Taking the couple of days off to celebrate our 15th in the middle of the month really helped both of us. Took the stress away for 3 days and allowed us to catch our breathe before diving back into life.
I am in the middle of negotiating so I can keep putting up artwork once a month. If I can pull that off, that will give me the outlet for telling little micro-fictions with each picture continuing the mythology of Bookstooge, the Emperor in Shadow. I have fun making stuff up like that, mainly because I just let my ego go completely out of control 🙂
Started playing some Magic with Spalanz over the net, like I had done with Dave earlier this year. Considering they are both bigger Warhammer 40K fans than I am, it seems only right we’re playing some WH40K Commander. Markus played his favorite little Necrons and then experimented with the Tyranids while I tried to pilot the Emperor Botherer’s deck. I had a great time.
My reading for September was the at the lowest level since January. As can be told by all the numbers in the Raw Data section. Considering that allowed me some breathing room in regards to writing, I was perfectly ok with that. Especially since I just broke the 200 barrier this month. The rest of the year is just going to be coasting.
The window replacement stuff is done! That was quite the process and I am very glad it is over. Plus, pouring out all the money on it is now done too, so our bank account can begin to recover.
On a slightly sadder note. I really miss Meatbag Intern. I’m currently working with a guy who’s been with our company for about 2 years. He’s had no land survey experience before so I take that into account. BUT. He shows very little initiative, can’t seem to handle more than one instruction at a time, ignores what I tell him half the time and even when I walk him through something, doesn’t understand the underlying principle and thus can’t extrapolate what I’m aiming for. When I tell him to do A and B, he doesn’t think ahead and realize that C is the next step. He’s not incompetent, he’s just not as good as Meatbag. I soldier bravely on though. Us outdoorsy manly men do that kind of thing you know.
Going to be easing up on the reading even more, hence my reviewing numbers will down, so I am hoping to keep a couple of days each week clear. Not for anything, but because I need to make sure I don’t burn my little writing self out. October of last year was when I worded myself out and had to take the month off from reviewing. You all did a great job of commenting on the lists that I read, but I don’t want to repeat that. So I’m deliberating easing up now.
A Pumpkin Festival is coming up, so we’ll be attending that and I plan on writing about it. IF it isn’t rained out (a distinct possibility, every year, sigh)
Groo is the only visual medium I plan on consuming in October. I’m letting manga go, I’m letting Asterix go and I’m letting Bone go, at least until New Years. I’m almost completely burnt out on the visual so I need to stop now.
Going to be watching and reviewing the Wolverine trilogy for my X-Franchise movie watching. Origins, The Wolverine and Logan. I’ve watched, and enjoyed, Origins before, so at least that will be good. We’ll see about the others.
They filled their pockets and then their hats. Then a furious gardener chased them with a rake. They ran. Cat was very happy as he carried his full, knobby hat home. Mrs. Sharp loved apples. He just hoped she would not reward him by making gingerbread men. As a rule, gingerbread men were fun. They leaped up off the plate and ran when you tried to eat them, so that when you finally caught them you felt quite justified in eating them. It was a fair fight, and some got away. But Mrs. Sharp’s gingerbread men never did that. They simply lay, feebly waving their arms, and Cat never had the heart to eat them.
~Chapter Two
Hahahahaahaha! Man, that’s some good comic writing right there 😀
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Stalking the Unicorn Series: John Justin Mallory #1 Author: Mike Resnick Rating: 3 of 5 Stars Genre: Fantasy Pages: 208 Words: 78K
About 6 years ago, I read the compilation of short stories about John Justin Mallory entitled “Stalking the Zombie”. It did not impress me and in the comments I even stated I wouldn’t be searching out the previous books. Well, there’s egg on my face now.
This is about a private investigator that goes into a “supernatural” side of New York City and is stuck there and has to solve cases. In this, somebody stole a unicorn and he’s been hired to find it. Only a demon is after it, his client is lying to him and the unicorn has actually been dead for quite some time.
