The holidays are a time for peace on Earth and good will towards man. So movies set at that time often involve heartwarming and cute scenes like Tiny Tim saying, “God bless us everyone;” Jimmy Stewart running through Bedford Falls wishing everybody a, “Merry Christmas;” and the guy from The Walking Dead telling Kiera Knightly that she’s perfect. That’s fine, and those are some scenes from good movies, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having a good action sequence at Christmas time. In fact, it can be a lot of fun to watch brave heroes and heroines battle to preserve the spirit of the season. So, if you’re in the mood for some mayhem to go along with your cheer, here are several exciting holiday classics to consider:

Die Hard  (1988) & Die Hard 2 (1990)

These are the two films that probably come to mind when most people think about Christmas action movies, and for good reason, too. Watching a lone everyman (granted, his everyman quality tended to diminish as the film franchise went on), John McClane, try to save Christmas from an army of bad guys is a lot of fun, especially when their leader is Alan Rickman. The tension, humor, and Rickman’s villainy make the first film one of the greatest action movies of all time, but the sequel where McClane tries to liberate a busy holiday airport from the grip of William Sadler’s rogue military unit is a lot of fun, too.

If the first Die Hard is already a regularly part of your holiday viewing, you might want to try reading the novel it's based on, Roderick Thorp's Nothing Lasts Forever, which is a much darker and grittier story. It features an older protagonist named Joe Leland, but it's still fantastic. I'm currently reading 58 Minutes by Walter Wager, which was the inspiration for Die Hard 2.

[KaBOOM! Santa's got a half dozen more to drop on you...]

In not-surprising-in-the-least news, Tom Cruise is set to return as Lee Child's silent but intimidating hero, Jack Reacher in a sequel to 2012's Jack Reacher. This new film is reported to be based upon the newest Reacher thriller, Never Go Back. Irony, of course, being something completely alien to Hollywood execs.  

The newest book has Reacher returning to Virginia to find a friend under arrest, himself a suspect in an assault case, and a child that a woman swears is his. That last bit may be what is driving the rumor that Reacher will have a “smart teen female sidekick” in the film. Despite how you may feel about Cruise as a not so towering, not quite physically intimidating Jack Reacher, it can't be argued that the first film didn't preform at the box office. So the question remains, will you watch?

Roger Ebert said of Invasion of the Bee Girls, at the time of its 1973 release, “[it] is the best schlock soft-core science fiction movie since maybe The Vengeance of She." Wow. And did Ebert invent a genre there?

In writing about this movie, which is my personal top 10 all time favorite cult films, I don’t want to get bogged down with a long rundown of its plot. For one thing, anyone reading this could get that from IMDB or 20-30 other places on the web. For another, people who haven’t seen the movie, and want to, should experience it the way I originally did: with only a vague sense of what it is about. Let it surprise you.

But, for some reference, here are a few particulars: the tale is set in a place called Peckham, in California. It’s a small town that’s home to a scientific research complex. Men, both inside and outside of the science center, are dying of heart failure. And none of them had cardiac conditions before. Autopsies reveal that they were all into some intense nookie at the time of their passing; or, as one character states, they were “coming and going at the same time.” Because the research center is government-sponsored, the feds get interested and send in one of their agents to investigate.

The cast is ideal. Anitra Ford, one of the original “Barker’s Beauties” models on The Price is Right, portrays a sultry, remote, dangerous lady scientist. 1968's Playboy Playmate of the Year Victoria Vetri is another researcher, and is the good-girl sexy scientist, to balance out Ford’s bad girl-sexy scientist. William Smith, who has an acting CV that goes on forever and who had played badass motorcycle dudes prior to Bee Girls, is the federal agent. That trio makes up the main players, but there are several enjoyable side characters.

Smith, who was gracious enough to answer a few questions of mine about the movie, describes how he came to take on the role of the hunky agent Neil Agar.

Editor's note: Just in case you weren't sure yet... like many other theatrical releases of its era, this film contains abundant skin and frankly sexual references.

[Even suspicious G-men are sexy in Peckham...]

