The Chessmen by Peter May

The Chessmen is last of the Lewis trilogy.

Peter May is an excellent writer.

Former police detective Fin McLeod is back on the remote Scottish Isle of Lewis of his birth.

He found work as security officer for a local landowner.  Mostly chasing down poachers.

The opening of this book is fantastic. Finn and childhood friend Whistler happened to witness a freak natural phenomenon–a bog burst–which drains a loch of all its water in a flash.

Revealed below was a mud-encased light aircraft. Finn immediately knows it’s Roddy Mackenzie plane, a friend whose flight disappeared more than seventeen years earlier.

So it begins.

The Tourist mini-series

Excellent. 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

The Tourist is a 6 part TV show series where an Irish tourist (?) in Australia run off the road, waking up in hospital with amnesia.

It’s been compared to Fargo: a blend of violence and barbed humour; bleak, underpopulated places, and the same cavalcade of viciousness and folly that brings out the heroism in an ordinary person.

Danielle Macdonald as Probationary Constable Helen Chambers steals every scene.

This entertainment has many original and quirky touches. Odd characters.

But it’s weird. If you don’t like weird, it may turn you off before the end.

Jamie Dornan, who portrays the protagonist Elliot Stanley confirmed that talks are progressing for bringing a second instalment.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Free Fire by C.J. Box

Book #7 in the excellent series about a Game Warden from Wyoming.

Joe Pickett’s been hired to investigate one of the most cold-blooded mass killings in Wyoming history.

Attorney Clay McCann admitted to slaughtering four campers in a back-country corner of Yellowstone National Park—a “free-fire” zone with no residents or jurisdiction.

In this remote fifty-square-mile stretch a man can literally get away with murder.

Now McCann’s a free man, and Pickett’s about to discover his motive—one buried in Yellowstone’s rugged terrain, and as dangerous as the man who wants to keep it hidden.

CJBox.net

But is there really a part of the USA where you can kill anyone legally?

The theory: There is a 50-square-mile region in Yellowstone National Park where sloppy district boundaries would make the prosecution of serious criminal offenses unconstitutional — in other words, a region where one could get away with murder. …

Fact Check – USA Today

Click through to read the details.

Joe Pickett – books 5 & 6

EXCELLENT!

Out of Range is the 5th book in the Joe Pickett series by C. J. Box.

Our game warden is temporarily assigned to the Teton district out of the big city — Jackson, Wyoming.

Will Jensen, a fellow Wyoming game warden and a good friend, has killed himself. Joe can’t believe it. He takes the assignment partly to investigate the supposed suicide.

In Jackson the typical right wing citizens jostle with politicians, environmental extremists and rich out-of-State wannabe cowboys.


Books 6 is good too.

In Plain Sight — Ranch owner and matriarch Opal Scarlett has vanished under suspicious circumstances during a bitter struggle between her sons for control of her million-dollar empire.

Almost everyone hates Joe Pickett in this one. He eventually gets fired as game warden.

But in many ways, book 6 was my favourite in the series, so far. I’m certain I’ll be reading them all.

SEEMS I can’t watch the TV adaptation in Canada.

Maid – miniseries

Excellent TV. 94% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Original. Non-cliche. Surprising, at times.

It reminds me a bit of the film Nomadland.

Real people in America. The USA is a terrible place to be poor.

Main is inspired by Stephanie Land‘s memoir Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive.

Story focuses on a young mother who escapes an abusive relationship, subsequently struggling to provide for her daughter by getting a job cleaning houses.

Margaret Qualley plays the lead. Very compelling. Very real.

She’s a former Pete Davidson squeeze — but who isn’t? 😀.

More importantly, she’s the real daughter of Andie MacDowell, who plays her crazy artist Mom in the series.

If I had any complaint it would be pacing. Too slow. Fewer episodes would have improved the story.

Also — I have to admit that I quit after 7/10 episodes. It hurt too much to see the sincere Mom making mistakes despite her commitment to do it right.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Bewilderment by Richard Powers

Wow.

What a fantastic book.

Richard Powers is my age. The main difference between us is that he won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Overstory. 😀

I’m saving that long book for a long outdoors trip.

Bewilderment is his 2021 book set in the near future amid the environmental degradation of the planet. 