It reminded me a good bit of the “Garrett, PI” books by Glen Cook. Not as good but still decent. JJ, as I shall refer to John Justin Mallory from here on out, likes to drink hard liquor and has about a million other Private Investigator cliches to fill him out as a character. He’s not much else besides cliches. Which works for a standalone story but since this is NOT a standalone story, we’ll see. JJ is no Widowmaker though, so I’ll have to wait and see if he gets any actual character development beyond being a boozer. Not expecting it though.
Managing expectations is the key to all of Resnick’s stories. Every time I have “expected” more, I’ve enjoyed less. So turn that brain off and prepare for the literary equivalent of an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And you’ll be happy.
★★★☆☆
From Wikipedia
Mallory, a private investigator from New York, spends New Year’s Eve in his office, with a bottle of whisky, and in a terrible mood. His business partner left for California with Mallory’s wife, having also blackmailed some of their clients. Since the infuriated victims head for the detective’s office, it seems that the night will end up tragically; yet, the plot suddenly takes an unexpected turn as in the room appears a strange creature, an elf called Mürgenstürm.
Mürgenstürm, who comes from an alternative world, is in equally serious trouble. He was obliged to guard a valuable animal, the unicorn called Larkspur. He neglected his duty and the unicorn was stolen. Now, the elf’s life is in danger, so he wants to take advantage of Mallory’s service.
As he has no other way out of trouble the detective decides to follow Mürgenstürm, and to search for the stolen animal. They enter the alternative New York through the gate in the basement of the very building where Mallory has his office.
When the detective examines the scene of the crime, he encounters the eye-witness, a cat-girl Felina, who, despite her catlike personality, will become Mallory’s loyal partner. She reveals that the culprit is a leprechaun, Gillespie, who is working for a perilous and powerful demon, Grundy, that is responsible for spreading evil in both New Yorks. At the same time, the Grundy finds out about Mallory’s investigation and tries to dissuade him from taking further steps.
Nevertheless, Mallory does not abandon the investigation and in search of information about the unicorn visits various places in the alternative New York, such as the Museum of Natural History, full of dead yet regularly reviving animals, and Central Park, occupied by wholesalers offering completely useless goods.
On his way Mallory meets Eohippus, a six-inch tall horse that helps him find the expert on unicorns, a former huntress still craving for adventure, Colonel Winifred Carruthers. Unlike Mürgenstürm, who gradually turns out to be more an accomplice in the crime than the victim, Carruthers and Eohippus are valuable allies. Due to Colonel, Mallory comes into contact with a magician, The Great Mephisto, and finds out the motives for the crime. In the unicorn’s head there is a ruby that would enable the Grundy to move freely between the two worlds and gain more power than he has ever had.
After a long search Mallory reaches Gillespie’s flat on the 13th floor of a cheap hotel only to find out that the leprechaun ran away, the unicorn is already dead, and the gate between the two cities begins to close. In the meantime, Mallory’s partners, Colonel and Eohippus, are caught by Gillespie.
Soon after that the detective receives an invitation to the auction at which the precious ruby is to be sold. The Grundy appears there too, and he seems to have all the cards. Yet, it turns out that Mallory, with the help of Felina, has already found and hidden the jewel, which gives him an advantage over the enemy. Grundy sets Mallory’s friends free and agrees to wait until the detective delivers the ruby.
Mallory, who has no intention of letting the Grundy wreak havoc in both worlds, has the jewel transported to “his” New York just before the passage between the two worlds closes. Then he meets the Grundy only to inform him about it. Since the demon cannot be sure whether Mallory tells the truth he does not dare to kill the detective, but promises to have his revenge in the future.
Mallory is content to stay in the alternative New York, where his work makes more sense. He is determined to continue his struggle against evil having the noble Colonel and of the mysterious Felina at his side.
