Anyone who follows this blog knows I'm not a fan of written mysteries, although I enjoy them on the big and small screen. I've read only a few that transcend the genre.
Dangerous Davies: The Last Detective by Leslie Thomas does not reach far into the existential territory that the best mysteries do, but it is distinguished by humor, imaginative extraneous segues, and quirky characters. Davies, in his early 30's, is on the low end of the totem pole, his nickname ironic. He is more likely to be a danger to himself than to criminals. He is the department's last choice to work a case. The time is the mid '70's. Davies is assigned to simply locate a career criminal who has returned to London and is up to no good. Along the way he becomes interested in a cold case, the disappearance of a 17-year-old girl in 1951. The plot is well conceived. I failed to guess the identity of the killer. Davies is an anti-hero, lacking self-confidence, self-deprecating, on the cusp of alcoholism. Although the novel is only 272 pages, it is not an easy read, which I attribute to the difference between the English of the UK and USA. The fact that Thomas was born in Wales may also have been a factor in the difficulty I occasionally encountered. His use of adjectives was frequently puzzling. Like so many authors before him, he began as a journalist. In 1965 he devoted himself entirely to books. There are four in the Davies series. He also wrote more than 25 other works of fiction, and memoirs and books on travel. Naturally, the BBC produced a series on the detective, and there is a highly regarded movie adaptation of the novel. Unfortunately, it is unavailable at Netflix. It is offered on DVD at Amazon for more than $100 to more than $200. 16 users at Jeff Bezo's behemoth have rated
Dangerous Davies: The Last Detective, forging to a consensus of 4.3 on a scale of five. I rate it 3.5. Leslie Thomas passed away at 83 in 2014.
Betsy McCaughey makes an interesting point in her op-ed piece in today's
NY Post. She questions why the emphasis is on Russia meddling in America's elections when they have the capability to do serious damage to great parts of the nation. They have hacked into our electrical grids more than once but have yet to turn off the lights as they did to the Ukraine. Fortunately, there are three separate grids in the USA and each uses different software. It is highly unlikely the Russians could damage all of them at once. McCaughey cites congress' apparent indifference to the issue.
RIP hockey legend Stan Mikita, 78. He played his entire 22 year career with the Chicago Blackhawks and is their all-time leader in points and games played. He scored 541 goals. He had a long tenure as team captain and was a member of the 1961 Stanley Cup champs. He is the only NHL player in history to win the Art Ross Trophy as scoring champion, the Hart Trophy as MVP, and the Lady Byng Trophy for sportsmanship - in the same season in both 1967 and 1968! Awesome, sir.
When I spotted Wolf limping along a block away, I was pretty sure he would buy the books I had on Golda Meir and David Ben Gurion. Given his back pain, I did not expect him to go on a spree, gobbling up CD's and other books in Russian and English. He explained it by saying his wife is spending time upstate, so he is free to pile up and hide books. My thanks, sir, and also to the gentleman who purchased two CD's, and to the two women who donated books in Russian, and to Herbie, who donated a pristine hardcover copy of Dan Brown's
Origin.
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