Podcast of the Week

 I listen to a lot of podcasts and there are billions, willions and sqillions out there - some are excellent, many are great and a lot are not so good. 

Whatever your interest you will, believe me, find a podcast that covers it. 

Where do you start, though?

Good question.

Which is why, every week here on the Archive I will point you to a podcast (myriad subjects will be covered) that I think you may enjoy.

And so this week I direct you to the excellent, Partners in Crime podcast. 

Hosted by bestselling crime authors, Adam Croft and Robert Daws the show is set out in a kind of magazine format. Think The Breakfast Show with knives! The show features genre news, interviews with well known authors and general chit chat. The latter is often hilarious.

The two hosts have a great chemistry and as well as the usual audio feeds there are several video episodes available on You Tube.

You can get the show from most of the podcast providers out there, and you can visit the Partners in Crime website by clicking HERE

Adam Croft is a highly successful English writer of crime/mystery fiction and a advocate of independent publishing.                      

Robert Daws is a stage, television and film actor as well as a writer of a series of successful crime thrillers.

Book Reviews: The Hawks of Delamere by Edward Marston

 I've been reading a lot of historical fiction over recent months, but this is the first time that I've dipped into Edward Marston's works - the book is set in the historical mystery subgenre and is set in the 11th Century. 

This is actually the seventh book in the series set around the compilation of the Domesday Book, and featuring Ralph Delchard and Grevase Bret who have been tasked by William the Conqueror to look into serious irregularities that arise while engaging in the great survey.

Those who know their history know that the Doomsday Book, or to use it's Middle English spelling, The Domesday Book was the result of agents being tasked to survey every shire in England and a goodly part of Wales in order to secure taxes and discover the strength of power following the Norman conquest.

This being a crime novel rather than a straight historical book means that the reader gets a lot of the colour of the period, whilst the main thrust of the story is the mystery that unfolds with the historical landscape very much setting the parameters within which the fiction works.

The book opens with boastful Earl of Chester ( a vile tub of lard of a character) out with an hunting party when his beloved Hawk is shot out of the sky in Delamere Forest. Two poachers, a father and son are found nearby and with no evidence they are accused of killing the bird and cruelly lynched. Not long afterwards, Ralph Delchard and Gervase Bret arrive in Cheshire in order to carry out work related to Domesday. It is not long before another man is killed by an arrow and it becomes evident that the earl may have carried out his cruel justice in the woods on the wrong men.

The medieval slueths' are soon up to all manner of intrigue as they try and stop and killer and avert an all out war.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and followed the story easily without having read any of the other books in the series that preceded it, so I guess that each of the novels can be picked up and read in any order.

I'll certainly be reading more of this series and anyone who enjoys mystery with history will no doubt find a lot to like here.

Available both digitally and in print

     

The Red Beret digital version available....

 Digital copies of my latest Commando title, The Red Beret can be picked up HERE

Commando #5469: The Red Beret

The tattered red beret sat upon Major John Bell's head. He and his crack team of paratroopers were on a suicide mission to destroy a bridge to clear the way for D-Day operations. They all knew the risks, they all knew that they might not come back -- but they were brave and their determination was like no other! So why did Bell wear a tattered red beret when his men donned their helmets? As a symbol of survival and luck he hoped would take them to victory!

The Resurrection of the radio star

 

The Radio Years

CLICK IMAGE

Paul over at the CBS Radio Theatre website was so impressed by the Archive that he asked me to add a link. I was only too glad to do this -  I love old time radio and often have a show on in the background while browsing the web. I've placed a link in the sidebar of the Archive or you can click on the image here.

Enjoy.


In 1974 long-time radio producer Himan Brown convinced CBS to green-light a new anthology of Radio Dramas, CBS Radio Mystery Theater (CBSRMT). 

Radio Drama had been declared "dead" twelve years before.
CBS Radio Mystery Theater was meant to appeal to an audience that remembered when radio drama was a popular form of family entertainment. Riding on the wave of nostalgia fever, the radio show attracted many younger listeners who would stay up late, hidden under their covers to hear the program on their bedroom radio (and many of them were not able to go to sleep after listening to the frightening program!)
CBSRMT was able to attract a wide array of talent. Many of the voices that were popular during the Golden Age of Radio made appearances on CBS Radio Mystery Theater, and younger talent, often from CBS Daytime Television and NY area stage was used as well.

All 1,399 episodes of CBS Radio Mystery Theater are presented at CBSRMT.com with listings by actor and writer. Please feel free to browse all the old time radio shows and listen to and download your favorite radio show episodes in MP3 format.

How the Woke lot killed the SEXIST MISOGYNIST DINOSAUR

 

NOTE - THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS

Now that they've done the unthinkable, and  killed off James Bond the frenzy begins - will the next James Bond be a woman, a black man or a transgender man from a council estate or even  a bunch of angry overweight lesbians with guns. 

When Daniel Craig took over the role of Bond in Casino Royale the film was billed as a reboot when in fact it was a reimagining of the character - gone was the sexism, the harmless misogyny, the devil-may-care imperialistic nonsense that had originally birthed the character kicking and screaming from Ian Fleming's awesome imagination. It had been replaced by a kind of Bond-lite character -  the violence and action ramped up to impressive levels to disguise the fact that so much was missing of what actually made James Bond James Bond in the first place.

