TwoNewfs Publishing

What Rainy Daze Writers are reading: A book review by L. C. Mcgee, author of The Amber Crow Mystery Series.

Seed to Dust, by Marc Hamer

I was flailing around in my vegetable patch one afternoon when an eager, novice plantsman, hailed me over the Marion berry fence. “Thought you’d be interested in this book,” he said, waving it at me. Naturally I was intrigued. It is a book about Gardening, sort of.

Marc Hamer is a unique writer, peppering his writings with insights into insect’s lives, birds, types of trees, plants, and ways of working with nature.

(But…a slight diversion here). Somehow the book resonated with my teenage quest in the past, i.e., what is Existentialism? It was more intriguing than all religions (ancient, popular and not so), and other philosophies (same). Of course, as only an avid teenager (nerd type) would do, I read all the materials that I could get my hands on. And whoa, this amazing writer evoked memories of that youthful quest.

Hamer, without using the abstruse wanderings of a Camus, or the pedantic musings of a Sartre, explores feelings involving existentialism with clarity. He never mentions the actual subject, and I felt his philosophical musings were unintentional, i.e., just the way he looks at life.

With gentle, loving reminiscing he weaves in stories of nature, plants and humans. All produced from observations, while working Januarys through Decembers in a country garden.

As I followed his narrative, I came across, landmarks that point to love, destiny and the intrinsic meanings of life. Hamer fascinated this reader, giving meaningful glimpses of moments in his life. When a young man, he wrestled with thoughts of su***de, miseries of a fractured family, and homelessness.

Throughout this marvelous book I felt I was listening to a wise and trusted friend.
https://www.amazon.com/Seed-Dust-Nature-Country-Garden-ebook/dp/B08TT76NDV

The Third Man, a film review by Cat Ruiz Kigerl
United Kingdom
1949. Director, Carol Reed
Zither Music by Anton Karas
Screenplay by Graham Greene

The Third Man is known as an “all-time classic thriller,” and categorized also as film-noir, a film genre that involved post-WWII settings, and dark, pessimistic and fatalistic plots. It is the story of Holly Martins (played by Joseph Cotton), an apparently innocent American writer of pulp Westerns with a curious mind and a knack for undercover work. He goes to visit his friend, Harry Limes, in post-WWII Vienna, and finds out Lime has just died. He’s quickly lured into a web of suspicion about Lime’s death. Was it murder? Who was the third man who carried Lime’s body from the scene of the accident? At the same time, Martins is entranced by his friend’s lover, Anna Schmidt (played by Alida Valli, who sounds remarkably like Ingrid Bergman). While trying to unravel Lime’s fate, Martins pursues Schmidt to the very end of the film. But Schmidt clings to her memory of Lime. “I loved him,” she tells Martins over and over, even after admitting she knew about Lime’s involvement in a bad penicillin racket that led to the deaths and madness of children (a racket based upon actual events). For some reason her ‘love’ didn’t ring true after that, especially when we finally meet Harry Lime himself (played by Orson Welles) toward the end of the film.

This is Joseph Cotton’s film even though Orson Welles still gets top billing. Welles effectively plays a cold-hearted criminal who does not justify Schmidt’s devotion. But his role is too short to begin to even like his darkness. Ardent Welles fans might of course disagree.
Director, Carol Reed’s surreal use of black and white film is top-notch. Shadows spiral up streets and around corners, silhouettes intrigue, faces are captured in stark frontal views, such as the remarkable mask-like face of Baron Kurtz (played by Ernest Deutsh), a little-dog-carrying accomplice to the crime racket.

The zither music, played throughout the film by Anton Karas, weaves unforgettable magic into the story’s fabric. It is often chilling and light at the same time, adding to the feel of fantasy mixed with stark reality.

