“Short, fat, and of a quiet disposition, he appeared to spend a lot of money on really bad clothes, which hung about his squat frame like skin on a shrunken toad.” That tag at the start of John LeCarré’s first espionage novel conspicuously describes the master spy, George Smiley. Call for the Dead, published in 1961 at the height of Ian Fleming’s James Bond series, draws a sharp contrast between the suave 007 and the frumpy Smiley. Around the same time, Len Deighton’s unnamed spy was also published, further playing against Fleming’s popular creation, but Deighton’s protagonist (named Harry Palmer in the films) is a nerdy cool agent with gourmet skills to boot and also, like Bond, is quite successful with the ladies. LeCarré’s Smiley has no such natural gimmicks as good looks or effortless magnetism to fall back on when the chips are down.
Smiley does have two gifts that eventually tip the scales in his favor. One is his analytical mind (perhaps the greatest since Nero Wolfe, if not Sherlock Holmes) that dissects intricate spy-web evils. And the other is patience on the Methuselah scale—he studies and plans long before he leaps. Sure, you may prefer Bond in a firefight or Palmer to dine alongside at a five-star restaurant, but Smiley is the agent you would call on in a world of bureaucratic hijinks and calculating double agents that litter both sides of the Atlantic. He’s the real deal.
Pouncing and ambushing only use so many calories when you're devouring food up to 3 times your size. And yet, we've never seen a spider with a Homer-Simpson belly like a python's. How do they keep their trim figures? Fishing spiders (genus Dolomedes) grab prey and liquify its insides with enzymes so they can slurp the whole things through their prey-holes. Below is one making a frog into fluid. Yes, raw food juicing is all the rage and supposed to be very healthful, but don't watch this old-school version from National Geographic unless you're an armchair naturalist or you want to see a seriously droopy sack of amphibian. Eeeeeewww. Just saying, if one of these juicing-fanatics shows up with its family to join the community pool, we're out of there.
Deadout by Jon McGoran is a thriller centered on a New England island where genetically modified bees hide dark corporate secrets (available August 5, 2014).
Here at Criminal Element we are not normally in the business of giving advice to the bad guys, but a man in Costa Mesa, California might want to rethink his love for the popular El Pollo Loco chain. So here is our advice… After you burglarize a place, it’s probably best to not return for some grub a few hours later. Or at the very least least, change your darn clothes first.
That’s an easy outfit to remember, right? The manager who had seen the surveillance footage earlier made the connection in a split-second. He quickly called the cops to report that, as a police statement explained, “a subject matching the description of the suspect seen on the store video was back at the restaurant, in line to order food.”
Friday, July 18th kicked off with an autograph session featuring Craig and all the actors, except Cassidy Freeman. (Editor’s Note: These are the very signatories to the poster in the comments sweepstakes below!) Fans from far and wide began lining up outside the old Clear Creek Elementary School before 7 a.m., when Craig Johnson pulled into the lot in the replica sheriff’s Bronco. The signing wouldn’t start until 9 a.m., but in the meantime, souvenirs were sold, people took pictures with the Bronco and chatted with fellow fans, and volunteers mingled throughout the crowd letting everyone know what to expect. There was an excitement in the early morning Durant air.
The penultimate episode of the season started with a bang and barely came up for air as writer Sarah Nicole Jones scrawled another corker of a show that had me satisfied almost to the end.
A Colder War by Charles Cumming is the 2nd espionage thriller featuring MI6 agent Tom Kell who must piece together a series of international crimes all resulting in the deaths of newly recruited agents (available August 5, 2014).
City of Ghosts by Kelli Stanley is the 3rd historical mystery featuring investigator Miranda Corbie as she travels the United States during the early days of WWII (available August 5, 2014).
The “Big Four” has a particular meaning in this episode of Poirot, but to those of us who love him as played by David Suchet, the “Big Four” can only refer to Captain Hastings (Hugh Fraser), Chief Inspector Japp (Philip Jackson), the inestimable Miss Lemon (Pauline Moran), and the brilliant Belgian himself. (No offense to George the butler, but how often does he actually leave the flat?)
The island perches among canals south of Mexico City, and didn't start out moth-eaten, mold-covered, and terrifying... probably.
Death, Taxes, and Silver Spurs by Diane Kelly is the 7th romantic mystery in the Tara Holloway series featuring the IRS Special Agent (available July 29, 2014).
Well Read, Then Dead by Terrie Farley Moran is the first book in the Read ’Em and Eat cozy mystery series (available August 5, 2014).