If you use the Reader, you may have noticed that the “visit” button is no longer visible under the post in the reader. You can’t even click on the title to get to the post, that just takes you to the full post but still in the reader. I have found that you have to click on the ellipses in the upper right of the box and under there is an option to “visit post”.
Of course, it is RIGHT ABOVE the option to “block site”. Can’t see any problems with that setup, can you? Yeah, me neither.
This is one more incremental change that goes against good usage and good design. Hiding options behind other options seems to be how WP is operating these days however and I suspect we’ll be seeing more “simplification” while they cater to whoever they think they are catering to.
While I’m not about to leave WP, or to abandon my Bookstooge.blog address, I am currently looking around at other options to host the site. Not very optimistic though.
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Conan the Freelance Series: Conan the Barbarian Author: Steve Perry Rating: 3 of 5 Stars Genre: Fantasy Pages: 167 Words: 61K
Each author who does these Conan pastiches (or in the case of Perry I’d call it fan fiction really) brings their own particular tastes to the stories. They also tend to have their own internal chronology. I bring this up because when I started reading this Perry has Conan waxing nostalgic for a bunch of buxom lasses whose names he rattles off. It sounded very much like a litany of “this girl was in this story and that girl was in that story” but this was the first Conan story I’d read by Perry. Turns out, I was reading these out of publication date. This is actually the 5th Conan story Perry wrote. So I soldiered on but I re-ordered them in calibre so they’re properly sorted now.
Anyway, Perry seems to REALLY like non-human monsters. I’m not talking about a singular demon or leftover dinosaur thing, but in this story we have a whole population of selkies, of humanoid lizard people and a double handful of magical terror monsters. Plus, the queen of the humanoid lizards is a buxom blue lass who Conan “conquers”. I just rolled my eyes pretty hard.
The other issue was the wizard. He had all the ingredients he needed for his final spell but kept getting distracted and mispronouncing stuff, thus having to start over from the beginning. This is a guy who’s been around hundreds of years. You’d think he’d have learned to focus in that time. I don’t mind wizards being defeated, but this wasn’t Conan defeating the wizard, this was the wizard being a total incompetent and reaping the consequences of being a nincompoop. I rolled my eyes pretty hard.
At the same time, seeing Conan fight selkies, fight lizard men, fight magical terror monsters and stick a big fat steel sword through a wizard’s gullet made it all worthwhile. THAT is why I read Conan stories. So I’m giving this three eyerolls out of five.
★★★☆☆
From the Publisher
Fate tosses the dice for Conan of Cimmeria, and they come up…death. Dimma, the Mist Mage, knows nothing of the muscular Cimmerian, but the vile necromancer’s plans require his death. Thayla, beautiful Queen of the Pili, would rather take Conan to her bed, but her own plots mean he must die. The sorcerous changeling Kleg wasn’t only to do his master’s bidding, but Conan stands in his way. Even the lovely Cheen will let nothing stop her from recovering the sacred Talisman of her people.
The game is deadly, the stakes are life, but whatever the risks, Conan of Cimmeria will play until the final toss.
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Mortal Errors Series: ———- Editor: Alfred Hitchcock Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: Crime Fiction Pages: 229 Words: 105K
Despite what the cover says about “30 Stories”, in this edition there are only 23. That’s the weird thing about these Alfred Hitchcock collections, they were released and released with different names, different number of stories, etc. I can’t imagine readers were very happy with that kind of treatment by publishers back then. Of course, looking at readers today, they put up with a ton more horse caca from publishers and sometimes it feels like they’re eating it with both hands 🙁 Ok, grumpy old grump complaining time is over. Now get off my virtual lawn!
One of these I recognized from a previous collection. The story was “A Padlock for Charlie Draper”. It’s a good story but the reveal at the end about the reward loses its impact on a re-read. The rest of the stories ran all over the place from bad guys doing bad things and getting away with, to bad guys getting their just desserts to good guys doing the right thing and getting the badguy.
I just sat back and soaked it in. That seems to be the best way to enjoy these kinds of stories.
