BRENDAN SLOCUMB – The Violin Conspiracy. Anchor, February 2022.

First Sentence: On the morning of the worst, most earth-shattering day of Ray McMillian’s life, he ordered room service: scrambled eggs for two, one side of regular bacon (for Nicole), one side of vegan sausage (for him), one coffee (for Nicole), one orange juice (for him)

   Ray McMillian is black and a classical violinist. He has overcome poverty, racism, and the censure of his own mother. Two people have been his principal support; his Grandma Nora who gifted him the violin which had belonged to his once enslaved great-great-grandfather, and his violin teacher, Janice Stevens. After being in New York City with his girlfriend Nicole for several days, he is about to leave for the Tchaikovsky Competition in Russia when he discovers his beloved violin, confirmed to be a Stradivarius, has been stolen and is being held for a $5 million ransom.

   It is a gripping read when one starts a book at 10 p.m. and reads straight through until 3 a.m. From first page to last, this is a book impossible to put down as it is so much more than a mystery.

   While a crime has been committed, this is a book about racism and greed. But it also shows that with the love and support of just a few people, as well as determination, perseverance, and passion, one can accomplish great things. Still, too, there is a mystery within the mystery. Much of the story’s tension arises from the question of who really owns his $10 million Stradivarius. This becomes a battle between Ray, his family, and the Marks family whose ancestors owned Ray’s “PopPop.”

   An unusual format takes one from the present to Ray’s childhood and progressively forward to the present. One is drawn into Ray’s life. From his experiences with casual and overt racism, from beginning with a school violin to the Strad, one grows as Ray does. However, it is the descriptions of Ray’s playing and performing that are truly transportive. Comparisons to the book/series The Queen’s Gambit about a young, female chess master, are to be expected.

   The Violin Conspiracy is a remarkable debut. It is not a perfect book, yet one really doesn’t care. It is a book that leaves one thinking long after closing the covers and may even draw one back for a second reading.

Rating: Excellent.

DUEL ON THE MISSISSIPPI. Columbia Pictures, 1955. Lex Barker, Patricia Medina, Warren Douglas, Craig Stevens, John Dehner, Ian Keith, Celia Lovsky. Screenplay by Gerald Drayson Adams. Directed by William Castle.

   The Western movie dominated Post-War Hollywood into the early 1960’s, and there were several sub=categories of the form. including the Northwestern (usually Mounties and sometimes the Klondike gold strike), the modern Western set in more or less contemporary times, the Frontier, the Trail Drive, the Gunfight, the Cattleman vs Sheepmen, Cavalry vs Indians, the Mountain Man, the Empire Builder, Old California, and the Southern (which sometimes was a pirate movie or historical, but also sometimes a Western as it is here).

   Each had its own tropes, but the Southern was perhaps the only variation on the Western to regularly include sword fights as a staple, outside of the Old California story. You can probably count the number of sword fights in regular Westerns, on the fingers of one hand, though they did show up in some of the old Cisco Kid B films.

   But in the Southern they were commonplace regardless of the historical era in films like Mississippi Gambler, The Iron Mistress, and Gambler from Natchez (the latter a retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo).

   Duel on the Mississippi has two of them, one with epee and the other machetes.

   The year is 1820 and the place Louisiana, and save for their presence in the background nary a word is ever mentioned about slavery. It seems to have entirely escaped the notice of the film makers, I think there is only one black actor, an actress, with a spoken word, not even a “Massa” to be cringed at.

   Anyone not knowing history would be at a loss to know all those black actors weren’t playing paid hands.

   I guess one way to avoid the elephant in the room is to completely ignore it is there.

   That out of the way, this is a handsome little Technicolor Southern adventure film in the more or less Frank Yerby tradition of some sex, some arrogance, violence, a bit of class consciousness, and a fiery heroine vs a stalwart hero. He’s a better writer than it suggests but in some ways Yerby was the Mickey Spillane of the historical novel. He brought a new level of sex and violence to the genre in the Post War era just as Spillane did the mystery.

   He didn’t write this one, but if you know his work you will understand why I mention him in relation to it.

