Return of the Maltese Falcon

 

I read Dashiell Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon" several decades ago when I was younger and didn't care for it much. I really tried to like it, after all, it was set in San Francisco, a city that I've always been fascinated by, and was deliciously noir. I'm willing to give it another chance now that I'm older, I just don't have time right now. 

All that is to say: I don't remember the book very well. I also tried to watch the Humphrey Bogart version movie several times and just couldn't get into it. So I wasn't terribly surprised that I had a hard time getting through this book, even though I like Collins and have enjoyed his other stories. 

"Return of the Maltese Falcon" picks up where Hammett's book left off. PI Sam Spade is contacted by multiple interested parties who would like him to find the fabled gold and jewel encrusted statue. Everyone's lying, including Spade, people are getting killed right and left, but in the end Spade untangles everything and there's a somewhat happy ending. The book picked up towards the end, the last fifty pages or so were engrossing, but it was a bit of a slog to get there. 

Lost Story of Eva Fuentes; Chorus of the Union

 

I've enjoyed Cleeton's novels so far, and I enjoyed this one up until a certain point. When I explain why, I'll try not to spoil too much. 

Margo lives in London in 2024. She's recently divorced and has a business where she tracks down lost treasures for clients: furniture and artwork and the like. A client contacts her about a book, apparently very rare. There is only one known copy in existence and it's called "Time of Forgetting" by Eva Fuentes, a Cuban author. 

Margo reaches out to a bookseller she works with to see if he's familiar with the book. He's not, but he gives her information about a woman who's tracking lost Cuban possessions from families who had to flee Cuba. And then he's murdered. Margo's office is ransacked and she's wondering why this book is wrecking havoc and considers telling the client she's out. 

The book is told from three points of view: Margo, Pilar, a librarian in Cuba in 1966 who is hiding books from families fleeing Castro's regime, and Eva herself, in 1900. Eva was a schoolteacher who participates in a program to travel to Boston for the summer to attend classes at Harvard.

All right, here's the dicey part. About 2/3 of the way through the book, a character is introduced who says he's Eva's grandson. His mother, her daughter, was born in 1901. He's in the 2024 part of the book, and he's in his sixties.

My brain screeched to a halt. How is that possible? I started doing math in my head: if he's in his sixties, he was born in the 1960s, right? And his mother was born in 1901, meaning she was in her *sixties* when he was born? 

Huh?

I hoped I misread, that he was actually Eva's GREAT grandson, but no, very clearly, grandson. 

Did no one stop and do the math? Surely I'm not the only one who picked up on that, right? 

At any rate, I barely paid attention to the end of the book because I was so flummoxed trying to figure out the math. I hate when things like that happen. It ruins an otherwise good story. 

"Chorus of the Union" was pretty good. It reminded me of a book I read a few years ago about the 1860 Republican convention, "The Lincoln Miracle". 

Lincoln and Douglas were longtime political rivals in Illinois, with Douglas always beating Lincoln. They debated often and both of them were great speakers. They went head to head in the 1860 Presidential election and Lincoln won due to the Democratic party splitting up into three separate faction over the issues around slavery. Despite not even being on the ballot in most of the Southern states, Lincoln still carried the day, and the South immediately started talking secession.

Despite losing, Douglas was a Unionist through and through. He cautioned the states to give Lincoln a chance and not secede. He was willing to work with Lincoln (and Lincoln was willing to work with him) to save the Union. Unfortunately, Douglas died just a few months into Lincoln's first term and the nation broke out in Civil War. It was a fascinating look at how men who were different in almost every other way could come together on a topic that they both felt strongly about. I don't know much about Stephen Douglas but I'm interested in reading more about him now. 

 

We Did OK, Kid

 

First off, it's killing me to type "OK" instead of "okay". My work prefers "OK", and I refuse. It's just *wrong*. 

That minor grammatical irritation aside, Hopkins' memoir was really good. I can't believe he's 87! I had no idea. Silence of the Lambs just came out what? two, three years ago? Something like that. 

Anthony is Welsh and his dad was a baker. He was an only child and not terribly bright in school. Everyone kind of wrote him off, didn't think he'd amount to much, which made him determined to prove them all wrong. He was good at memorizing and losing himself in poetry, and he managed to parlay that into a successful acting career. 

He has a lot of good life advice and terrific taste in poetry. And I love how down to earth he is. So refreshing. 

Ain't Nobody's Fool

 

Unfortunately, this one was disappointing. 

I love Miss Dolly and was really hoping for an engaging biography about her life, but it read like a dry academic paper (complete with teeny tiny footnotes I had to strain to read). As someone who has read a lot of dry academic papers for school and work, I can attest that it's not really the genre I want for casual reading. 

