Quickies

From time to time I get too lazy to write full (or even mini) reviews for the stuff I'm reading and watching, and resort to a post giving you a paragraph-sized taste of recent acquisitions. This is one of those times.

Books

Well-Schooled in Murder - Elizabeth George. In this third volume of George's Inspector Lynley British murder mystery series, the aristocratic Lynley and his not-quite-middle-class detective sergeant Barbara Havers go back to school, investigating the disappearance of a scholarship boy at a rundown boarding school. The missing persons case soon enough turns into a murder investigation, and rumors of bullying, miscenegation, abuse and deviance begin to swirl. Havers practically welcomes the sordidness of it all as it distracts and distances her from the increasing squalor of her own home life.

Half the Blood in Brooklyn - Charlie Huston. In this third volume of Huston's hard-boiled noir vampire Joe Pitt Casebooks series, Joe finds his life even more stressful than usual. His girlfriend, Evie, is on the fast track to dying from AIDS and he is tormented by the thought that although he could save her life by infecting her with the Vyrus that infects him, and he doesn't want to inflict his kind of life on her. Also, he gets mixed up with a family of vampire sideshow freaks and their Orthodox Jewish cousins ... who are also vampires. It's another brutal, bloody, funny and heart-wrenching visit to Joe's world - and you definitely don't want to live there.

The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite - I think I heard about this entry into the modern superhero comic genre over at Whitney Matheson's Pop Candy blog (USA Today). Written by the lead singer of My Chemical Romance, Gerard Way, and illustrated by artist Gabriel Ba, this TPB collects the first six issues in which we are introduced to the Umbrella Academy: seven sort of supernatural pseudo-siblings, spontaneously born to unrelated and hitherto unimpregnated women, and raised by a monocle-wearing space alien. The cool thing about this book is that it's not your typical origin story. We see the instance of their birth; then we see an incident in their youth where, acting together, they save Paris from a zombie-robot-historical figure; then we jump ahead 20 or so years, to where some of the siblings have died, and some are estranged, and the UA has to reunite to save the world again. There are many unanswered questions and I'm hoping that further stories go back and answer some of them, because now I'm intrigued.

Television

Mr. Mouse and I have added Justified to our regularly scheduled DVR menu. After the first two episodes, I like it (but don't love it) and Mr. Mouse grudgingly likes it. For Deadwood fans - which we both are - Timothy Olyphant is just revisiting his Bullock character with a modern setting: he's an efficient lawman in a cowboy hat with violence and anger issues, dealing with bad guys for whom he has a fair amount of respect, and his personal life is complicated by two women. At least this time the writers have given him a sense of humor. Mr. Mouse and I mostly take issue with the fact that he drives a Lincoln Towncar - he's in Kentucky, for crying out loud - give the man a truck.

I've started recording/watching Flashforward again but am finding it highly dissatisfying. Thank god Dominic Monaghan is there as the amoral scientist-playboy - he is the only one who looks like he's having any fun at all. I've got V in the queue, and soon will add ABC's new Happy Town - which looks like it may turn out to be another painful Harper's Island experience. Thankfully True Blood S2 should be coming out on DVD in the next couple of months and I'll get something worthy of recapping again.

And - if you want proof that I ever do things outside of the house (besides going to movies - I haven't done that since last August), feel free to check this out.