★★★★☆
Table of Contents:
WHERE’S MILO – Fletcher Flora
THE WASTEBASKET – Jack Ritchie
DEAD GAME – Harold Q. Masur
POLTERGEIST – W. Sherwood Hartman
A CHOICE OF WITNESSES – Henry Slesar
ONE BAD WINTER’S DAY – William Link and Richard Levinson
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: The Integral Trees Series: The State #2 Author: Larry Niven Rating: 3 of 5 Stars Genre: SF Pages: 171 Words: 73K
I read this 30+ years ago as a young teenager. The library paperback had that cover and I can tell you that the reason I liked this story so much back then was because there were seven foot tall women taking their shirts off every other chapter (or so it seemed).
This was an adventure story in a very different SF setting than any others I had read. A smoke ring surrounds a star and giant trees and debris survive in this ring instead of planets. Having read A World Out of Time the other month, the connections to the State make a lot more sense.
However, Niven still seems obsessed with women taking their shirts off and people having sex in low to zero gee.
I do plan on reading the sequel, but after that, I suspect I am done with Niven. And I certainly won’t be re-reading these books again.
★★★☆☆
From Wikipedia.org
Twenty astronauts aboard an interstellar “ramship” colonized the Smoke Ring five hundred years before the story begins. Their descendants have adapted their cultures to the free-fall environment. Without gravity, even those who live in integral tree tufts are much taller than Earth-average humans, having grown up in much weaker tides. Many people are able to use their longer, prehensile toes as another set of fingers. The small number of devices left from the original crew are coveted items in Smoke Ring societies.
Quinn Tribe inhabits the “in tuft” of Dalton-Quinn tree. They normally subsist on the tree’s cottony foliage, augmented by hunting and a flock of domesticated turkeys. But since the tree passed near Gold six earth years ago it has been falling toward Voy, nearly dropping out of the Smoke Ring. As a result, the tribe suffers a severe drought. The tribe’s leader, the Chairman, decides to send a party of nine up the tree, ostensibly to hunt and re-cut tribal markings into the trunk. The group consists mostly of people with disability and people the Chairman dislikes, including the Chairman’s son-in-law (and rival) Clave, and Jeffer, the Scientist’s apprentice.
When they approach the midpoint they notice that the tribal markings are different; upon reaching it, they are attacked by members of the Dalton-Quinn tribe who live at the other end of the tree. During the battle a massive tremor splits the tree in half, causing the in tuft to fall farther toward Voy (killing its inhabitants) and allowing the out tuft to find a new equilibrium that is closer to the Smoke Ring’s median. The seven surviving members of the Quinn Tribe and one of the attackers jump clear of the shattered tree and are left adrift in the sky with only a few “jet pods” (high pressure seed cases that provide a temporary thrust when opened) as their only method of propulsion.
Before dying of thirst, they hook a passing “moby” (a flying whale-like creature) which takes them to a “jungle,” which is a floating mass of plant life. They cut loose, crash, and find themselves in the middle of a battle between the Carther States, who live in the jungle, and slave-runners from London Tree. The group is split when six of them are captured by the slavers; the other two remain in the jungle.
Carther States counter-attacks some weeks later, and the Quinn Tribe group is reunited. During the battle they steal London Tree’s CARM (Cargo And Repair Module), a small spacecraft—a relic of the original settlers. The CARM is still functional due to careful management and its robust design; its solar panels provide electricity to electrolyze water into hydrogen and oxygen, which it stores automatically and then burns for propulsion as needed. London Tree’s “Navy”, bow- and spear-armed warriors, use the CARM to conduct long-distance military actions and slave raids on a scale impossible for wingless humans in a zero-g environment.
Not fully understanding how to pilot the CARM, the Quinn and Carther warriors engage its main rocket motor, which accelerates the ship at several g, enough to prevent the crew from reaching the controls to turn the motor off. The CARM is propelled up into the thinnest part of the gas torus before running dangerously low on fuel. As a result, they become the first Smoke Ring inhabitants in centuries to see the naked stars.
