Just last month teen idol Bobby Sherman passed away. He would have turned 82 years old today.
Bobby seemed to be everywhere. He was singing on the radio, as well as acting on television and on the big screen. He was a singer on the show “Shindig,” he had a role on “Here Comes the Brides,” and had guest appearances on Emergency!, The Mod Squad, Murder She Wrote, and even Frasier.
Eventually, he left the public spotlight and became a paramedic. He volunteered with the LAPD, working with paramedics and giving CPR and first aid classes. He became a technical Reserve Police Officer with the LAPD in the 1990s, a position he still held as of 2017. For more than a decade he served as a medical training officer at the Los Angeles Police Academy, instructing thousands of police officers in first aid and CPR. He was named LAPD’s Reserve Officer of the Year in 1999.
In March of this year he was diagnosed with stage 4 kidney cancer. He passed away three months later on June 24th.
He left us plenty of music. He released 107 songs, 23 singles and 10 albums between 1962 and 1976. Seven of those were Top 40 hits. The one that always comes to my mind is Julie Do You Love Me, which reached #5 on the Hot 100 chart.
I recently finished The Author’s Guide To Murder by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White. I’ve had luck in the past with books written by more than one author, but this one wasn’t all I had hoped for.
Before I give my brief thoughts, let’s looks at the Goodreads synopsis:
Agatha Christie meets Murder, She Wrote meets #MeToo in this witty locked room mystery and literary satire by New York Times bestselling team of Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White.
There’s been a sensational murder at historic Castle Kinloch, a gothic fantasy of grey granite on a remote island in the Highlands of Scotland. Literary superstar Brett Saffron Presley has been found dead—under bizarre circumstances—in the castle tower’s book-lined study. Years ago, Presley purchased the castle as a showpiece for his brand and to lure paying guests with a taste for writerly glamour. Now it seems, the castle has done him in…or, possibly, one of the castle’s guests has. Detective Chief Inspector Euan McIntosh, a local with no love for this literary American show-off (or Americans in general), finds himself with the unenviable task of extracting statements from three American lady novelists.
The prime suspects are Kat de Noir, a slinky, sexy erotica writer; Cassie Pringle, a Southern mom of six juggling multiple cozy mystery series; and Emma Endicott, a New England blue blood and author of critically acclaimed historical fiction. The women claim to be best friends writing a book a historical novel about the castle’s lurid past and its debauched laird, who himself ended up creatively murdered. But the authors’ stories about how they know Brett Saffron Presley don’t quite line up, and the detective is getting increasingly suspicious.
Why did the authors really come to Castle Kinloch? Is the murder of the long-ago laird somehow connected with the playboy author’s unfortunate demise? And what really happened the night of the great Kinloch ceilidh, when Brett Saffron Presley skipped the folk dancing for a rendezvous with death?
A crafty locked-room mystery, a pointed satire about the literary world, and a tale of unexpected friendship and romance—this novel has it all, as only three bestselling authors can tell it!
The fact that the synopsis refers to this as a “locked-room mystery” is a bit misleading. Perhaps it should have been referred to as a “Stuck on an Island” mystery because the characters are roaming all over the island, rather than being locked in a room.
I’m not sure I agree with the Agatha Christie or Murder, She Wrote nods either. I never felt like this book was close to either one of these.
For what it is worth, I liked the premise and it certainly had potential. I just never felt any excitement or that the story moved at all. There were parts I felt were unnecessary to move the plot along. Many of the situations were forced with awkward predictable dialogue.
Without giving any spoilers, some of the outcomes of the characters just didn’t make any sense to me. One minute they are normal, at the end, not so much. With the exception of one or two, the characters seemed flat or stereotypical. Not to mention the introductions of some of them with the “Oh my goodness, you are _______!” or “You and ________ are related?!”
Don’t get me started on the ending.
This was an example of “Too many cooks spoil the broth.” Each of these authors had written books, apparently some good ones. (I don’t know as I have never read them separately.) Three heads are not better than one for this story ….
The very talented Angela Lansbury has passed away just days shy of her 97th birthday. She will forever be remembered for her role as Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote. She was also in Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Blue Hawaii, Gaslight, Death on the Nile, Beauty and the Beast, and so many other roles.
I stumbled on one of her earlier performances on accident. I was doing a search for Film Noir films and found one that starred Raymond Burr (Perry Mason). Angela Lansbury starred opposite of him in a film that has become a favorite – Please Murder Me from 1956.
IMDB describes it this way:
A lawyer (Raymond Burr) suffers a guilt complex after getting a murder acquittal for his client (Agela Lansbury), and then finding out she did commit the crime.
Rotten Tomatoes gives a little bit more of the plot for you:
A lovesick attorney (Raymond Burr) tries to trap a murder client (Angela Lansbury) he got acquitted by arranging for her to kill him.
The movie starts with lawyer Craig Carlson buying a pistol at a pawn shop and putting it in his office desk drawer with a file folder. He dictates a message into a tape recorder for the local district attorney revealing that he expects to be murdered within an hour, and he begins to tell his story in extended flashbacks.
I believe that the film is now in the public domain and can be viewed completely on YouTube. It is worth the watch. Great film noir and great acting from Burr and Lansbury. The film reminds me of something you would hear on an old radio show like Suspense or The Whistler. Great ending!
Various Ramblings of a Nostalgic Italian 