It's a rare thing to know of someone who gets money stolen from them only to have the reaction: “They must have needed it more than I did.” But that's exactly the reaction one coffee shop owner had last week when a thief nonchalantly grabbed money out of the tip jar and walked out of the store.

After the theft, instead of pressing charges the owner (who had caught the thief in security footage) decided to hold a food drive to give to the man if he elected to come forward. The decision created polarizing opinions—for some it restored their faith in humanity, for others it was rewarding bad behavior.

What do you think? Is the owner rewarding bad behavior or are they helping out a fellow man during hard economic times?

Tip jar image courtesy of torbakhopper via Flickr.

Or are elves secretly applying for new gigs as imps? If so, one of the 7 unbreakable codes this isn't, but then again, centuries of whittling alphabet blocks may dull the mental edge somewhat.

Hat tip: Cheezburger's Fail blog.

Iron & Velvet by Alexis Hall is the first book in the Kate Kane: Paranormal Investigator romantic suspense noir series (available December 16, 2013).

My name’s Kate Kane, and when an eight-hundred-year-old vampire prince came to me with a case, I should have told her no. But I’ve always been a sucker for a femme fatale.

It always goes the same way. You move too fast, you get in too deep, and before you know it, someone winds up dead. Last time it was my partner. This time it could be me. Yesterday a werewolf was murdered outside the Velvet, the night-time playground of one of the most powerful vampires in England. Now half the monsters in London are at each other’s throats, and the other half are trying to get in my pants. The Witch Queen will protect her own, the wolves are out for vengeance, and the vampires are out for, y’know, blood.

I’ve got a killer on the loose, a war on the horizon, and a scotch on the rocks. It’s going to be an interesting day.

Iron and Velvet by Alexis Hall livens its contemporary urban fantasy setting with a strong noir voice.  Detective Kate Kane, the first-person narrator, could easily slide into a black-and-white movie and begin flirting with Lauren Bacall, so long as a few vampires and fae and werewolves also showed up.  The overall tone is less dark than classic noir novels, such as those by Raymond Chandler, but Kate still shares a number of characteristics with those detectives, including drinking and women.

[Two great pasttimes...]

San Francisco has always embraced the weird, the outrageous, and the rebellious. From the raucous times of the Barbary Coast, to the howling poetry of the Beats, to the free love of the hippies, letting your freak flag fly is not just a slogan in the City by the Bay, but a way of life.

All of that uninhibited freedom, though, has at times fostered a sense of lawlessness in San Francisco. For every sailor who awoke in a brothel in the Barbary Coast, another awoke on a ship, kidnapped by “Shanghai” Kelly; while the Beats were reciting poetry in North Beach, Sonny Barger was forming the notorious Oakland chapter of the Hells Angels; and as the hippies were frolicking in Golden Gate Park, the Zodiac Killer was tallying victims all across the Bay Area.

It’s not surprising, then, that two great crime books to come from San Francisco were written by authors with checkered pasts. You Can’t Win by Jack Black, and Shake Him Till He Rattles by Malcolm Braly, were penned by career criminals who straightened out in time to capture their respective eras in San Francisco history. Though written decades apart, the books share a voice that is particular to that of an ex-con. It is a voice that is tough yet empathetic, unflinching yet forgiving. It is neither self-pitying nor self-flagellating. It is the voice of a life lived hard.

You Can’t Win, first published in 1926, is the autobiography of Jack Black, who was at various times a burglar, a convict, a dope fiend, a “yegg,” and a member of the Johnson Gang of thieves. Black crisscrossed the country at the turn of the 20th century, learning his craft (thieving, not writing) from a cast of characters so vivid, their names alone will make you smile: The Sanctimonious Kid, Salt Chunk Mary, Sticks Sullivan, Foot-and-a-half George, and Montana Blacky, to name just a few. After many visits to San Francisco, Black eventually settled down in the city, his decision no doubt influenced by his stay in nearby San Quentin prison.

Open to any page in You Can’t Win and you will see why it was the favorite book of William S. Burroughs, who wrote the introduction for the AK Press reissue. Black’s teeming prose, his rat-a-tat-tat rhythm, and his use of street slang are obvious influences on the Beats, especially Jack Kerouac. You Can’t Win is also stuffed with delightful old time colloquialisms: professional thieves were “yeggs,” cops were “bulls,” opium was “hop,” and everyone was addressed as “kid,” no matter their age.

