The folks over at Cemetery Dance have done some site re-organization. After installing WordPress, my online column has a new URL. Of course, you can still use NewsFromTheDeadZone.com to get there, too.
I watched Hanging Gardens, the third episode of the Rebus series. Not as good as the second, not as bad as the first. Some good, realistic twists. I find it interesting how proximate the criminals and the cops are. Without guns to defend themselves, a lot of the exchanges end up like bar room brawniness and high school smackdowns.
So, is Wendy going to get to be a “field mouse” on C.S.I.? Hodges is a funny character. So geeky and pompous but he has his moments of redemption, too, as when he told Wendy he just wanted her to be happy. Usually the acting on the show is at least solid, but I thought Nick’s reactions in the final scene when the brother was released from jail were forced and obvious.
Mice seemed to be a theme on Thursday night, with Jane using one (Mr. Jingles, is that you?) to effect an escape from the lockup. Of course, he psychoanalyzed everyone in jail with him and solved the murder almost without leaving (like Nero Wolfe, solving his crimes from the brownstone). Getting one of the suspects “brought to him” was funny. Still, I find the show teetering on the balance, trying to decide whether to be serious or comedic. NCIS pulls off the comedy. The Mentalist hasn’t figured out the right recipe yet.
Finishing up revisions on Chapter Two and plan to send it off to my agent tomorrow.
I read quite a bit more of Awaiting Your Reply this morning. The title comes from the end of one of those Nigerian scam e-mails, the one that everyone is familiar with. My husband died and I’ll give you millions of dollars if you’ll help me get his fortune out of the Ivory Coast. The e-mail itself doesn’t play a part in the story, which is about identity–what it means, and what it doesn’t mean. You have a university kid whose biological father (who he knew as his uncle until the revelation) contacts him. The kid’s pissed that the people who raised him never thought it was important enough to tell him who he really was. After he runs away, he’s declared dead. He’s working with his father (but is he really his father?) on some elaborate scam involving identity theft. The kid travels around the country under different aliases, making transactions, creating lives for these fabricated identities. Then there’s the guy whose twin brother is scizophrenic, who likes to tell him made-up stories about things that supposedly happened when they were kids. So the brother has his original memories of childhood and, imprinted on top of them, the wild fantasies his brother has spun. Confusion ensues. The mentally ill brother has been traveling around the country, adopting different pseudonymns, and fooling people into believing he’s a professional this or an expert that. And then there’s the young woman who’s traveling with her former high school history teacher, a man who probably isn’t what he claims to be (what history teacher could afford a $70,000 car?).
Speaking of identity, we watched The Burning Plain, with Kim Bassinger and Charlize Theron. The movie was a tad confusing at first, because it’s told out of sequence and there are characters who are supposed to be older versions of themselves but it takes a while to unravel who’s really who. An interesting film about rejection (Bassinger’s husband couldn’t make love to her after her breast was removed for cancer treatment) and new love, about children disliking the people they love, about love happening between people who were supposed to hate each other, about punishment gone wrong, and about chances to atone.
