He has a face only a mother could love, and a stop-stammer delivery system that makes you think he’s making it all up as he goes along, but he elevates just about everything I’ve ever seen him in. He was the heart and soul of I Capture the Castle.
I’m currently watching him as the editor of the London Herald in the miniseries State of Play, which also features John Simm and Philip Glenister of Life on Mars. Glenister again plays a DCI, but Simm is a newspaper editor on the trail of a huge story involving the murder of a petty thief and the probable murder of the lover of a backbench MP whose star is rising. Excellent stuff—the British do political intrigue unlike anyone else, in my opinion.
I was going to start the new John Grisham, but I received a copy of Spade and Archer from the publisher today, so I decided to tackle it instead. It’s a prequel to The Maltese Falcon and starts out with Sam Spade leaving the Continental agency and starting up his own private detective agency. His last case as a Continental op was the Flitcraft case that Spade talks about in Falcon, the story about the falling beam. That’s always been one of my favorite vignettes, how a guy changes his life after a near-miss and ends up a couple of years later in a virtual photocopy of the life he left behind. A world in which steel beams no longer fall from the sky. The author has the tone and the language down pat so far, and the strained history between Spade and Archer is established early on, though how they end up partnering remains to be seen.
Read today that some clever scientists have discovered a new elemental form of boron. Not as sexy perhaps as discovering buckyballs, but the new pressure version, which seems to remain stable at normal pressure after it has been made, is almost as hard as diamond and more heat resistant.
I got a kick out of Big Bang Theory last night. It contravened the normal plotline of Friend A lends Friend B money and then makes all sorts of impossible demands by having Friend B beat herself up over the loan before Friend A even gets a chance to do so.
Received an acceptance letter for a short story this morning. Always welcome news. I’ll post more details as they become available.
I’m just about ready to print out the first draft of the manuscript. I have to do my selected bibliography and have a couple of other peripheral matters to take care of, then it’ll be ready to go. I received a little constructive feedback from the editor yesterday as well, which I’ll take care of during preliminiary revisions.
