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Perry Mason and the Case of the Velvet Claws: A Radio Dramatization

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Perry Mason plays fast and loose with the law in a deadly case 2 CDs 1 hour 31 minutes Dramatized for audio by M.J. Elliot. Based on the book by Erle Stanley Gardner. Voiced by the actors of The Colonial Radio Theatre on the Air. The Case of the Velvet Claws was the very first Perry Mason book, published in 1933. This radio dramatization is based on that book but, of course, it had to be adapted for the "radio play" format.  Erle Stanley Gardner   (1889-1970)  Perry Mason, Paul Drake and Della Street all figure large in this murder mystery that all began with an adulterous wife who wants to avoid political scandal. Eva Griffin, married to a powerful millionaire,  was discovered in a hotel with a married Congressman due to an un-related crime at the hotel. Spicy Bits, a magazine that specializes in reporting scandal, is on the trail of this potential scandal and Griffin wants Perry Mason to act in her stead and offer the magazine a bribe to drop the story.

The Sandy Knoll Murder: Legacy of the Sheepshooters by Melany Tupper

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Could have been so much more Perry Mason had Paul Drake. Ben Matlock had Tyler Hudson, Conrad McMasters and Cliff Lewis. What did they have? Tremendous investigators - researchers that covered the whole thing and then turned it over to someone else to make it sound nice for the judge and the jury. Melany Tupper has thoroughly investigated (and thoroughly documented) the murder of John Creed Conn in 1904. Conn was a frontier businessman who disappeared, presumed to have committed suicide or accidentally drowned but than his body suddenly appeared on Sandy Knoll 7 weeks later. At the same time, sheep were being slaughtered dozens and sometimes even hundreds at a time in yet another confrontation between cattle ranchers and sheepherders and there was a possible serial killer was living in and around the area. All of this sounds like a great recipe for an exciting bit of history. This is where my reference to Perry Mason and Ben Matlock comes in. Tupper is like his investigators

Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters by Jean Shepherd

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Excellent. Absolutely Excellent . Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters is written by the man who co-wrote and narrates   the classic movie A Christmas Story , Jean Shepherd (1921-1999) . Shepherd's book  In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash  is the inspiration for that movie, although the infamous dogs in the kitchen scene comes from  Wanda Hickey. If you love the movie  A Christmas Story, you will absolutely enjoy this book. Set in Hammond, Indiana (he fictionalizes it as Hohman, Indiana) in the 1930s, Wanda Hickey is actually a set of 8 semi-fictional short stories loosely based on actual people and events in Shepherd's life. Hohman is described as being "nestled picturesquely between the looming steel mills and the verminously aromatic oil refineries and encircled by a colorful conglomerate of city dumps and fetid rivers" which is an unkind, but not inacurrate description of Indiana's industrial northwest corner. Jean

Skin (X-files) (abridged audiobook) by Ben Mezrich

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A competent, but not great audiobook Published in 1999 by HarperAudio Abridged audiobook Format: Cassette Duration: Approximately 3 hours Read by Bruce Harwood Bruce Harwood I heard  Skin as an abridged audiobook. It was narrated by Bruce Harwood, who portrays the most 'normal' of the conspiracy-addicted threesome known as 'the Lone Gunmen' on the X-Files TV show. Harwood does a competent, but ultimately uninspiring job of narrating the story. In fact, this is also a decent description of the book as a whole. It is okay, but not great. The characters act like they are supposed to, but those wry comments from Fox are mostly non-existent and Scully is just not quite right throughout most of the book. I am sure that the abridgment is at least partially to blame. The unabridged version is 8 and 1/2 hours. This one clocks in at three hours. Something had to give and it sounds like this one gave away its personality. The plot itself was okay. The e

Wizards (DVD) by Ralph Bakshi

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My opinion is all over the place with this movie Another reviewer described  Wizards accurately when he said it was "a weird, horrible, funny, enthralling cartoon movie". That is dead on. The animation is both bad and wonderful. The plot is epic, wonderful and poorly thought out and petty. Ralph Bakshi So, here are some random thoughts:  The animation: I LOVE the fact that Bakshi used a variety of animation styles and techniques. It made the movie visually interesting and some of the animation is great enough to rival Disney animation at its very best. Sometimes, however, the animation is of such poor quality that it distracts from the action. At times, the animation is worse than SeaLab 2021 on Adult Swim - and they intentionally make the animation bad! Money became an issue as the movie was being animated and it is, at times, quite obvious that they cut corners in some segments. The characters and plot: Avatar putting the moves on Elinore W

The Concrete Blonde (#3 in the Harry Bosch series) by Michael Connelly

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         A Great Read! Originally published in 1994 Synopsis: Detective Harry Bosch of the LAPD shot and killed a suspected ritualistic serial killer in a controversial but "righteous shoot" several years before. Now, the killer's widow is suing the city for killing the wrong man and new victims of the serial killer are showing up - victims that definitely were killed after Bosch shot his man. First - let's address the title. There are actually two concrete blondes in the book. One is the concrete statue of lady justice outside the courtroom. The other is one of the victims - a blond prostitute/porn actress who was found encased in the concrete floor of a self-storage unit. Michael Connelly Second - this is a great cop story. I won't go into much plot detail, but I will say that the story twists and turns in so many directions that it is hard to put down. Just when you think you have got it figured out, you find that Connelly has been waiting for you