Unknown to any of the inhabitants of the Smoke Ring, Discipline, the ship in which their ancestors arrived, remains in orbit, and its AI autopilot, Kendy, has been attempting to watch their progress. When Kendy sees the CARM dangerously far from the habitable area of the Ring he contacts them. With help from the on-board computer and after some interaction with Kendy, the occupants of the CARM eventually safely return to the Smoke Ring. Unable to reach any of the trees that they know, they decide to settle on a new tree, which they dub “Citizens’ Tree”.
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Three Men Out Series: Nero Wolfe #23 Author: Rex Stout Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: Mystery Pages: 130 Words: 59K
First off, I couldn’t easily get rid of the links in the synopsis below. I use LibreOffice to write my initial reviews and there is an option to remove all formatting from copied text. I assumed that would take care off it, but it didn’t. I didn’t care enough to go through and individually de-link everything. Which is stupid, because linking is as much a format issue as font size, type and spacing is. Oh well, whatever. I’m not real happy with libreoffice right now. I feel like it stabbed me in the back.
I enjoyed this collection of 3 stories, just like I expected I would. I might have even given it 4stars except for two things.
First, the final story is about baseball and I find baseball deadly boring. If it had been the first story, I probably would have forgotten about it and it wouldn’t have influenced me. But it was the last story and so that was the note I went out of the book on. Not necessarily bad, but not good like I wanted.
Secondly, Nero Wolfe keeps leaving his bloody house. I have commented on it before, but Stout really breaks the “Wolfe doesn’t leave the house” rule all the time. Too many times for me. In two of the three stories here he leaves the house! No, no, no! If you have rules, you obey them and only break them once every 7 or 8 books. Otherwise it’s like a piscetarian claiming they are a vegetarian, ie, it’s utter balderdash.
I know that’s a lot of complaining. But I still like these stories and highly recommend them. It’s more like going to a high class restaurant and being irritated that your waiter didn’t put “quite enough” shredded parmesan on your plate of capellini with artisan tomato sauce :-/ So let me tell you, this waiter is NOT going to be getting a big tip from me today.
Herman Lewent offers to pay Wolfe $1,000 to solve a problem regarding his family’s finances. Lewent’s father left his entire estate to his daughter Beryl in his will 20 years earlier, with a provision that she should look after Lewent’s needs. She sent him $1,000 per month until her death one year ago, leaving the estate to her husband, Theodore Huck. Lewent has tried to persuade Huck to give him a portion of the money, to no avail; Huck intends to keep sending him only the $1,000 monthly payment. Now, Lewent is concerned that one of Huck’s three attractive female employees is trying to seduce him into cutting Lewent off, and he wants Wolfe to find out which one it is. When Wolfe rejects the case as a family squabble, Lewent mentions that Beryl died of ptomaine poisoning at Huck’s house; he believes that one of the three women murdered her. Wolfe turns the case over to Archie, who accepts and travels to Huck’s mansion, where Lewent also lives.
Huck’s declining health has confined him to a wheelchair, which is motorized and outfitted with various conveniences. The three employees Lewent suspects are secretary Dorothy Riff, nurse Sylvia Marcy, and housekeeper Cassie O’Shea. Archie questions Huck, using the pretense that Beryl might have hinted at entrusting one of them with part of her father’s estate to be turned over to Lewent, in an attempt to draw out information on them. Huck sees through the deception and even believes it might be part of a blackmail scheme on Lewent’s part, so Archie questions the women instead, as well as Huck’s nephew Paul Thayer, who lives in the mansion and who warned Lewent about the women’s possible designs on the money. Stopping at Lewent’s room, Archie finds him lying dead on the floor inside, the base of his skull caved in. However, the skin is not broken, there is no blood on the floor, and the blow appears to have been delivered at an upward angle. The geometry of the room leads him to believe that Lewent was killed elsewhere and his body moved to this location.