Graham Greene, who wrote the screenplay, and known for his dark stories, stated that THE THIRD MAN was always meant for film. In Greene’s own words: “The Third Man was never written to be read but only to be seen. Like many love affairs it started at a dinner table and continued with many headaches in many places: Vienna, Venice, Ravello, London, Santa Monica.” He adds, “To me it is almost impossible to write a film play without first writing a story. Even a film depends on more than plot, on a certain measure of characterization, on mood and atmosphere; and these seem to me to be almost impossible to capture for the first time in the dull shorthand of a script. One can reproduce an effect caught in another medium, but one cannot make the first act of creation in script form. One must have the sense of more material than one needs to draw on. The Third Man, therefore, though never intended for publication, had to start as a story before it began those apparently interminable transformations from one treatment to the other.” Greene and Reed’s collaboration resulted in this timeless classic because, according to Greene, he and Reed “…had no desire to move people’s political emotions; we wanted to entertain them, to frighten them a little, to make them laugh.”

Quote from: The Third Man. The Criterion Collection. 1999.

Photo from: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041959/mediaindex

Film Review by Cat Ruiz Kigerl. author of fiction, poetry, and screenplay. 2021

What TwoNewfs Authors are reading.

The Murderer in Ruins by Cay Rademacher, reviewed by L. C. Mcgee, author of The Amber Crow series, TwoNewfs Publishing.

Skillfully Written. The Murderer in Ruins by Cay Rademacher. Reviewed by L. C. Mcgee, author of The Amber Crow Series, TwoNewfs Publishing.

I ran across the author’s first book, The Murderous Mistrial and found it intriguing. The protagonist, Roger Blanc, formerly of the Paris gendarmerie, is now working in Provence. Monsieur Blanc is an ‘expert detective’ in a delightful place and meeting a variety of interesting people. I was hooked. I’d found another excellent and innovative mystery writer, whose stories are involved and complex.

Back to The Murderer in Ruins. The place, Hamburg Germany 1947, and the Brits are occupying the city. Chief Inspector, Frank Stave has a series of murders to solve. Through the eyes of the persistent Inspector, the reader views a monstrous cold winter, and the starkness and misery after the bombings.

The interplay between the German survivors and the occupying Britons is revealing; many unique situations and individuals are engendered from these involvements. This book is a must read if you enjoy a grim, but realistic journey into the past. Mr. Rademacher’s Hamburg stories are gripping as they are based on real situations that occurred after WWII.

All Rademacher’s books are skillfully written. In the inspector ‘Stave’ series, he provides the reader with a fully different feel and tone than his Provence novels.

Too, I appreciated the amount of research, documentation, and explanation of events at the end of the novel.

P.S. The second book in the series, The Wolf Children, is also a fantastic read, and based on facts.

What the 5 NW Authors Are Reading

Books by Georgette Heyer, the Queen of Regency Romance.
Reviewed by Gwendolyn Van Hout Knechtel, contributing author of New Halem Tales, TwoNewfs Publishing.

Georgette Heyer Novels – An Introduction
by Gwendolyn Van Hout Knechtel

The recent Netflix’s series, Bridgerton, set in Regency England, sent me on a mad dash to find my Georgette Heyer novels. Though she may not be a familiar name, Georgette Heyer essentially established the historical romance genre and subgenre of Regency romances. Her first novel, The Black Moth, published in 1921, was written for her younger brother, who suffered from a form of hemophilia.

I discovered Georgette Heyer as a teenager, and though the author also wrote some contemporary detective fiction from the mid-1930’s onward, she is remembered for her successful Regency romances. Some favorites of mine: The Talisman Ring, Fredricka, The Nonsuch, These Old Shades and The Devil’s Cub. Inspired by Jane Austen’s “comedy of manners” novels, Georgette Heyer did meticulous research on the Regency period.

Using vocabulary and phraseology of the time, these novels are fun first-rate Regency romance literature - or as a character in Heyer’s novel might say, “Of the first stare.” I love the language! What rich imagery it conjures calling someone a “clodpole” or “a dirty dish.”

In the future, I will review a few of the above titles. Until then, why not try them yourselves?

Special thanks to https://thegraphicsfairy.com/ for the Regency Fashion Plate - Jane Austen-Esque.