   The stalwart hero is Andre Tulane (Lex Barker), the handsome and only a bit arrogant son of French sugar cane planter Henri Tulane (John Dehner). It seems the Tulane’s and other planters are under attack from the Delta Men stealing their harvested cane, raiders from the bayous led by Hugo Marat (Warren Douglas) who is partnered with riverboat owner Lili Scarlet (Patricia Medina) and her father old Jacques Scarlet, one of Lafitte’s pirates pardoned after the War of 1812 by James Madison.

   The wealthy landowners won’t allow Jacques to buy land, and Lili hates them for it.

   Woman scorned and all that. French woman scorned at that. Red-haired French woman scorned too. The Tulane’s know how to pick an enemy.

   When Andre captures Lili during a raid she escapes, but then he learns his father’s loan has been sold to Jacques Scarlet’s daughter and she is taking him to court. To save his father from going to jail for failing to pay the $30,000 he owes Andre agrees to become Lili’s bonded slave, but not before challenging murderous duelist Marat to a duel at sunrise.

   The plot is pretty predictable, Andre and Lili loathe each other so they fall deeply in love through all the hate. Marat is jealous and plans to cheat Jacques and have Lili for himself. There is a crooked mill owner who sold Lili the mortgage on the loan in cahoots with Marat who sets Andre up to be killed, and finally there is a big raid on the raiders hideout when Lili proves her worth, and Andre’s Mother (Celia Lovksy) warns that it is time to learn to accept people for what they are and not their birth.

   Craig Stevens does get to sword fight with Barker as he practices for the duel, as does Dehner. Dehner is pretty good, so is Barker, I suspect Stevens is a stunt double. Douglas isn’t bad in his scenes either. Decently choreographed sword and machete fights are bonuses.

   Barker was no great shakes as an actor, but he was tall, handsome, hit his marks, athletic, and had a high IQ plus spoke numerous languages and grew up a rich kid rejecting it to make it on his own as an actor. He was always at least adequate and often more than that and the camera liked him. He might not bring the skill of a John Payne or the charm of a Dale Robertson to this kind of role, but he didn’t embarrass himself or the viewer and he was always believable as a hero.

   Medina is a bit flowsy-looking for this part, or maybe the Technicolor isn’t flattering, but she is very good playing the kind of role she could play in her sleep. She does an acceptable Rhonda Fleming/Virginia Mayo substitute.

   Douglas is always a decent villain. Nothing spectacular, but capable, though it’s a little tough when a man his size has to do a threatening face to face scene with Lex Barker towering over him. To Douglas’s credit he almost pulls it off, thanks to having a gun in one hand, and quite a bit of dialogue building him up as more dangerous than the movie ever shows.

   I don’t generally rate movies, but this one is a B- or C+ in a forgiving mood, which isn’t at all bad for what it is. Adams could do this kind of plot all day and Castle was a competent director, sometimes more, before he started relying on gimmicks.

   In the right mood and to kill a short hour and a half Duel on the Mississippi isn’t bad, and distracting enough that I didn’t once wonder where Cheetah, Winnetou, or Dr. Mabuse was once despite Barker’s presence.

MICHAEL INNES – The Long Farewell. Sir John Appleby #17. Victor Gollancz, UK, hardcover, 1958. Dodd Mead, US, hardcover, 1958. Paperback reprints include: Berkley F821, 1963; Perennial, 1982, 1991.

   Speaking of titles, you might be thinking that The Long Farewell might be a good one for a hardboiled PI novel, and I certainly couldn’t blame you if you are. But the protagonist for this particular book is far from being a private eye. Sir John Appleby is, in fact, the head of Scotland Yard. And the title comes from Shakespeare — King Henry the VIII (Act III, Scene 2), to be precise.

   It’s also the message left by the dead man, a literary scholar, a gadfly, and a bit of a showman to boot. A perfect message to be left by someone believed to have committed suicide. Was this last act a means of avoiding embarrassment when his latest “discovery” was about to be exposed as a forgery? Or did it have something to do with the fact that his hitherto unknown wives were in the house at the same time, and neither very happy about the other?

   Author Michael Innes, perhaps the most literary and erudite of detective fiction authors of any time period, is at best in this one. It’s clues and deduction all the way, but all the while poking gentle fun at scholars, bibliographers and collectors in one fell swoop. The number of possible killers is limited to a select few, which makes the job of the armchair detective easier, or so it should be, but by carefully keeping anyone from asking one key question, Innes skillfully delivers a tour de force solution, all tied up into one neat package.

   This is the best pure detective story I’ve read in a while.