Black tells us at the beginning of the book that he is going to write about the things he stole during his life as a thief just as he took them, “with a smile.”

[How Cities and Criminals Evolve...]

We just delivered this to @amazon HQ in honor of a 3 year overdue invoice. Can we please get this mess fixed? —ruaok http://t.co/K6OJWis3NK

— MusicBrainz (@MusicBrainz) December 3, 2013

Using mom's lesson “If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all” paid off when the open music encyclopedia site, Music Brainz, decided to say something nice and send this passive aggressive cake to Amazon to celebrate the third anniversary...of not getting paid! Most criminals would just go for the knee caps (and not have the patience) if they had to wait THREE YEARS for an invoice, so this is the better way to go. In the end, Music Brainz got paid, and Amazon got a free cake. Win/win, yes?

Oh man, O Man.

I need to come clean on something before I get going. And that is that I was only nine or so when this very incredible, very thoughtful TV show first came on the scene. I was too young to stay up that late. I only vaguely remember the second half of the first season, when the show was moved from San Diego to Los Angeles. Some sort of money thing, as shooting in San Diego quickly became too costly. Harry, played to the hilt by David Janssen, was the penultimate private eye. Harry Orwell had been a cop but was wounded in the line of duty. However, getting shot in the back didn’t kill him; it killed his career as a policeman instead. What I love about that bullet is that it serves as a powerful symbol for the wounding that Harry’s view of the world took. In an even more powerful bit of symbolism, he owns a derelict boat named The Answer. Can you get any more symbolic, right? And of course, he’s always working on The Answer. (Yes, I just had to get that in, sorry.)

Harry of course has a cop friend on the force (which private detective doesn’t?). Captain Manny Quinlan, played by Henry Darrow. He was given a difficult role, was Henry, having to play the foil for Harry’s character. One moment he’s a source of information, then in another he’s the cop who threatens to yank Harry’s private eye license. I would like to add here one totally bad-ass bit of awesomeness in the Captain Quinlan character: his ties rival Michael Douglas’s in The Streets of San Francisco. After the show moved to Los Angeles, Darrow’s character was replaced by Lt. Trench of the Santa Monica PD, played to perfection by Anthony Zerbe (who won an Emmy for his role).

[Put these all together and what do you get?]

Norman Reedus in People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive issue (December 2, 2013)?

Yeah, you can see that .

Norman Reedus featured in the story about sexy guys who love cats?

Yeah, we know... we just blew your mind.

But you’re not completely surprised that Daryl from The Walking Dead has a soft side, and a black rescue cat that his son named Eye in the Dark. In the right hands, Reedus says, the cat is a “big fluff love ball,” but he adds, “...if I don’t like someone, they leave bleeding. He’s a little baddie.”

Yeah, you can definitely see that.

Mystery Writers of America has just announced its new Grandmasters for 2014, and authors Robert Crais and Carolyn Hart will be honored at the Edgar Awards banquet next May 1st.

In addition to these worthies, also to be feted will be Aunt Agatha's—a new and used mystery and crime bookshop in Ann Arbor, Michigan— which will be awarded the Raven for outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of creative writing.

It's shaping up to be a great Edgars already!

In October 1947, the House Committee on Un-American Activities held its first hearings into alleged Communist subversion in Hollywood. This kicked off one of the darkest eras in the history of the American film industry. For years, Hollywood was thrown into turmoil as investigations were held in Congress and on the front pages of newspapers all across America. Careers were ruined, friendships betrayed, and an entire generation of filmmakers and filmgoers came of age in a postwar environment boiling with suspicion and fear.

Perhaps, then, it’s not entirely incidental that film noir entered its golden years in 1947. A genre defined by guilt and paranoia, in some respects noir could only have flowered the way it did in tumultuous Hollywood of the late forties and early fifties.

[A scary time to be in show business...]

During the Prohibition years from 1920 to 1933, alcoholic beverages were illegal in the United States. But it was still fairly easy to get a drink. One of the easiest ways was to find a speakeasy—a hidden bar that served bootleg liquor and that often required a password to get in. Legend has it that the name speakeasy came from patrons being told to “speak easy,” or softly, so the police wouldn’t hear the party.