Archie calls Wolfe with an update, then continues his questioning of the household members without revealing his knowledge of Lewent’s death to any of them. He is thrown off by Huck’s decision to present Dorothy, Sylvia, and Cassie each with an expensive jeweled wristwatch. Finding himself stumped after dinner that evening, Archie calls Wolfe and tricks him into coming to the mansion by faking an attack on himself. Wolfe is furious that Archie would stoop to such methods, but prepares to question the household about both Lewent’s allegations and Beryl’s death. He learns that Beryl had died after eating pickled artichokes at a party; since she had taken them all and no other guests became ill, it was assumed that the artichokes had been poisoned.
Wolfe offers Huck a deal: for $100,000, he will investigate and use what he finds to persuade Lewent that his suspicions are groundless, with the caveat that no one will ever tell Lewent of this arrangement. Huck accepts the terms and everyone agrees to keep them secret, and Wolfe and Archie excuse themselves to speak with Lewent in his room. Only after Wolfe has examined the body and the scene does he allow Archie to call the police and tell the others of the murder. Inspector Cramer and his men soon arrive to question the household members; while this is going on, Archie suddenly realizes that he knows how Lewent’s body was transported without attracting attention.
Wolfe identifies Huck as the murderer and explains that he tricked Lewent into bending over to pick something up off the floor, then struck him with a spherical paperweight. The smooth surface would not break the skin, and Lewent’s posture would make it appear that the blow was delivered upward. Huck then put the body in his lap, covered it with the quilt he always used to keep his legs warm, and drove his wheelchair to Lewent’s room to dump the body. He was eager to accept Wolfe’s $100,000 offer because he knew that Lewent would never hear of the results, and he had earlier poisoned Beryl in order to inherit her fortune. Cassie provides further motive, saying that Huck had been having an affair with her; when Beryl found out about it, Huck made up his mind to kill her.
Sylvia removes her wristwatch and puts it in Huck’s lap as Cramer prepares to take him into custody. Even though he is eventually convicted, Archie does not know if Dorothy or Cassie ever returned theirs.
Leo Heller, a mathematics expert who uses his knowledge of probability to assist his clients with their problems, tries to hire Wolfe for a difficult case. He believes that one of his clients may have committed a crime, but does not want to tell the police of his suspicions without evidence to back them up. Wolfe angrily refuses the job, remembering a past incident in which he lost a client to Heller, but Archie offers to stop by the next day for a preliminary discussion.
The following morning, Archie goes to Heller’s private office at the agreed-on time but finds it empty, with the door open. Taking note of several pencils lying in an unusual pattern on the desk, he asks the five clients in the waiting room if any of them have seen Heller in person, but all of them say no. That evening, Inspector Cramer arrives at the brownstone with news that Heller has been found dead, shot through the heart and stuffed into his office closet. Accounts of Heller’s movements suggest that he was killed shortly before Archie entered the office.
Cramer demands to know Wolfe’s involvement in the case for two reasons: an envelope in Heller’s desk, marked with Wolfe’s name and containing $500 cash; and the pencils, whose pattern he re-creates as best he can. Archie corrects it slightly, tearing the eraser off one pencil and placing it in the middle of the pattern. Cramer is convinced that they stand for Wolfe’s initials when viewed from the side, even though one grouping has too many strokes to form a W. Wolfe dismisses Cramer’s claims, keeps the $500, and briefly looks through a book from his shelves before locking it in a desk drawer. He asks Cramer to bring in Heller’s five clients as well as Susan Maturo, a woman who had left Heller’s building just as Archie entered to meet with him, and urges Cramer to watch for instances of the number six.
Wolfe and Cramer question these six people one by one, learning of their various reasons for wanting to see Heller. They take a particular interest in Susan, a nurse who had worked in a hospital where a bomb exploded a month earlier, killing 302 people. She had thought of hiring Heller to find the culprit, but changed her mind at the last minute and began to think of hiring Wolfe instead. The number six figures in every person’s account, but a remark by one client – about Heller’s winning tip on a racehorse named Zero – prompts Wolfe to have everyone brought back to his office.
