Quarry Jane White (Boiler House Press: Recovered Books 2023) FULL REVIEW HERE! I was fortunate to be pointed toward this 1967 novel by Anne Billson, who wrote the introduction to this new edition. It’s a wonderful example of the flexibility of the crime genre. White employs familiar tropes to unfamiliar ends, brings in the mythic…
Tag: reviews
Review: Tár
I ran off to watch this on an afternoon when I was feeling poorly and annoyed and irritated. I didn’t know it was three hours long. When my ass in the chair told me it had really been more than two hours I checked my phone. So it’s not that it dragged at all. It…
Review: Moonage Daydream
Thanks to Peg for wrangling the tickets and my students for relinquishing me a few minutes early so I could fly from Albany to Catskill for the screening at the Community Theatre, which is a lovely venue. There were even Bowie-themed doughnuts. Director Brett Morgan sent a short introductory video which conveyed how special this…
Review: Loving Highsmith (2022)
I meant to go to Film Forum on Saturday to see a screening of this with a Q&A after with the director Eva Vitija and Megan Abbott, but alas something I ate on Friday made it inadvisable, so checking the Zeitgeist website I found it was playing down in Newburgh. I had never been to…
The Falcon Takes Over (1942)
A loose adaptation of Chandler’s Farewell My Lovely with George Sanders as the Falcon instead of Marlowe, which more or less means the same plot but instead of Marlowe muttering we have Sanders kissing all the girls — almost literally! And he swans about in his white tie and tails about which I’ve no complaint….
Spook Racket: Psychic Mafia
Oddly enough in the seemingly endless line of grifters and con artists in and around the spook racket, I had not read this volume. I first ran across the BBC radio series on it — part of their ongoing fascination with grifters like Anna Delvey. Lamar tells his story (with Spraggett’s help) with relish, albeit…
Scoundrel for a Sunday
THE PRIVATE AFFAIRS OF BEL AMI (1947) I’m a bit mystified how I never got around to this film until recently. I adore George Sanders and no one plays a better scoundrel than he does. Add to that a luminescent Angela Lansbury at her very dewiest beauty and some great women’s roles, and — well,…
Matinee: The Magnificent Dope (1942)
Farran Nehme (@selfstyledsiren) started a wonderful thread of golden recommendations on Twitter the other day, so I bookmarked a few things for when I had a spare moment. This came up first early Sunday morning because it was a the first time I could fit something in (yeah, back on dad duty) because I thought…
Classic Crime: The Witch’s House
Taking the day off is a good time to catch up on some fiction reading as I have almost no time for reading lately except work which is mostly non-fiction. I can forget what it’s like to read without making notes or checking footnotes and sources, stopping to make notes of what else I need…
Blithe or No
BLITHE SPIRIT (2020) An impulse purchase this week: I suspect it was the subliminal effect of the tarot spread in the cover image. And I like Judi Dench. And Dan Stevens. And I love Coward, the snap and crackle of his dialogue. Certainly the play could use an update — like removing all the casual…
K. A. Laity 