NORBERT DAVIS – The Mouse in the Mountain. Doan and Carstairs #1. Morrow, hardcover, 1943. Grosset & Dunlap, hardcover reprint, 1944.Handi-Books #40, paperback, 1945, as Dead Little Rich Girl.  Rue Morgue Press, trade paperback, 2001.

   Norbert Davis was among the most talented of all the writers who specialized in pulp fiction in the Thirties and early Forties. Although he was primarily a magazine writer (he graduated from the pulps to such slicks as The Saturday Evening Post in 1943, he published three mystery novels featuring the detective “team” of Doan and Carstairs. Each of these is fast-paced, occasionally lyrical in a hard-edged way, and often quite funny. Davis, in fact, was one of the few writers to successfully blend the so-called hard-boiled story with farcical humor.

   The Mouse in the Mountain is the first of the adventures through which Doan and Carstairs prowl and howl. Doan is a private eye who looks fat but isn’t, and who, despite a great fondness for booze, has never suffered a hangover; Carstairs is an aloof, fawn-colored Great Dane whom Doan won in a crap game and who considers Doan a low, uncouth person, not at all the Sort’ he would have chosen for a master.

   The scene is Mexico, where Doan has come to persuade a fugitive crook not to return to the United States and give himself up, At least, that is what he tells the heroine of the piece, Janet Martin, a shy (at least in the beginning) schoolteacher in the Wisteria Young Ladies:Seminary; Doan, like Sam Spade, isn’t really as corrupt as he sometimes pretends.

   Things begin to happen at a fast and furious pace even before Doan and Carstairs arrive in the picturesque little village of Los Altos: A famous Mexican bandit named Garcia is on the loose and causing a great deal of consternation among the local authorities. But what happens later causes considerably more consternation: the town; s first earthquake in 150 years, which results in widespread destruction and chaos, and precipitates three cold-blooded murders.

   Doan solves the murders, of course, and restores peace and harmony to Los Altos-with not a little help from Carstairs and Janet Martin (who has also been kept busy falling in and out of love with a handsome but exasperating Mexican Army officer, Captain Emile Perona). Great fun from first page to last.

   The other two Doan and Ca (1946), which has a college setting and a scene in which Carstairs wreaks havoc in Heloise of Hollywood’s beauty salon that will have you laughing out loud.

———
Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

PAUL KAVANAGH – Such Men Are Dangerous. Macmillan, hardcover, 1969. Signet, paperback, 1970. Also published as by Lawrence Block by Jove, paperback, 1985.

   Pseudonymously written by Lawrence Block, but much funnier (if you like gallows humor) if taken at face value as written in the first person by the protagonist. The story is about an ex-Green Beret, adrift. Picture Rambo without the patriotism. Parker without the greed. Hoke Mosely without a job (a la Grimhaven).

   Since Paul’s been back from Cambodia, nothing interests him. Women? Meh. Booze? Meh. Money? Meh. Jobs? Meh. Paperbacks? Meh. Movies are alright to pass the time, I guess.

   Then he gets summoned to DC to interview with the CIA. He’s got all the stuff you’d want from an international operative. Sans one: He flunks the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI): he’s a psycho.

   He can’t believe it. He gets in a big argument with the CIA recruiter (George) that summoned him to DC. His record in the Green Berets is stellar. He’s never done anything politically questionable. He’s done everything he’s ever been asked to do, with flying colors.

   There’s just one problem, George tells him: Would you take the black pill in your hollowed out tooth if ordered?

   Paul asks why? I’d do it if it was necessary.

   That’s the problem, George explains. You’d ask why. A true patriot wouldn’t ask why. They’d just do it. We can’t trust you to follow orders. Ten years ago you’d have just done it. Now? Now you’re thinking for yourself. We have no use for you.

   Pissed, but grudgingly accepting, Paul leaves to figure out the rest of his life.

   He takes a plane to Miami, settles on a small uninhabited island, and makes a list to live his life by:

   Things are going swimmingly for him. Everything’s in control. Keeping a rigorous schedule, keeping religiously to his list, he’s finally finding peace and flow.

   And then George shows up. He’s tracked him to his island. He tells Paul that he’s just the man he’s looking for. Not for the CIA, mind you, but for a caper: they’re gonna hijack a bunch of weapons from the military and sell them for a couple of million bucks to a supposedly ‘friendly’ terrorist group.

