Therefore, the story stands out from a lot of it's peers. This is more of a psychological study of murder and motive than the standard detective yarn of the period, and explores how the culprit tries to avoid being discovered. It may lack in suspense but makes it up with good characterisation.
The interesting premise may though be the best part about the story, the initial part especially is a bit of a slog though it does pick up later on.
I go to the north west quite a lot, but always to Merseyside. Why don't i go to Greater Manchester more often, after all its where my northern relatives actually live and i'm sure as i am only half-Scouser i won't dissolve. So, at the weekend i headed up to Wigan. I also took a short train ride to the nearby town of Hindley. At Easter i plan to so some more exploring up Manchester way.
A nice trip up north, also nice to see the Manchester Bee network buses, hopefully we will have something similar in Birmingham soon. You can see my photos here.
One plot involves the kidnapping and ransoming of VIPs by a highly professional couple. The Secret Service are completely flummoxed as to who the kidnappers are but suspect they are planning their big job. Indeed, they kidnap the Archbishop of Canterbury and want a fortune in diamonds for his release.
The other plot involves a medium and her lover / assistant who are employed by a rich older woman to find her long-lost nephew. Trying to find this nephew is very difficult but they finally do succeed... but you can guess who it turns out to be!
A good book, a slow start is ultimately very rewarding. The characters are well written and the demise of one of them hits hard. The book ends on a pretty dark note as well. Interestingly, the story was adapted into a film called Family Plot, which was Alfred Hitchcock's last film.
This book is a hilarious satire on capitalism and marketing. Caesar sends his young protege Preposterus to Gaul to corrupt the Indomitable Gauls using the profit motive. He creates a fake demand for menhirs and begins to corrupt Obelix and later other villagers in the pursuit of profit...
This is utterly wonderful stuff, packed full of nonsense and often biting satire. We have the memorable scene where Preposterus (who is said to have been based on a young Jacques Chirac!) tries to explain the concept of marketing to Caesar, the gaudy fashions of the nouvelle rich villagers and the Romans trying to get a piece of the menhir action.
Naturally it all ends happily ever after and our friends return to their simple rustic lifestyle of hunting and eating boar and fighting, uncorrupted by bags of money! Goscinny and Uderzo were at the height of their powers here, it is a shame that this was the last book written by Goscinny to be published before he passed away.
This is still a busy line now, both for passenger and freight traffic though a lot of the industry has gone now and some of the intermediate stations between Liverpool and Runcorn are also no more.
The line ran past a parkland near where my Uncle and Auntie lived in south Liverpool. When i was a little kid and we went up there, i always liked to go up to where the railway line was and hear, if not really see, the frequent trains going past. I've been past on train now many times. I always think of those times.
Liverpool Lime Street, Liverpool South Parkway (a more recent addition) and Runcorn are interesting stations which are well worth a visit.
Time to head to somewhere new, time to head to Wales! At the weekend i visited the rather nice little town of Ruabon near Wrexham. I was pleasantly surprised at how nice Ruabon is, it has a nice church, some lovely old buildings and even a stretch of Offa's Dyke! Old Mercian King Offa's defensive work is now just a path mostly used by dog walkers, and me!
You can see my photos of Ruabon here.
Ben is the main character of this tale, a good old gentleman of the road who stumbles upon mysterious, and even murderous, goings on in the house opposite the one he is squatting in.
Ben is reluctantly drawn in to try and solve the mystery. The story is fairly unusual, and the main character is quite novel, but at times i found the story a bit hard going. I've always found dialogue written in a strong dialect is a bit tedious to read but i suppose it makes Ben more authentic. Once the story gets going its worth the read but getting there (without giving up) takes a bit of effort.
I didn't know Lego had a botanicals range, including red roses. Well, as it was Valentine's Day yesterday i thought it would be nice to make the Lego roses to give to my Wife instead of natural roses which will be dead in a few days! It has been a few years since i built a Lego set, i went through a bit of a craze about ten years ago. Maybe i might make a few more Lego sets in future.
Early on in this annual there is a hint, the story TV or not TV features the kids as TV mad and watching breakfast TV. It is likely this is mentioned due to breakfast TV being new and novel at the time, that would put the stories in this annual around the 1983 time frame.
Olive also appears as the cook and she did not feature until 1981, earlier annuals had different and unnamed school cooks (though just as inept!)
This is a good annual anyway, not quite as good as the annuals released in the 1980s which featured strips from the 1960s and 1970s, a true golden age.
I've wanted a greenhouse for awhile though didn't really have enough space for it, but then i saw this mini greenhouse and thought it would be a good stop gap until i eventually have enough space (whenever that will be!)
I built the greenhouse this morning and have sited it next to the kitchen extension. It will get a lot of sunshine during the afternoon and evening, well it will when the rain finally stops anyway! I have moved the spider plant, which has just about managed to stay alive under the cloche, to the greenhouse.