When the Volstead Act, which put Prohibition in place, was repealed in 1933, 80 years ago on December 5th, the speakeasies disappeared. But if you want to revisit that time in a new way, you have your chance because modern speakeasies have popped up all over the country. These bars take the mystery and romance of history and create a fun atmosphere.

Hallmarks of the modern speakeasy include:

1) Individually mixed drinks with fresh ingredients, often invented at that bar. We’re talking fresh, muddled fruit and innovative concoctions. A far cry from the quality of spirits found in most speakeasies back in the day. This also means you pay more than you would for an average cocktail, and depending on the city you’re in, it can be a lot more.

2) An unmarked door or a misleading sign. You have to know where the speakeasy is. Most doors are unmarked, but I’ve visited one behind the façade of a Fortune Telling shop and another where you had to go into a restaurant and pick up an antique phone to gain admittance.

3) Reservations are commonly a must, and many times, you’ll need a password. It pays to do your research. I’ve never had trouble getting into a popular place—as long as I made a reservation and knew in advance if I needed a password.  

4) An intimate atmosphere with lots of attention from your bartender to help you get exactly what you want. These places are small (thus the need for reservatinos), and the décor is well planned. Many of the speakeasies even play the music of the time.

Are you ready to go? Some friends and I started visiting these places as we traveled, and we've compiled our Top Ten list from around the country.  So here are my favorites in no particular order:

[Suddenly... so ... thirsty...]

A neuroscientist who had his brain scan handy while reviewing those of various psychopaths, schizophrenics, and even some murderers serendipitously diagnosed his own “low activity in areas of the frontal and temporal lobes linked to empathy, morality and self-control.” See image above. According to Joseph Stromberg's blog post at Smithsonian Magazine:

... when he underwent a series of genetic tests, he got more bad news. “I had all these high-risk alleles for aggression, violence and low empathy,” he says, such as a variant of the MAO-A gene that has been linked with aggressive behavior. Eventually, based on further neurological and behavioral research into psychopathy, he decided he was indeed a psychopath—just a relatively good kind, what he and others call a “pro-social psychopath,” someone who has difficulty feeling true empathy for others but still keeps his behavior roughly within socially-acceptable bounds.

It wasn’t entirely a shock to [James] Fallon, as he’d always been aware that he was someone especially motivated by power and manipulating others, he says. Additionally, his family line included seven alleged murderers, including Lizzie Borden, infamously accused of killing her father and stepmother in 1892.

We at Crime HQ tend to take a jaundiced view of the ways some people choose to dispose of their mortal remains, because—let’s face it—those ways can be strange. But we can recognize pretty when we see it, so without a hint of snark we present Shine on Brightly, an Asheville, North Carolina, company that sells cremation urns, grave markers, memory books, memorial jewelry and other keepsakes made by local artists and artisans.

What do President Zachary Taylor and Warren G. (Gamaliel) Harding have in common, other than being president? Yes, both were somewhat heavyset. But more importantly, both of their deaths have stirred the pot of conspiracy.  Taylor, who died in 1850, was believed to have died from overeating in hot weather. Harding officially died of a stroke or heart attack. But were their deaths really natural, or were they murder? In Taylor’s case, the exhumation and forensic exam of his body proved without doubt that he had indeed died of natural causes.  But the whispers of murder still float around Harding. Could the notorious womanizer-in-chief have been murdered? Or were his well-known blood pressure issues really to blame?

Warren G. Harding had his share of enemies, most of whom were self-created .  Elected in 1920 on a platform of returning the nation to “normalcy” after World War I, he packed his government with a mixture of bright administrators and Ohio cronies. His attorney general, Harry Daugherty, fought off a couple of impeachment attempts.  Probably the worst of his appointments was Secretary of the Interior Albert Falls, who accepted bribes in regards to oil rights in Teapot Dome, Wyoming, and eventually went to prison.  And most scholars agree that Harding had extramarital affairs with four women, two of them close friends with his wife, Florence.

[So what else is new?]