Quantum of Solace followed which was like watching a bloody video game with no attempts at the character building, or  the re-invention that the previous movie attempted. After that we had Skyfall, which at least almost felt like a Bond movie and will, I've no doubt, come to be regarded as Craig's best Bond. Then came Spectre, which was okay but nowhere near as good as the previous high point. And now there is No Time to Die, an overly long turgid movie that actually kills off the character of 007 in its climax. This is a definitive death scene too, not a trick death like that which opened one of the real Bond films, You Only Live Twice.

 Mind you no sooner do the credits roll that we are given  the promise that James Bond Will Return.

James Bond will return indeed - truth is we've been waiting a long time to actually see James Bond return and maybe in these Woke times we never will. The Bond of Casino Royale was a Bourne clone and he's continued down that road ever since.

Bond was always shorthand for stiff-upper-lip masculinity and flag-waving ideas of fashion, style and heterosexual lovemaking, and the increasingly demented Woke culture can't deal with that. They spend so much energy trying to be offended by Bond's macho nonsense that they forget the films are mere fantasies. No one is going to try and take over the world in such convoluted ways as Spectre, no one is going to irradiate all the gold in Fort Knox, and you can be sure that no one is going to turn up with their dwarf sidekick and bring about the end of life as we know it.

No Time to Die in its insistence on making Bond a real character give him a daughter he'll never see - yeah, that's right Bond is a daddy now - and have him heroically sacrifice himself to save mankind. He's carrying a deadly virus you see. The ending is as unambiguous as possible JAMES BOND IS DEAD.

Some will argue that he's been dead for at least the last five movies - the real Bond that is, the one that became the literary and movie legend in the first place. Fleming actually toyed with the idea of killing Bond himself but he decided against the move, and now the filmmakers have fulfilled on that idea and killed off Bond for once and all.

There is a BBC recording of Ian Fleming talking to Raymond Chandler HERE

Daniel Craig's rocky road to 007

 

Daniel Craig's latest and last Bond is raking in the cash and receiving mostly positive, even raving feedback - I've not seen the movie yet and initially wasn't going to bother, but given the news of the shock ending I'm going to see it next weekend.

So I thought now would be a good time to remember the fury Craig met when he initially took the role.

When Craig was first announced as the new Bond the naysayers immediately lamented the “blond Bond” and criticized his blue eyes. The London Daily Mirror on Oct. 15, 2005, ran his photo with the headline “The Name’s Bland … James Bland.”

At Craig’s first meeting with the press, he arrived via a speedboat on the Thames; he was wearing a lifejacket, which led to endless media mockery. Reporters were even more appalled that he chewed gum during the press conference.

Websites launched with names like, DANIELCRAIGISNOTJAMESBOND and BLONDNOTBOND.COM

The hostility shifted into high gear. The Sun newspaper reported that Craig had suffered sunburn that stopped filming of Casino Royale. It also was reported he didn’t know how to drive a manual car. “Craig’s 007 Can’t Get in Gear.”, the headline proclaimed.

“Craig confessed he doesn’t like guns,” said another British newspaper and then went onto report that he lost two teeth in a fight scene with “minor actors” 

This prompted Barbara Broccoli to announce: “His teeth are fine, he doesn’t have heat rash, and he’s not afraid of the water.”

Still Casino Royale” raked in $616 million worldwide, becoming the highest earning Bond film to date and regarded by many as Craig’s finest Bond outing. (By comparison, the final Pierce Brosnan film, “Die Another Day,” had earned $431.9 million.

Craig is the longest-serving Bond, at 15 years, though in fairness this is due to the fact that these days there is a long delay between movies and of course the Covid crisis held back the latest Bond film several times over.

As a Bond fan myself, I'm still not overly fond of Craig's version of the character but there's no escaping the fact he's been a massive success in the role.

Now...who will be next?

National Book Awards Finalists

 The National Book Awards finalist have been announced and the full list is:

Fiction

Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land
Scribner / Simon & Schuster

Lauren Groff, Matrix
Riverhead Books / Penguin Random House

Laird Hunt, Zorrie
Bloomsbury Publishing

Robert Jones, Jr., The Prophets
G. P. Putnam’s Sons / Penguin Random House

Jason Mott, Hell of a Book
Dutton / Penguin Random House

Nonfiction

Hanif Abdurraqib, A Little Devil in America: Notes In Praise of Black Performance

Lucas Bessire, Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains

Grace M. Cho, Tastes Like War: A Memoir

Nicole Eustace, Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America

Tiya Miles, All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family's Keepsake

Poetry

Desiree C. Bailey, What Noise Against the Cane

Martín Espada, Floaters

Douglas Kearny, Sho

Hoa Nguyen, A Thousand times You Lose Your Treasure

Translated Literature

Elisa Shua Dusapin, Winter in Sokcho. Translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins

Ge Fei, Peach Blossom Paradise. Translated by Canaan Morse

Nona Fernández, The Twilight Zone. Translated by Natasha Wimmer

Benjamín Labatut, When We Cease to Understand the World. Translated by Adrian Nathan West

Samar Yazbek, Planet of Clay. Translated by Leri Price

Young People's Literature

Shing Yin Khor, The Legend of Auntie Po

Malinda Lo, Last Night at the Telegraph Club

Kyle Lukoff, Too Bright to See

Kekla Magoon, Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther Party's Promise to the People

Amber McBride, Me (Moth)

The National Book Foundation will once again broadcast the National Book Awards Ceremony on YouTube, Facebook, and the Foundation’s website at nationalbook.org/awards. Winners of the National Book Awards receive $10,000 and a bronze medal and statue; Finalists receive $1,000 and a bronze medal; Winners and Finalists in the Translated Literature category will split the prize evenly between author and translator.