With the pencils laid out on his desk as they were on Heller’s, Wolfe explains that the book he consulted earlier was on the history of mathematics. The two groups of pencils were arranged to symbolize a three and a two, and he originally assumed that the eraser between them stood for multiplication; hence his focus on the number six. However, the mention of the horse’s name made him realize that the eraser was meant to stand for a zero. Before he was killed, Heller had laid out the pencils to form the number 302 – the death toll in the hospital bombing.
Aside from Susan, the only client with any substantial connection to that hospital is Jack Ennis, an inventor who had unsuccessfully tried to persuade the staff to use a new X-ray machine he had designed. Wolfe conjectures that he set the bomb as revenge for this rejection, learned that Heller might have become suspicious enough to call in Wolfe, and killed him. As Ennis is placed under arrest, Archie reassures Susan that he is guilty, and a jury reaches the same conclusion at his trial two months later.
Wolfe and Archie honor a house guest’s request to see a baseball game by taking him to the final game of the World Series at the Polo Grounds. The tickets come courtesy of Emil Chisholm, part-owner of the New York Giants, but Wolfe is in no mood to enjoy the game or the surroundings. The Giants fall far behind the Boston Red Sox due to inept fielding on the part of several players, and Archie notices that Nick Ferrone, a talented rookie, is not part of the day’s lineup. He and Wolfe are summoned to the Giants’ clubhouse by Chisholm, where they meet manager Art Kinney, team doctor Horton Soffer, and talent scout Beaky Durkin. Soffer has discovered that four of the Giants players have been drugged, by drinking beverages laced with a sedative before the game. Suspicion immediately falls on the absent Ferrone, and Archie finds him dead in another room of the clubhouse, his skull fractured with a baseball bat.
The Giants lose the game and the Series, and the police arrive to question everyone on the team at length. They begin to focus on catcher Bill Moyse, who had previously confronted Ferrone over his interest in Moyse’s wife Lila. As the questioning comes to an end, Wolfe asks that the four players who were drugged remain behind, along with Kinney, Soffer, Durkin, and Chisholm, and comments that one fact has come to light and drawn his attention. Realizing that he had previously seen Lila seated in the stands and looking pleased at the Giants’ poor play, Archie leaves the stadium and finds her and a friend sitting in her parked car a few blocks away. He claims that her behavior may lead the police to think that Moyse was paid to drug the drinks and fix the game, but learns from her friend that she was angry at Moyse being left on the bench throughout the entire Series and had taken pleasure in their loss.
Lila insists that Moyse had nothing to do with the drugging or the murder, but admits that the two of them had been approached by someone who wanted Moyse to fix the game: her uncle, Dan Gale. She drives Archie to Gale’s drugstore in an attempt to persuade Gale to tell the police and clear Moyse’s name. Instead, Gale threatens to disfigure her with sulfuric acid; Archie recognizes that he is trying to buy time for his associates to arrive and deal with their intrusion. Gale, a compulsive gambler, lost ownership of the drugstore but had been offered a chance to reclaim it by fixing the Series on behalf of organized crime.
Archie and Lila subdue Gale, spilling the acid but not injuring him or themselves, and Archie calls the police to come pick him up and look for his accomplices. Upon Archie’s return to the stadium, Wolfe confronts the eight men who have remained in the clubhouse and notes that the assumption that Ferrone drugged the drinks is implausible. Brought into the Giants’ organization by Durkin, Ferrone had performed so well that his next year’s salary would be increased and he would receive a large bonus if the team won the Series. Instead, Wolfe conjectures that Ferrone caught someone else drugging the drinks and was killed to keep him quiet.
