Category Archives: Reviews

Reviews of books, movies, what have you.

BOOK REVIEW: Trespassers at the Golden Gate

Trespassers at the Golden Gate: A True Account of Love, Murder, and Madness in Gilded-Age San Francisco
Gary Krist
Crown Publishing Group
Copyright 2025 by the author

It should have been fairly straightforward. She shot him in broad daylight, in front of dozens of witnesses, and was immediately taken into custody. Laura D. Fair killed lawyer and aspiring politician A.P. Crittenden in a fit of jealousy. That much was obvious. But as the trial dragged on, it quickly became clear that Crittenden was a two-timing bastard who had strung Fair along for years, promising her that he’d divorce his wife, and marry her. The bum deserved what he got, but what would be an appropriate punishment for Fair?

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BOOK REVIEW: Sand, Snow, and Stardust

Sand, Snow, and Stardust: How US Military Engineers Conquered Extreme Environments
Gretchen Heefner
University of Chicago Press
Copyright 2025 by the author

The Army was caught by surprise in WWII. Not by the enemy, but by the conditions in North Africa. They were expecting a hot, dry, flat expanse of sand. That may have been the case in the east with the British, but in Algeria and Tunisia, the terrain was rough and rocky. In December, it got bitterly cold at night. And it rained, turning the dry land into a quagmire. None of the gear and equipment they had was useful.

The Army was going to have to learn – and quickly – how to function in deserts. Similar lessons about the fickleness of Nature would have to be learned in Alaska, too (though for some reason, Heefner barely mentions the military bases in the tundra there). Especially since – once the Nazis and Japs were defeated – they would quickly have to turn their attention to containing the Communist Menace, even if it meant bases in Libya and Greenland.

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BOOK REVIEW: Slither

Slither: How Nature’s Most Maligned Creatures Illuminate Our World
Stephen S. Hall
Grand Central Books
Copyright 2025 by the author

Snakes.

Love ’em or hate ’em, there’s little in-between.

Hall, a professional science writer, would probably fall into the “love ’em” category. Here, he introduces us to some of the researchers studying them, presents in an easy-to-follow manner some of their recent findings, and comments on our strange relationship with the creatures over the millennia.

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MOVIE REVIEW: The Gorgon (UK, 1964)

One of the hardest beings from Classical Mythology (well, three beings, actually) to properly depict is (are?) the Gorgons. Three sisters, who were cursed with having living snakes for hair and being generally so ugly that to see them in full view would literally petrify you with fear. For obvious reasons, it’s going to be darned difficult to make any image of them that’s even close to the Real Thing.

Most artists have gone with making the woman “plain”, and using basic snake forms about six inches long to frame her face. Easier to do in animation than in live action.

Hammer Films, in this interpretation of the legend, decided to go with a headdress of balloon-like snakes that could be made to move through the use of air hoses. It barely worked. They did, however, make up for it – mostly – by limiting the Gorgon’s on-screen appearance.

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Movie Review: Jane and the Lost City (UK, 1987)

It’s 1940, and the British are in dire need of funds to keep their war effort going. Fortunately, they’ve just received a report of a “Lost City” somewhere in Africa that’s sitting on a fortune in diamonds. Unfortunately, they don’t have information on it’s exact location. Time to call in a crack team of adventurers to find it before the Nazis do!

The “crack team” consists of The Colonel (Robin Bailey), his butler / assistant Tombs (Graham Stark), and our titular heroine Jane (Kirsten Hughes). Opposing them at every step along the way is a team of Nazis, led by Lola Pagola (Maud Adams), with her “muscle” Carl (Ian Roberts), trained assassin Heinrich (Jasper Carrot), and expert on Africa Dr. Schell (John Rapley).

If this sounds like a mashup of Raiders of the Lost Ark and King Solomon’s Mines, you win. I don’t know what you win, but you win something….

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MOVIE REVIEW: The Big Clock (1948)

George Stroud (Ray Milland) is the editor-in-chief of “Crimeways”, essentially a print version of a “True Crime” podcast that’s earned a reputation (and its market share) for identifying the guilty before the police can. He’s trying to take a well-earned vacation with his wife, but his bully of a boss, Earl Janoth (Charles Laughton), pulls him back to take charge of a new story – a model who did some work with another magazine in Janoth’s publishing empire has been found dead in her apartment. George is tasked with finding the killer RIGHT AWAY before they have to call in the police.

