Theodicius
Good. Evil. Bratwurst.

I was told I had to pick up a copy of Mary Higgins Clark’s My Gal Sunday, by people who insisted it was the best husband/wife team since Nick and Nora Charles.

Not even close. (more…)

My local PBS station is carrying this show, and I caught three episodes last night. It’s a passable mystery, though I have to admit I’m usually at least 15 minutes ahead of the detectives, so I can’t say it’s plotted very well.

But it was good to see Felicity Kendall in action again. Sigh. I really had something for her back when we were both young. Good Neighbors. I scoured the video stores for episodes of Solo. And she still looks good today. Deeper Sigh.

Now, if they ever did a buddy series with Felicity Kendall and Lis Sladen, I don’t think my heart could take it.

I suppose I should mention something about the Da Vinci Code, as everyone else seems to be getting drawn in, so here I go.

It’s a well-written thriller, in general, but the historical research is amazingly shoddy. As fiction, I’d give it a B, but if he submitted the “research” behind it as a term paper, it’d get an “F” at most, and we might even have to invent a lower grade for it. He begins with a page stating “facts”, virtually none of which is actually true in the strictest sense, though a few items you could “spin” into being acceptably true, in the sense that claims made in TV commercials are “true.”

You see, I’ve been down this “historical” road a few decades ago, when I read “Holy Blood, Holy Grail”, but it seems Dan Brown lacks the critical skills required to be a researcher or historian. He seems to believe everything he reads (‘it’s in a book, therefore it must be true”) which is a fatal flaw when doing research, though quite essential, if only in a temporary sense, when reading fiction.
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OK, sonow I’ve seen a few episodes of the TV series based on Kathy Reichs’ books, what do I think?

Ick.

First, ifyou’re expecting to see anything resembling the books, you’ll be disappointed. This Tempe Brennan also a Forensic Anthropologist, but that’s where the resemblance ends. This one seems to go out of her way to physically deck at least one person every show. There’s also more sex in the show than the books, and none of the supporting cast seems to have made it into the show intact, either.

The writing is incredibly spotty (one show Boreanz calls her”Bones” all the time with no issues, another everytime he does she snaps”Don’t call me bones!”). There are all the cliche characters and gags, nothing real in it at all. You might be watching Quincy reruns, except the plotting isn’t as good.

As a show about Temperance Brennen, it stinks. As a show about a forensic anthropologist, it’s no better than average, maybe worse. If you watch the show, my advice is to turn off your brain before you turn the show on; you’ll enjoy it more. The more you think about what you’re seeing, the worse the show will seem. If you have to watch TV, I suppose this is OK. But you’re better off reading any of Kathy Reichs’ books than watching it at all.

Just finished To The Nines by Janet Evanovich. The first and last book of the series (I did another in the sequence as abridged audio on my recent trip to Phoenix; I did the book to check the real series.)

Evanovich has a way with dialogue. Her plots are more from the thriller genre than the mystery genre, as she doesn’t require anyone to do much thinking. For example, as soon as she introduced the evidence for the existence of the WebMaster in this book, I knew the rest of the story. It wasn’t at all hard to see who the main villain was, and I ended up cursing the supposedly intelligent characters in the book for not recognizing something so obvious right away. The remainder of the plot required the good guys collectively act like idiots for the remainder of the book.

Between that and the annoying characters she’s populated her world with, there’s every reason for me to avoid stopping by here again. Even though Lula did manage to discover the major drawback to the Atkins diet (there’s blessed little to crunch on in it) I really never want to meet up with her again. Life’s too short to spend it with characters who make you wince.

And that’s the bottom line. I cringed often in this book, mainly at the characterizations of ethnic minorities, but at other points as well.