The fact that drew his attention is that Durkin had been sitting in the stands from the starting lineup announcement until the time he was called into the clubhouse. Wolfe considers it highly unlikely that a scout who had brought such a promising young player onto the team would not become angry over learning that he was not going to play in a pivotal championship game. Wolfe asserts that Durkin acted as he did because he had killed Ferrone, but he has no proof until Kinney and the players intimidate Durkin into admitting his guilt. He had accepted a bribe to fix the game as a way to pay off his gambling debts; when Ferrone confronted him over a bet he had placed against the Giants, Durkin panicked and killed him. The money is found hidden in a radio, and one of the players knocks Durkin unconscious when he tries to flee.
Just before Archie can call the police to inform them of Durkin’s capture, they call the clubhouse with news that Gale has confessed to paying him off. Wolfe and Archie find themselves at odds with each other over whether they or the police can take credit for solving the murder.
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This was the last story that both Goscinny and Uderzo did. Goscinny died part way through. Not that I could tell, or even really cared, but maybe you do? Yes, weep dear populace, for your mighty hero, your captain, is dead. Deader than Marley in fact.
Ok, that’s enough time for mourning. Get over it now.
Sigh. Another visual medium bites the dust. It isn’t that I disliked this but I simply didn’t care about it. Since this was the last Asterix by both, and given how I’ve been feeling about manga, graphic novels and comics, I’m going to take a break at least until the new years. I want to enjoy these again and not slog through.
★★★☆☆
From Wikipedia.org
After fighting the Belgians in the northern part of Gaul, Caesar states that they are the bravest enemies he has ever faced (historically claimed by Caesar). His soldiers agree with him, to the point when they consider being posted to the camps outside Asterix’s village as a period of leave.
Chief Vitalstatistix is aghast at the idea that his village, which has been the terror of the Romans for years, is now looked upon as relatively harmless. He is further outraged when he hears of Caesar’s remarks. He claims that “his villagers” are in fact the bravest men of Gaul, and travels to Belgium to prove his point. A reluctant Asterix and Obelix go with him after Getafix tells them not doing so could make the story come to a sticky end.
After crossing the border, they encounter a village of Belgians who rely on brute strength (and a regular diet of meat and beer) to successfully scare off Caesar’s troops. These Belgians are led by two chiefs, Beefix of the Nervii and Brawnix of the Menapii (though Brawnix comes across mainly as a second-in-command).
To prove that the Gauls are the bravest, Vitalstatistix proposes a competition. The contest consists of raiding and destroying Roman camps on either side of the village. The Belgians and Gauls destroy the camps, telling the soldiers who they are. By the end they have destroyed an equal number of camps. Meanwhile, the Pirates’ ship is wrecked when Obelix throws a boulder catapulted at him too high, causing the Captain to complain, saying he and his men are neutrals. Word is sent to Rome, though the facts are exaggerated, talking about vast hordes of Gauls, a savage pack of hounds, and a mysterious fleet of neutrals. Caesar goes to Belgium himself to restore order unaware of the fact that the whole thing is to get him to decide once and for all which side is the bravest.
Upon Caesar’s arrival, Asterix and Obelix go to meet him under a flag of truce. Asterix proposes that Caesar meet both parties at an arranged meeting point and tell them they are equally brave so they can all go home. Outraged at being reduced to a mere umpire (as opposed to emperor), Caesar furiously declares that he will meet them in battle instead. In the ensuing fight, the Romans get their way in the early stages of the battle through the use of catapults. But then the three Gauls, and their magic potion, join the Belgians after they thwart a Roman flanking maneuver, and, by combining their efforts, the Gauls win the battle.
With the battle lost, Caesar decides to leave for Rome. On his way he comes across the Gaulish and Belgian chiefs. Caesar proudly announces that he will lay down his life, but the chiefs only want to know who is the bravest. Caesar angrily declares them simply all “crazy” and leaves Vitalstatistix and Beefix laughing the incident off. They have to face the fact that they are all equally brave and, after a victory feast, part on good terms.
