The Body In The Library – Agatha Christie, 1942 ★★★

Murder Most Cozy

When you read a book that helped spawn an entire subgenre, you tend to look for signs of aborning fecundity.

Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple is to cozy mysteries what James Bond is to spy fiction: The first name that springs to mind when discussing the genre. Think murder in a quiet town, a dash of elegant humor and no big emotions, and you think Marple.

Adolf Hitler: My Part In His Downfall – Spike Milligan, 1971 ★★½

Goon Goes to War

There’s nothing so tragic that laughter can’t be mined from it. Not even World War II.

Of course, a lot depends on who is doing the mining.

Back in the 1950s, Spike Milligan redefined comedy in Great Britain as a performer and lead writer on radio’s “The Goon Show.” Before all that, in 1940, Milligan took time out of his young life to help beat back the Nazi war machine, as a draftee in an artillery regiment.

King Edward III – William Shakespeare & others, c. 1594 ★★½

Making a Case for Number 39

William Shakespeare is commonly credited with having written 38 plays, many if not most regarded as classics to this day. Why not make room for another?

The answer is an easy no if the play is not up to the standard one expects from the Bard of Avon. Much of the time this patriotism pageant unspools, the result is uneven, as more sensitive members of academia put it. But then you find yourself catching sparks of true genius and wit that, if not exclusive to Shakespeare, ring with his singular voice.

Did Shakespeare lend a hand? The evidence suggests a qualified yes.

Land Of Black Gold – Hergé, 1939-1940/1948-1950 [Revised 1971] ★★★★

Worth the Wait

How much can you expect from a Tintin book that took five calendar decades to reach us in its final form? Logically not a lot, but logic has a way of being happily ignored in the world of Tintin.

Such is the case for Land Of Black Gold, at least for me.

How Life Imitates The World Series – Thomas Boswell, 1982 ★★★½

Dealing Out Poetry and Hard Slides

Baseball lends itself to two kinds of writing styles, lyrical and analytical. Thomas Boswell is a rare baseball writer who pulls off both with equal finesse.

Whether writing about stars or taking in the sport’s appeal to all ages, Boswell waxes poetic and, at times, sentimental about the communal power of the game, its power to simultaneously apotheosize and humanize its actors. But before those Ken Burns violins get going, Boswell throws in a zinger or one-liner to make clear he’s no sap.