Heywood Broun – a biographical portrait by Dale Kramer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Heywood Broun has become a long forgotten whipsaw sharp humorist. Even the more notable Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley, of the same Smart Set, are getting long lost nearly 100 years after blazing literary trails of wit.

I can’t even remember where I picked up this copy of Dale Kramer’s ‘Heywood Broun’, but I have never seen it again. I had to enter the book, here, into the Goodread’s shelves. That’s a true pity, for this book of Broun’s life is very well written and researched. The writing is better than most biographies. There’s a closeness felt in the writing to Broun that seems to be closer than Broun, himself, would have allowed.

There are the troubles: Lack of years noted, which, as usual, gets confusing while reading. There are asides of supposed dialogue at different points, that are very good, but for someone as guarded as Broun, have to wonder about the accuracy. The dialogue does fit well and well illustrates the narrative.

There seems to also be the noticeable edits throughout the book as names come out of no where with no explanation. The names are not recognizable, even with my knowledge of the circle Broun ran around with.

Bottom line: I recommend this book….IF you can find it.

An aside: The book is inscribed Christmastime 1949 by Maggie Bartel, long time reporter for the New York Daily News. She retired to Key West and became, and apparently is still, instrumental in recording Key West history. Something dear to my heart.

Bartel had inscribed the book to, what appears to be, “Bob Ring”, who I could find nothing about. Was hoping this might help me figure out where I had picked up the book. Possibly Bartel never gave the book to Ring and I found it during one of my trips to the Keys. The book does appear otherwise not to have been read, though the dust jacket is in terrible shape.

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Here are a few photos from an event I performed this past Saturday in St. Augustine!

The Broken Gun by Louis L’Amour

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I see a well illustrated old west themed cover to a Louis L’Amour book, the title ‘The Broken Gun’ and I plunge into a novel that instantly confuses me. It takes a few pages to realize when in time this novel falls. There is no mention of it. There is a mention of 90 years before…but, before what?

By the third page the Korean War is mentioned.

Involving stroytelling, time should be established in some way off the top if a story about different time periods is being unraveled. Instead L’Amour leaves the reader at drift trying to figure out what’s going on.

Making the early part of the book worse is L’Amour’s poor approach to literally illustrating an urban setting.

Once the novel goes out to ranch lands of sand and rock, L’Amour hits his stride in describing the setting. But, time gets away from him again. L’Amour clearly had trouble with writing about his present.

A number of things bother me about the writing of this book. One involved an over long chase near the end. Another was one sentence involving a character that vanishes. Though clearly not the intent, the line is more surreal than consistent with the rhythm of the story.

The story is shakey, at best, and the conclusion over obvious.

Bottom line: I don’t recommend this book. 4 out of ten.

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Poirot Loses a Client by Agatha Christie

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

‘Poirot Loses a Client’ lost me a bit in viewing Christie as a great author. The formula is mostly the same. Someone is dead. Group of people are suspects. Everyone is overly talkative about what they think is going on. Suspects gathered. Resolution. After reading Edmund Crispin, I wish Christie thought of fleshing out a plot, characters, setting and writing.

This story has Poirot, and pal, enter the story with little explanation as to who they are and why they would be involved in the plot. For those of us that know the characters, we could say we don’t need the background. I feel a book needs to anticipate new readers and not make assumptions.

Moreover, the story feels like it has been pushed through a template, as referred to above.

Getting to the conclusion is a plodding roaming of Poirot finding one talkative character after another. Not all suspects would spill so much. One way Christie could have made the story more interesting story would be having the characters stonewalling Poirot.

The resolution was a bit frustrating after getting through the rest of the book.

There is good character development, with the exception of proper introduction of the two main characters.

Bottom line: I do not recommend this book. 4 of ten points.

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I spent the day at Silver Springs State Park hand drawing and painting Valentine’s cards for a special price. While there I also promoted our Silver Springs Festival and Marion County Museum of History and Archaeology. I, as usual, fumbled trying to sell cards and went about cheerleading what I was promoting. Finally, folks got wise they were missing out on a great deal involving Valentine’s Day cards and I was put to the test to knock out many as the day closed. Notice it is nearly dark in one photo.