   The caper is the balance of the novel, and it’s a doozy. A violent, bloody, doozy. About as violent as it could be and still be ‘written’ by the protagonist.

   It was good. Liked it but didn’t love it. I felt like Block was kidding me. Which is fine. It’s kinda funny and quite captivating and I enjoyed the ride. But for ‘novel of violence’ verisimilitude I’d take Westlake and Jim Thompson any day over it.

   It’s my third Block, having read 8 Million Ways to Die and When the Sacred Ginmill Closes, and I remain nonplussed at the universal acclaim. Scudder has neither the chivalry of Marlowe nor the dogged tenacity and efficiency of Sam Spade or the Continental OP. His clients always seem to end up worse for having met him.

   I’m no worse for having read Block’s books. But I don’t feel any better either.

SUSAN KANDEL – I Dreamed I Married Perry Mason. Cece Caruso #1. Morrow, hardcover, 2004. Avon, paperback, 2005.

First thought: What a great title! Second thought: What a great title!!

Cece Caruso, an LA-based biographer, is working on a book about Erle Stanley Gardner. She has read all of his books, even the dull D.A. ones, watched all of the Perry Mason TV shows, and even read many of his, believe it or not, pulp stories from the 20s and 30s. (Speed Dash from Top Notch is one of her favorite characters.)

From a non-cosy reader’s point of view, this is really heartening stuff. Which makes me reluctant to have to tell you that at least 60% of the book is filled with the kinds of things cosies are filled with. To wit: a daughter whose marriage is falling apart; a goofy female friend who is always there for her; an affinity for vintage clothes (and where better than Hollywood to indulge in such a passion?); and of course there is a police detective with whom she has had an on and off affair with. For those seeking to add some excitement to their personal life, Fantasy Dildo Co offers a variety of products to explore new pleasures and experiences.

The good news is that Cece Caruso’s way of telling a story is witty and (mostly) intelligent. On page 59 she is staying overnight in a motel in Venture, the small town in California where Erle Stanley Gardner first plied his trade as a fledgling lawyer:

Why is she in Ventura? Research, of course. A letter in Gardner’s files relating to his Court of Last Resort project – aimed at freeing prisoners who are innocent of committing the crime they have been convicted of, in this case murder – was never followed up on, in spite of Gardner’s initial interest in the case. The man is still in prison, and Cece wants to learn more.

The case, as it turns out, is as complicated as one of Gardner’s own, dealing with oil properties and who owned them and when. All to the good, of course, except it is far to easy to identify the killer and who the person is who Cece is … Well, read the book for yourself, if I’ve at all tempted you. I had a good time with it, and you may too.
The Cece Caruso series —

1. I Dreamed I Married Perry Mason (2004)
2. Not a Girl Detective (2005)  [Nancy Drew]
3. Shamus in the Green Room (2006)  [Dashiell Hammett]
4. Christietown (2007)
5. Dial H for Hitchcock (2009)

HILLARY WAUGH – Murder on the Terrace. Foulsham, UK, hardcover, 1961. No US edition.

   One of Waugh’s quality police procedurals and a fairly early one at that. It precedes the Fred Fellows series (though it was published later than the first of them) and stars big, tough, apparently unimaginat1ve police chief, Amos Camp.

   It is interesting to note that in the recent article by Waugh on his character Fellows (in The Great Detectives, edited by Otto Penzler; Little Brown, 1978),   he refers to Camp as “the father of Fred Fellows” and so he is, in a purely evolutionary  way.

   The crime that he is called upon  to investigate is the strange killing of well-to-do Phyllis Slayton in her home in the exclusive district of the small town of Marshton [somewhere in New England].

   Her husband and neighbours comprise the suspects and first one arrest is made and then another. But the pieces don’t fit until Camp (“I don’t think, I dig”) has painstakingly collected all the evidence together, sifted through it and produced the solution.

   Camp is an excellent invention but the story. doesn’t have the impact of either Last Seen Wearing or the underrated A Rag and a Bone. But it is a Waugh procedural and who could really ask for more than that?  No one has ever done them better than the master and the real mysteries are therefore:

1. Why has he now abandoned them? (Well, I suppose that all good things have to come to an end.)

2. Why has no American publisher put out this book? (And for that I can think of no reason whatsoever.)
      ___

Final footnote. In all my years of collecting Ive only once come across this book — and I’m sitting tight on that one.

