like a lot of these movies, it went on too long (2:24), and the climactic battle between Diana and the Evil Bad Guy was implausible, even by comic book movie standards, but when the next WW movie comes out, and as this movie is killing it at the box office, there will be more of them, we shall be in line to see it.

Three stars from The Grandstander.

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The newest Lucas Davenport thriller from John Sanford finds Lucas in his new role as a US Marshall.   A couple of crooks/killers have robbed a drug cartel of millions of dollars and killed several people, including a little girl, in the process.  This sets both the Cartel and the US Marshalls on their trail.  Typical Davenport/Sandford action - brutal criminals, some new partners for Lucas, a compelling storyline, and a most interesting ending to the story that will set up future stories in the series.  As a side note, the story also describes a US Presidential election with fictional candidates, of course, but comparisons can certainly be made.

Three and one-half stars.

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In 2001, a college freshman is drugged and gang raped at a college fraternity party.  Thirteen years later, the woman commits suicide, and shortly thereafter, one of the football players who took part in the rape, is killed, and another one turns up missing.  

The missing guy was last seen in Portland, Maine, and that brings Portland police detectives Michael McCabe and Maggie Savage into the case.  This is the fifth novel in James Hayman's series about McCabe and Savage, and I have written of this series before. "The Girl on the Bridge" continues the series and is another excellent police procedural thriller.

There is a bit of a twist in this one as to who the villain is, and, I must say, I did see it coming, but not at first!  I highly recommend this one, and all of the novels in the series.  Oh, and this one also ends with a hint of a possible change in store for McCabe and Savage in the future.  Can't wait for the next book.

Four stars.

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Yesterday we took advantage once again of the fabulous TCM/Fathom Events Series of classic films on a Big Screen.  This one was Billy Wilder's 1959 classic - and it truly is a Classic - "Some Like It Hot".

Has anyone not seen this one?  In 1929 Chicago, musicians Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon witness the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. In order to escape the Mob, they disguise themselves as women, join an all girl orchestra to escape Chicago and get to Florida, where they will then ditch the band and go on their way.  Of course, another musician and singer in the band is played by Marilyn Monroe, and complications, and hijinks, ensue.

This movie is lauded as the Best Comedy Movie ever made, and it is hard to argue the point.  The three stars, Curtis, Lemmon, and Monroe may never have been better in anything that they ever did, Wilder's direction and script (with I.A.L. Diamond) was fabulous, and, of course, there was that memorable closing line from Joe E. Brown.

No matter how many times you've seen this movie, it is always funny. Always.

Four stars all the way.

Allow Me To Recommend....

Earlier this year, the book "The Girl in The Glass" by James Hayman was offered on one of those Amazon "Kindle Deal of the Day" emails, it looked interesting, so I bought it.  It was terrific.

The book centered around Portland, Maine police detectives Michael McCabe and Margaret "Maggie" Savage, and the crime involved the death of a young heiress in Portland who was murdered in an amazingly similar fashion to the death of her great-great-grandmother that took place 108 years earlier.  It was a fast paced story and a great mystery with, in the case of McCabe and Savage, terrific characters.

This led me to see if there were other books in the series, and indeed there were. In fact, "The Girl in The Glass" was the fourth novel in the series, and I immediately ordered the other three.

In chronological order, the books are "The Cutting", "The Chill of the Night", and "Darkness First".  You needn't read them in the order in which they were written, but if you are obsessive about things like that, Amazon is making it easy for you to do so.  All four of them can be purchased for you Kindle for $5.96, or, you can buy them individually for $.99 for the first three books, and $2.99 for "The Girl in the Glass".  I mean, they are practically giving them away.

You can also learn more about the series and about author James Hayman at www.jameshaymanthrillers.com.

The bad news is that I have now finished all four books, and have to wait until Hayman comes out with a new one, which probably won't be for another year or so.

So, if you are in the market for a good mystery/police/crime novel, give any or all of these "McCabe and Savage Thrillers", as they are being marketed, a shot.  I do not think that you will be disappointed.

Some Books to Read....

With the holidays behind us, and the weather getting a bit foreboding, I have been able to knock off three books thus far in 2016.

This one came as a recommendation from high school classmate and Facebook friend Jack Longmore.  No, this is not, as the title might imply, a book about strained race relations.  The "whites" in the title refer to unsolved cases that confront several police detectives in New York City. Such cases are the "white whales" that each cop continues to pursue in Ahab-like fashion over the course of their careers.

This is a pretty gritty story of cops on the night shift.  I am guessing that the author is trying to fashion himself as a latter day Joseph Wambaugh, and in that regard, he falls a little short.  There were a lot of characters and overlapping story lines in this one that made it difficult to get into, but if you are able to stay with it past the half-way mark, it is a pretty good story.

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"The Crossing" is the latest in the Connelly's series about Los Angeles police detective Harry Bosch, and in this one, Connelly brings in his other series character, Mickey Haller, the "Lincoln Lawyer", into the story.  Turns out that Bosch and Haller are half-brothers, a fact I missed somewhere along the way.

I have read a number of these stories, and always liked them, but I fear that Harry Bosch has jumped the shark.  In this one, Harry is now "retired" from the LAPD, and looking for things to do when Mickey asks him to work on investigating circumstances surrounding a murder, the suspect charged with the crime being Haller's client.  After a lifetime of chasing down and arresting killers, Harry is reluctant to make the "crossing" to the other side and try to free an accused killer.  Harry's angst over the whole thing takes up a large part of the story, and gets a bit tiresome, but he takes it on anyway, and ultimately finds the truth behind a shocking crime among the upper crust in LA.

As I say, I think I'm pretty much done with Harry, and I'm thinking that Connelly would be better off writing solely about Mickey going forward.

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This is a book that was one of those Kindle "Deal of the Day" books that Amazon sends out all the time, and I am glad that I spent the $2.99 on it.

The story involves the murder of a beautiful young heiress in Portland, Maine in 2012 that is eerily similar to the murder of her great-great-grandmother in the same Maine location in 1904.  The featured characters are Portland police detectives Michael McCabe and Maggie Savage, and it turns out that "The Girl in the Glass" is the fourth book in a series featuring these two.

This one offers a very good, believable whodunit, and McCabe and Savage look to be good characters to follow in a series.  Once I got into it, I knocked this one off in two days.  I will certainly be checking into the first three novels in the series, and you should, too.