I have been to Honeybourne once before but that was some time ago so it was high time i returned and updated my ptography, the village is in Worcestershire so will be in my fourth book. Honeybourne is a nice village on the border with Gloucestershire and on the edge of the Cotswolds (though this seems to cover a rather wide area).
A nice church, some thatched roofs and it didn't really rain much so a good day! You can see my photos here.
As well as old calculators, i also collect typewriters. I currently have 39 in my collection, though as yet no chimpanzees.
The latest machine to join the collection is a rather nice Italian typewriter from the 1960s, an Antares Little Star. It works fine as well, it didn't even need a new ribbon. The longevity of typewriters can be rather impressive.
Though to be honest i'm finding the current pop culture obsession with filling in gaps and continuity-porn a bit tiresome, as it was with this volume and a number of other volumes in the series. It would be nice for future volumes to explore new territory. "Plutarch's Staff" does cover some interesting origin details though, especially for one of the series' major characters.
The criticisms aside, the story is very good, and drawn beautifully of course. This story sees Blake more to the fore and so is less mystical and more action and intrigue based.
At the risk of contradicting myself in the previous paragraph the events that lead up to Secret of the Swordfish are very interesting indeed and fit in perfectly well with the later stories even though they were written by another author (the original master Edgar P. Jacobs of course) and over 60 years before.
This book is a survey of the railway stations of Warwickshire from Atherstone to Wootton Wawen. It details the history, architecture, operations and railway services each station has. All with lots of photographs from yours truly!
This is the first in a series i have been commissioned to create for Amberley. The second on the railway stations of the West Midlands should be out later this year. The third on the stations of Herefordshire & Worcestershire is now in the early stages, a fourth is also on the horizon...
The book has two halves, the first covers the history of the Luftwaffe after Hitler's take over, and throughout the war from glory to collapse. The second part is a directory of types used and is very comprehensive covering many obscure types as well as the famous aircraft like the Stuka and Bf109. Each entry in the directory contains technical information, colour artwork, and photographs. Major types also get full cutaway illustrations.
The book dates from the mid-1970s so some information may be out-of-date nowadays as archives have become more readily available but this book can only be very highly recommended indeed.
The parish church of St Mary the Virgin in Lapworth dates from the 12th century though much of the surviving church is from later centuries.
The nave is 12th century with a north aisle and chancel from the 13th, a north chantry chapel also dates from the 13th century though was rebuilt in the 15th. The church has a 14th century tower and also from that century a nave clerestory.
The tower is probably the most interesting feature of the church. The steeple is connected to the north aisle by a passage and has a projecting stairway. The church is built from random coursed stone.
I headed up to Frodsham in Cheshire at the weekend, a town i have not been to before. Though at times i did not think i would make it! I changed trains at Chester, somewhere else i have not been before, but at Helsby (the stop before Frodsham) the train was stopped due to trespassers on the line. This did give me a chance to look around Helsby station but as time went on it did look like the train might be turned around.
Luckily, after an hour the all clear was made and i made it to Frodsham. I climbed a very steep hill which gave a good view of the surrounding area, and gave me access to the church. You can see my photos here.
As usual, the crime is mostly investigated by an amateur detective (as it is a Golden Age novel), in this case it is Boddy, a former Army officer. He begins to investigate a varied set of suspects, who all possibly had competed for the artist's affections, including a missing priest and the victim's partner.
An interesting murder mystery, though maybe not one for many surprises. The mystery works more for it's ingenuity of how the fairly obvious culprit carried out the crime than anything else but it a perfectly decent story.
However, one comic did survive as it was left at my Grandmothers' house and years later i made sure i would keep this one...
Star Wars #54 then was released on Valentine's Day 1979 and includes a Star Wars comic strip and two other stories (The Micronauts and The Warlock which i wasn't that interested in back then and not so much now either). The Star Wars comic started off a weekly comic telling of the first Star Wars movie but once they blew up the Death Star, and Darth Vader went spinning off into space, they had to continue the comic with an early example of the Extended Universe at least until Empire Strikes Back was released in 1980.
The story here concerns Luke, Leia and Tagge who appears to be some kind of galactic mafia boss who hates Vader. Luke and Leia are trying to discover why and how Tagge can fly TIE fighters into the atmosphere of the gas giant Yavin, while at the same time evading Tagge's TIE fighter patrols. Of course, the story here was set between the two films and no one but George Lucas knew that Luke and Leia were siblings, so we get a little bit of mild incest.
The cliffhanger has their ship under attack by TIE fighters and the intriguing teaser that next week is called "R2 D2 Casualty Of War", as to what happened in Star Wars #55, i can't remember, but obviously R2 was fine as he made the next film OK...