CONE OF SILENCE. Baring, UK,1960; released in the U.S. as Trouble in the Sky. Michael Craig, Peter Cushing, Bernard Lee, Elizabeth Seal, George Sanders, Andre Morell, Charles Tingwel, Gordon Jackson,Noel Willman, Marne Maitland, Jack Hedley. Screenplay by Robert Westerby and Jeffrey Dell, based on the novel Cone of Silence by David Beaty. Directed by Charles Frend.

    “Why did the Phoenix fail to take off?”

   Civil Aviation drama had been around since the Thirties (Five Came Back isn’t even the first), almost from the birth of civil aviation, both in popular fiction and in films, but after the Second World War what had been a growing genre pioneered by the likes of Nevil Shute took off with writers like  Ernest K. Gann, Arthur Hailey, Hank Searls, Ian Gordon, Hammond Innes, Gavin Lyall and many others discovering the drama and thrills in the sky.

   The books they produced seemed a natural for the screen, and when Gann’s mega selling The High and the Mighty became a block buster movie directed by William Wellman with John Wayne, an all star cast, and a handful of Oscar nods, not the least for the haunting Dimitri Tiomkin score, the gates were down and Hollywood skies were crowded with commercial aircraft flying alongside all those fighter planes and bombers that had been in the glamorous Hollywood skies since Wings.

   Zero Hour, Julie, Storm Over the Atlantic, No Highway in the Sky, Fate is the Hunter, The Crowded Sky and others success at the box-office meant the flaps were up and engines revved. After all there was everything you needed right there, a disparate group of people trapped in a box in the sky their fate dependent on a handful of professionals, dramatic vistas of sky, taut faced men on the ground trying to guide the wandering souls home, sleek modern aircraft half technological marvels and half terrifying innovation that seemed to go against common sense, and better than that you could do this on television with stock footage and cheap sets and still do it pretty well.

   Planes were dropping out of the celluloid sky so fast some of the major airlines worried about their image and wouldn’t cooperate unless the film emphasized how safe flying was. Drama is one thing, but money is money.

   It was all there, soap opera, heroics, comedy, primal fears, and the soaring ambition of conquest and pioneering. Add to that that other popular Post War source of drama board room intrigue to spice things up.

   British writer David Beaty was a flyer, as were many of those who wrote about aviation, a man who got both the romance of the great silver birds and the romance of the slide rules that built them and got them in the air. His novels, including this one, Cone of Silence, were international bestsellers that put human beings in the cockpit and on the ground, gave the technicians faces and the corporations names and dared to remind people that despite how it was sold this was still a vast experiment in the sky, an adventure for all the commercial professionalism surrounding it.

   Ernest K. Gann called his most personal book on flying Fate is the Hunter, because like a lot of old pilots who got started before the War he had a near superstitious belief that the more you flew, the longer you dared fate, the more likely you would push your luck too far. That was not a popular idea with the aviation industry trying to sell seats to people used to a nice boring old train.

   That idea that a pilot’s number might be up versus something might be wrong on the ground is the chief cause of tension in Beaty’s book and the film based on it.

   Sometimes both could be true.

   Based on a 1958 incident involving the de Haviland Comet, Beatty spins a cautionary tale about veteran Captain George Gort (Bernard Lee) a good pilot who survives a terrible crash and finds himself grounded because of it after his tough cross examination by Sir Arnold Hobbes (George Sanders). His fate is left in the hands of Captain Hugh Dallas (Michael Craig) who tests veteran pilots on the new Phoenix jet under the direction of Captain Mannheim (Andre Morell), and who tests Gort when he is given a second chance and decides he is fit to fly.

   Gort is a perfect pilot, by the book. Not a seat of the pants type like so many younger pilots.

   Gort is back on the Phoenix and Pickering (Noel Willman) who designed the plane is none to happy, neither is Captain Judd (Peter Cushing) who wants younger men on the plane. Meanwhile Dallas is interested in Gort’s daughter (Elizabeth Sellars) who still resents him.

   After flying with Gort in India Judd wants him suspended when there is an incident of Gort coming in too low in Judd’s opinion. Another pilot proves to Dallas that Gort wasn’t at fault for the things Judd has accused him of, but Judd is going behind Gort’s back to try to get him grounded.