At least the author did a nice job of showing how smart Dolly is. She said no to Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis when they wanted to record her song "I Will Always Love You". As much as she wanted Elvis to sing it (me too. Can you imagine how amazing that would have been?) she wasn't willing to give up 50% or all of her copyright, which was the only way the Colonel would let Elvis record it. Smart move in the long run. 

She's been working hard her whole life and brings a lot of joy to a lot of people and sadly, she deserves better than this. Hopefully a better biography will turn up one day. Or she could update the one she wrote a few decades ago. 

They All Came to Barneys

 

Sadly, I never got to go to Barneys. Apparently there was one at South Coast Plaza but by the time I was old enough to know about such things it was long gone. I went into Neiman's once and immediately turned around and went out. I could see it was definitely too bougie for me (my budget, not my tastes. As far as tastes went, it was right up my alley). I'm pretty sure Barneys would have been similar.

Barney Pressman started Barneys in New York in the 1920s as a discount men's suit store. His son, Fred, decided to take the store in a different direction and focus on quality and up and coming designers. Fred loved well made clothes. When his son, Gene, turned twenty-one, he joined his father and grandfather at the store. Gene was the one who convinced Fred to branch out into women's clothing, and the store flourished for decades. Barneys became known as the place to go to see the newest, coolest things. Not just clothes, but home furnishings. Barneys sold things that you couldn't get anywhere else and discovered some major designers and brought them to America for the first time. 

So how did it all fall apart? Part of it was ambition. They wanted to open more stores throughout the country and of course the stores had to be built with the finest materials and designed by famous architects. They ended up going into a partnership with a Japanese firm. They couldn't pay the bills and Barneys declared bankruptcy. By then Barney was gone and Fred followed not long after. Gene and his younger brother, Bob, ended up losing the company their grandfather built from nothing. 

From what I understand, Bob is also writing his own tell-all book, and Gene doesn't come out of it looking well. So Gene struck first.

One of the best parts of the book was when Gene talked about hiring a woman for the store who thought nothing about wearing tiaras to work as business casual and how she was the only one he'd ever met who thought that way. That's me too! I don't honestly understand why more people don't wear tiaras (and crowns) to work on a regular basis. You only get the one life. You should enjoy it.  

The Last Death of the Year

 

I have to say, I was disappointed by this one. Normally I really enjoy Hannah's Poirot mysteries, but for some reason this one just didn't hold my interest. 

Catchpool and Poirot go to the Greek island of Lamperos for New Year's Eve. They're staying at a house known as the Spitty, inhabited by a group of people who, forty years later, would be called a commune. It's a ragtag group of people who subscribe to a philosophy of forgiveness above all else. 

Their leader, Austin, proposes a game in which everyone writes down their New Year's resolution and puts it in a container. Catchpool will them read them one by one and everyone has to try to figure out which resolution belongs to which person (sounds dreadfully boring to me, but hey, it was the 1930s). 

Catchpool comes to one resolution about murdering Matthew, one of the male members of the group, and he and Poirot are horrified at the prospect. Matthew takes it in stride, laughs it off as a joke, but no one confesses to having written it. 

So of course Matthew is murdered that evening. 

I can't say too much more without giving it away, but it was just lackluster. 

Somewhere, a Boy and a Bear

I finished this book on Sunday, which was National Winnie the Pooh day. I found that an interesting and unplanned coincidence!

I love Pooh bear. There's just something about him that makes me smile. I have a Pooh bear, he's my constant companion. He's a good friend. 

Christopher Robin Milne received his teddy bear for his first birthday, the other friends from the Hundred Acre Woods followed later. His father, A.A. Milne, wrote children's stories about Christopher and his bear. Milne was also a successful poet, playwright, and adult author as well, but of course he's best known for Pooh's stories. 

Christopher was his only child and while they were close when Chris was younger, they drifted apart once Chris became an adult. There was some resentment on Chris's part about how he helped his father gained success. He made his peace with being "Christopher Robin" in his later years, especially after having a daughter with cerebral palsy. The fortune he inherited from his dad's stories allowed him and his wife to get Clare the medical attention she needed, and to this day the trust in her name helps others with disabilities. 

The original Pooh and his friends live at the New York Public Library. Milne sent them on a publicity tour to the US, and they ended up at his New York publisher's office. Chris didn't want them back, so there they stayed until the publisher donated them to the library. They are the number one attraction, out of all the amazing things at NYPL. Over the years attempts have been made, including President Obama and the Prime Minister calling to ask the library to send the bear back home, and the library has politely declined. Pooh is theirs, and he's staying. 

The first story featuring Pooh bear was published on December 24, 1925, so we are celebrating 100 years of Pooh bear. I'm sure he will be around for 100 more 😊