What Stroud doesn’t know – but we viewers do – is that Janoth is the killer. The model was his mistress, and he killed her in a fit of anger when she broke up with him. What Stroud does know is that after he believed he got fired and missed his train to head out on vacation, he went out for a couple of drinks to drown his marital troubles – and wound up meeting the mistress, visited a few drinking establishments with her (and doing things that made him memorable), and then saw her back to her place before heading off to join his wife. And all the investigating he’s doing is making it more and more likely that he’s going to be nailed for the murder.

A rather interesting set up for an early “film noir”, isn’t it.

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BOOK REVIEW: Service Model

Service Model
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Tor Publishing Group
Copyright 2024 by Adrian Czajkowski

If Charles the Valet-Bot were programmed to feel boredom, he’d probably be bored out of his mind over the constant repetitiveness of his tasks. There’s never a single change in the daily routine; his misanthropic hermit of an owner is content to just sit around his estate watching TV all day.

Until one day when Charles starts finding unusual reddish stains everywhere. He slowly comes to the conclusion that his owner was murdered – and he’s the murderer. This means he must report to Central Processing to be reprogrammed, since one cannot have killer robots on the loose.

This starts “Uncharles” (as he now designates himself) on a picaresque odyssey across a post-collapse landscape, searching for another master to serve – and trying to make sense of all of this.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Great River

The Great River: The Making and Unmaking of the Mississippi
Boyce Upholt
W.W. Norton & Company
(c) 2024 by the author

The Mississippi River is one of the longest rivers in the world. Add its many tributaries to it – the Ohio, the Missouri, the Tennessee, the Arkansas, the Red – and you’ve got one of the greatest river systems on the planet. Upholt concentrates on the “Big Muddy” itself, giving a rough history of how people have used and tried to control it.

It’s not a perfectly linear history; like the river itself, he meanders quite a bit. A quick look at how people decided on what would be the source of the river gives way to the geological history of the river basin, which goes right in to its ‘discovery’ and exploration by Europeans. Then comes its role in the development and growth of the United States, complete with steamboats and river rafts. And then it’s back to the past as people start wondering about all those odd mounds that seem to pop up all around the river.

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MOVIE REVIEW: Frankenhooker (1990)

If you dig in the heap of “Awful Movies That Are Still Fun to Watch”, you will undoubtedly come across The Brain that Wouldn’t Die (1962). It’s about a doctor whose radical ideas on transplants has him on the outs with the medical establishment. He gets the chance to Show Them All! When his girlfriend is decapitated in an accident. Fortunately, he manages to keep her head alive – now all he needs is a body to graft it to.

Weird idea, but not one that’s unusual. In competent hands, and with some resources given to it, one just might be able to create a passable movie on that premise.

Frank Henenlotter wrote that he came up with the idea for Frankenhooker out of thin air when his pitch for another movie failed. But the similarities between the two movies are too strong for it to have been a mere coincidence. Perhaps he saw the older movie and vaguely remembered the plot, or perhaps he knew that “Brain” was in the public domain, so he was free to riff on it to his heart’s content.

Anyway…..

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Book Review: Cascade Failure

Cascade Failure
L.M. Sagas
Tor Publishing Group
Copyright 2024 by Morgan Stanfield

It’s almost like these Sci-Fi stories are coming from a Plot Generator:

1. A disgraced former officer
2. A down-on-their-luck small business owner
3. A ragtag crew on an equally ragtag ship

Stumbles on

1. A conspiracy to hide a mass killing
2. An alien race threatening to wipe out humanity (or at least a large portion of it in an interstellar war)
3. Some massive corruption scheme to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer.

Can they overcome incredible odds to defeat the baddie and save the day? And perhaps

1. Make a nice profit
2. Find love
3. Resolve whatever problems were keeping them “on the outs” in the first place

along the way?

There’s actually nothing wrong with using such a Plot Generator Device; it’s been fairly common in creative writing workshops. The trick is making a good story out of the proposed plot.

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