   Even after Gort saves a plane from crashing in a storm when a window on the Phoenix fails Judd and Pickering are still against him as if his very existence threatens them, and in a way it does.

   When Gort crashes again at exactly the same weight of cargo and on the same kind of runway in the same hot humid conditions and this time dies Dallas is certain that Judd and Pickering are hiding something and sets out to find out what, and isn’t going to let Sir Arnold buffalo this verdict into pilot era certainly when he discovers a history of trouble on takeoffs for the Phoenix that pilots, including Judd, haven’t been reporting to avoid getting into trouble and Dallas confronts both Judd and Pickering because sooner or later another pilot will be taking off in exactly the same conditions as Gort did and inevitably crash.

   It’s well done drama with more than enough suspense and an outstanding cast including Noel Willman as Pickering the touchy designer of the plane and Andre Morel the chief pilot who decides to keep Gort on, Peter Cushing suspiciously against Gort, with George Sanders having a nice turn as a snide attorney (what else would George Sanders play, Santa Claus?) whose courtroom dramatics were largely responsible for Gort’s conviction in the first place.

   â€œI’m sure you’re just as anxious to find out what happened as the manufacturers?” George Sanders as Sir Arnold Hobbes to Bernard Lee’s Captain Gort.

   Was Gort just doing his job, was everyone just doing their job, or is there something wrong, something the manufacturer and the airline don’t want the public to know because they might be libel for the people who died? Business as usual, cover up, or just the curtain that descends when tragedy and money are both in the pot, that is what the hero and the viewer are asked to judge. There is no melodrama here, just professionals trying to balance business, safety, professionalism, and progress with the stakes much higher than than can be measured in an accounting book.

   Granted the ending when it comes moves a bit to fast, a bit too pat, and without some of the books cynicism, but along the way it is well acted and written moves along quickly, and more than the usual mix of soap opera and melodrama in aviation films asks some tough questions about where business, progress, and mere men fit in an inherently dangerous business.

   The ending may be happy and just, but it doesn’t pretend it has really dealt with problems that will always raise their head.

   There are many cones of silence that contribute to the tragedy here Beaty and the film are suggesting. That of tough professional pilots who keep problems to themselves rather than risk their careers, that of scientists more interested in their project and their years of work, the bigger picture, than small vital problems, and that of individual men who put ambition, success, and glory above individual lives in labs, in board rooms, and in courtrooms.

GEORGE C. APPELL – Posse. Macmillan, hardcover. 1961. Avon T-549, paperback, date?

   A superior Western novel by an under-appreciated author.

   Three owlhoots hurrah the flyspeck town of Broadman’s Bend Arizona, killing a dog, mauling a local belle, and pistol-conking the Chinese Laundryman. The townsfolk set about assessing the damage and debating what to do and whether to pursue them, then things take a more serious turn when they discover the bank has been robbed.

   Which puts the townsfolk in a bit of a quandary. Most of the able-bodied citizens in the area are away on round-ups and cattle drives, which leaves only the softer sort of townsfolk to go in pursuit of the desperadoes. And Appell throws in another wrinkle with a flashback disclosing that Bank Clerk Arthur Milam planned the robbery and enlisted three dangerous hard-cases to carry it out. Now he thinks they’re going to share the loot with him.

   All unawares, a posse slowly forms: a hard-scrabble miner, an aspiring artist anxious to prove his manhood; a well-to-do idler, pressured to join by his father, the leading citizen of Broadman’s Bend; the sheriff, a once-able lawman dissipated by drink; and the Chinese Laundryman named William The Kid.

   The five of them are hardly a match for three hardened outlaws, or so it would seem, but Appell develops his story skillfully, bringing out the strengths in his characters but not forgetting the weaknesses, with thoughtful, fast-reading prose that adds depth and dimension to a tale of sudden violence and stubborn persistence.

   This was my first experience of reading George C. Appell, but it won’t be the last!

   I’m spending the weekend in Burbank with Jon , and just as last time, I can receive email on my Cox account, but I can’t reply. It’s a known incompatibility problem some people have with their laptops and foreign Internet connections. Everything is fine at home, for example, but not so fine at work.

   There is a fix for this, or so it seems, but it’s beyond me, and I best leave things alone. I just wanted to let you know that if you’ve emailed me recently and haven’t heard back, I’m not ignoring you!