It follows widowed astrobiologist Theo Byrne and his volatile nine-year-old son Robin, who is diagnosed with Asperger syndromeobsessive–compulsive disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Theo resists psychoactive medication for Robin, turning instead to an experimental neurofeedback therapy in order to help his son.

It’s part science fiction. Part science. Part philosophy. An important father and son story.

Extremely well written.

The author must have been inspired by Flowers for Algernon.

There’s a character much like Greta Thunberg.

The bad guys are a Trump-like President and his enablers. Anti-science. This time the losing President cancels election results in 6 States he lost and calls a new election.

Black Bear Pictures and Plan B Entertainment acquired the feature film rights.

Click PLAY or watch the author on YouTube.

vocalist Henning May

Rockin’ tipped me to Henning May’s band AnnenMayKantereit. (worst name ever?)

What I liked best is May’s vocals. So rough and soulful.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Catwoman: Soulstealer by Sarah Maas

Sarah J. Maas writes young adult fantasy.

She got asked to write one book in a series called DC Icons.

This book kept me going. But it’s more of a cartoon than a novel. Action. Action. Action. No real plot.

Catwoman (Selina Kyle) debuted as “the Cat” in Batman #1 (spring 1940), she is one of the Dark Knight’s most enduring enemies.

She’s is a Gotham City burglar who typically wears a tight, one-piece outfit and uses a bullwhip for a weapon.

Eartha Kitt played the role in the 1960s Batman TV series.

Though mostly an antihero, Selina and Bruce Wayne are frequently depicted as having a romantic relationship. In one version, they eventually marry.

This book is Catwoman’s origin story

Two years after escaping Gotham City’s slums, Selina Kyle returns as the mysterious and wealthy Holly Vanderhees. She quickly discovers that with Batman off on a vital mission, the city looks ripe for the taking.

She teams up with Harley Quinn — the Joker’s former girlfriend — and Poison Ivy, her new girlfriend.

As Batman is out of town, their nemesis is Batwing (Luke Fox).

Click PLAY or watch the author on YouTube.

Bombshell (2019 film)

Great cast. Not much a film, however.

Too preachy. And I felt they tried to include too much. Fewer story lines would have made it better.

 Charlize TheronNicole Kidman, and Margot Robbie star in this film based on the accounts of the women at Fox News who set out to expose CEO Roger Ailes for sexual harassment. …

After co-moderating the 2016 Republican debateMegyn Kelly faces numerous insults from Donald Trump, who is upset because she asked him about his offensive comments toward women. …

Fox eventually paid the victims of sexual harassment $50 million, while paying Ailes and O’Reilly $65 million in severance.

wikipedia

Roger Ailes died age-77 in 2017.

Rupert Murdoch hired him in 1996 to become the CEO of Fox News. In 2016 Ailes was fired, taking a $65 million golden handshake. He was under investigation for sexual harassment from Megyn Kelly and many other women.

Other FOX old men accused of harassing blonde women included:

Fox Sports President Jamie Horowitz
Fox Business Host Charles Payne
Fox News host Bill O’Reilly
Fox News Latino vice president Francisco Cortes
Fox News co-President Jack Abernethy

It was the culture of FOX. Hopefully things are better now.

Personally I wish some billionaire would buy FOX News and fire most of the opinion talking heads.

Winterkill by C.J. Box

Book 3 in the Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett series.

Great start to the story:

It’s hours away from darkness with a bitter winter storm raging when Joe Pickett finds himself deep in the forest edging Battle Mountain, shotgun in his left hand, his truck’s steering wheel handcuffed to his right—and Lamar Gardiner’s arrow-riddled corpse splayed against the tree in front of him.

Lamar’s murder and the sudden onslaught of the snowstorm warns: Get off the mountain. …

CJBox.net

This book introduces the most interesting character in the series ➙ Nate Romanowski.

Romanowski is an ex-Special Black Ops soldier for the U.S. military. An the “outlaw falconer” who loves his birds more than anything else.

I learn something about the rural American western culture each book. In this one a group called the “Sovereigns” is camped on Joe’s turf. Government dissenters from Waco, Ruby Ridge and the Montana Freemen standoff.

It’s intense.