The Long Divorce by Edmund Crispin

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As much as I really liked ‘The Moving Toyshop’ for the playful way with the story and characters, ‘The Long Divorce’ has far less engaging characters and story. I can still clearly recall many parts of ‘the Moving Toyshop’ and can hardly recall much of ‘The Long Divorce’.

The writing is fine for a mystery. The setting is well defined, especially the rural areas. The characters are also illustrated well but with less spark than in ‘The Moving Toyshop.

There is a significant and needless plot device used, it seems, because there is little engaging in this book. I’d say, that is what hurts this book. The writer was so busy setting up to reveal the plot device that certain characters and situations got washed out.

Bottom Line: I recommend this book. Checking 5 of 10 points.

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The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a rollicking good literary time as author Crispin takes you along for a weird mixture of mystery and hijinks. There is a mystery in it all but it’s more than forced. The fun is reading Crispin’s writing of the characters and settings. Both extremely well done.

The embedded story is a bit complex and certainly strains credibility. Considering this book is from the mid-1940s and set in tiny Oxford, England, the tale would be far easier to pull off today.

Included are chase scenes written like few others. The best part of those are further descriptions of the locales.

Bottom line: I recommend this book. 7 of 10.

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More Romer, the Recycling Squirrel I scrawled out for our City Hallways more than 20 years ago while I was with the City of Orlando. This one is a favorite of mine. John Everhart was a co-worker who had one heck of a sense of humor. That last panel is an exact pose you might find him in if you came through the engineering department.

The cartoon involved a bit of editorial that employees were told one day that we no longer had a place to park and had to park blocks away and walk to City Hall. I didn’t mind the walk. It’s that the City was slowly giving away all the land around the building to business investors. I remember so well after the old City Hall was visually imploded at the beginning of the film Lethal Weapon 3, Lew Oliver arranged the new City Hall to have property around the building that might be built and then leased to help City taxpayers. Within ten years Lew was gone and the opposite happened.

This is Day 4 of a 5 day challenge that I got flipped in my head. That and I’ve been busy. This is #1 0f 3 for the day. Heck, I almost need a legal description to work this thing out!

I’m apparently supposed to ask another artist to post 3 bits of artwork for 5 days and also ask another artist to post work. OK, AE Sabo​ – You’ll likely follow the rules better than I. 😀

Savage Territory by William W. Johnstone

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m reading these in order and this is the fourth in the series. After a bumpy third book, this one gets more on track of the first two with similar quality and story telling. This is not as good as the first two, but still, involving story telling better than most all of the rest of the Johnstone Clan written books.

Seems this is the same writer as the other three books, for, again, there is an interest in trains, a Perry Mason-type trial and attention to detail missing in most Johnstone books. The writing is very good. The characters well written, as usual.

This is the first of the four where the outcome is pretty obvious from the start. The writer keeps the reader guessing as to just how the obvious ending could possibly occur with so many characters going in so many different directions. It all works well.

Bottom line: I recommend this book. 8 of 10.

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Purgatory by William W. Johnstone

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As I read the Johnstone Clan’s The Last Mountain Man series from the start to this third in the series it becomes very apparent that the crafter of the tales is a far better storyteller than those handling the other parts of the series I’ve read so far. These three are all complex with interwoven threads that bind to make a solid story.

However, this one is not as well written as the first two. Specifically the first few chapters that are a mish-mosh of trying to retell the two previous books and start telling this one. One reason for this may be that this book came out the same year as the last and the one previous to it came out only months earlier. Chug-a-lugging these books seems to have strained production values.

The bulk of the book is still good, lacking the depth of the first two. The characters are especially well explained. Excellent work is done with a secondary character that is law enforcement that, over the course of the book, realizes what is really going on.

Despite the poorly written first chapters –
Bottom line: I recommend this book 7 of 10

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