Grip, The Raven Who Inspired Dickens and Poe, Is Stuffed And Stored At The Philadelphia Free Library

Phillymag.com offers an interesting piece about how Charles Dickens' pet raven, called Grip, was the inspiration for the raven in Dicken's novel Barnaby Rudge, and later served to inspire Edgar Allen Poe when he wrote The Raven in Philadelphia.

Grip, the raven who influenced two of the 19th Century's greatest authors, is now stuffed and on displayed at the Philadelphia Free Library.

You can read the piece via the below link:

http://blogs.phillymag.com/the_philly_post/2011/10/31/poes-raven-stuffed-free-library/

Operation Ghost Stories: Inside The Russian Spy Case

 

The FBI released photos, documents and video on the Russian spy ring the bureau rolled up last year. 

The arrests of 10 Russian spies last year provided a chilling reminder that espionage on U.S. soil did not disappear when the Cold War ended. The highly publicized case also offered a rare glimpse into the sensitive world of counterintelligence and the FBI's efforts to safeguard the nation from those who would steal our vital secrets.

You can view the FBI's released information via the below link:

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/october/russian_103111/russian_103111 

A Look Back At Barney Miller, A TV Comedy Series That Captured the Gritty Essence Of Police Work

I was a huge fan of Barney Miller, the clever cop comedy series that appeared on TV from 1975 to 1982, so I look forward to watching the old shows on a new DVD (Shout!Factory).

Thomas Vinciguerra at the New York Times wrote an interesting piece about the great old show.

“Barney Miller” rewrote the rules of cop shows and sitcoms alike. Its principals weren’t heroes; they were jaded lifers contending with assorted wackos, like the beggar who earned enough to pay for a maid. Or the messianic who thought a new Ice Age was upon us. Or the nut job who threatened to turn into a werewolf.

And every week the show, which won three Emmy Awards, kicked off with a theme that sported the baddest, funkiest bass line this side of Isaac Hayes.

An early fan of “Barney Miller” was Joseph Wambaugh, the author of novels like “The New Centurions” and nonfiction works like “The Onion Field.” He began tuning in shortly after stepping down as a Los Angeles Police Department detective sergeant, to write full time.

“I was uncertain if I could make it without the badge,” he said. “But I could turn on ‘Barney Miller.’ It filled a void for me. I could have gone onto that set, sat down and gone to work.”

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/arts/television/barney-miller-remains-on-the-beat-in-a-complete-dvd-set.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1

Below is a link to a video of the Barney Miller theme song and opening credits:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkHI3ginCXs

Operation Mincemeat: Ben Macintyre On World War II"s Greatest Deception Plot Against The Nazis

The below link is to a BBC TV program that dramatized Operation Mincemeat, the greatest World War II deception.

Ben Macintyre, the author of Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man & a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured Allied Victory, hosts and narrates the BBC program.

The program offers a suspenseful, fascinating and compelling story of how British Naval Intelligence used a dead man to deceive Hitler and the Nazis into believing the allies planned to invade Greece rather than the true target, Sicily.

The plot was a "mad idea" originally conceived by Commander Ian Fleming (seen in the below photo), a British naval intelligence officer who would go on to write the James Bond thrillers after the war. 

You can watch the clever and entertaining program via the below link to Youtube.com:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5570fDdBOQ

You can also read about Macintyre's excellent book via the below link to an earlier post:

http://pauldavisoncrime.blogspot.com/2010/01/operation-mincemeat-true-story-that.html

I interviewed Ben Macintyre about his earlier book on Eddie Chapman, a British crook who became one of World War II's most daring double agents.

You can read the interview at GreatHistory.com via the below link:

http://pauldavisoncrime.blogspot.com/2009/12/agent-zigzag-story-of-one-of-world-war_11.html 

Sherlock Holmes: The Great Detective Lives On - And On

As I've noted here before, I'm not fond of continuation novels. But Anthony Horowitz does a good job of explaining why he agreed to write a new novel about the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's iconic character Sherlock Holmes in the British newspaper the Telegraph.

Although Holmes appears in just 56 short stories and four novels, he is famously the one character most often portrayed on television and film. He has recently been modernised by the BBC and bowdlerised by Hollywood – the second film with Robert Downey Jnr comes out at Christmas. There is currently a campaign (which I support) to give Jeremy Brett (seen in the above photo) a posthumous Bafta for his brilliant depiction of the character throughout the Eighties.

My own addition to the Sherlock canon – the first to be given the imprimatur of the Doyle estate – received extraordinary attention when I announced it last January in the House of Commons at a dinner hosted by the 1,000-strong Sherlock Holmes society. I found myself on the News at Ten. The Spectator ran an editorial as did the New York Times – although neither seemed to think the book would be much good. So why Holmes has endured – and, more to the point, how did I dare to take on the mantle of the world’s most successful detective?

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/8856345/Sherlock-Holmes-The-great-detective-lives-on-and-on.html

On Hemingway: Paul Hendrickson and William Kennedy Talk About Their Books On Ernest Hemingway

 

I'm a huge admirer of Ernest Hemingway's novels and short stories, so I was sorry that I was unable to hear William Kennedy, author of Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes, and Paul Hendrickson, author of Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961, discuss Hemingway and their books about the late great writer at the Philadelphia Free Library earlier this month.

Fortunately, I was able to listen to the two authors via the library's audio podcast.

You can listen to the MP3 audio of the author event via the below link:

http://libwww.freelibrary.org/authorevents/podcast.cfm?podcastID=690

Frank Wilson, my friend and former Philadelphia Inquirer editor, did a fine job of introducing the two authors.

I read Hemingway's Boat and I found Paul Hendrickson's book to be interesting and insightful and William Kennedy's Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes is next on my list of books to read.

The Exorcist's' Secret Message

William Peter Blatty, the author of The Exorcist, wrote an interesting piece for FoxNews.com about the impact of his novel and the film made from his novel.

That I am regularly hauled out of my burrow every Halloween like some furless and demonic “Punxsatawney Phil” always brings a rueful smile of bemusement to my lips as I lower my gaze and shake my head, for the humiliating God’s-honest truth of the matter is that while I was working on "The Exorcist," what I thought I was writing was a novel of faith in the popular dress of a thrilling and suspenseful detective story – in other words, a sermon that no one could possibly sleep through -- and to this day I haven’t the faintest recollection of any intention to frighten the reader, which many will take, I suppose, as an admission of failure on an almost stupefying, scale.  

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/10/28/exorcists-secret-message/