Month: August 2012
Friday Cocktail
Toast to tonight’s extraordinary moon with a Blue Moon Cocktail. August 2012 has seen its second full moon tonight. The next time we’ll see two full moons in the same month won’t be until 2015! That is unless you’re using the seasonal definition which counts the third full moon as the Blue Moon in a given season… Read More ›
Lady in the Lake
This 1947 film noir is unique in its presentation. “Right now you’re reading in your newspapers and hearing over your radios…about a murder. They call it the Case of the Lady in the Lake. It’s a good title. It fits. What you’ve read and what you’ve heard is one thing. The real thing is something else. There’s… Read More ›
The Thin Man
It’s 1934, and Prohibition is over! The martinis and highballs flow freely in this classic silver screen hit that spawned five sequels! “The champagne elite of sleuthing”, Nick and Nora Charles banter their way through solving their first mystery in The Thin Man. Clyde Wynant, an inventor, receives a visit from his daughter, Dorothy, who is soon… Read More ›
Murder by Death
The ultimate murder mystery parody? You are cordially invited to Dinner and a Murder at 22 Lola Lane Saturday evening 7 p.m. Your Host Lionel Twain What would happen if Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Sam Spade, Nick and Nora Charles, and Charlie Chan teamed up to solve a mystery? Well, no one really knows, but… Read More ›
Topper Returns
Welcome to Carrington Hall, a creepy seaside mansion on a hill! Or as one character says, “If there wasn’t anybody living there, it’d be a haunted house.” Our story begins with a car accident. Oh, don’t worry! No one’s killed…yet. Anne Carrington (Carole Landis) and her dear friend Gail Richards (Joan Blondell) are on their… Read More ›
Friday Cocktail
Buvez à votre santé with this Friday’s cocktail, the Moulin Rouge. Built in the 1880s, the Moulin Rouge is a famous cabaret in Montmartre, a bohemian section of Paris, made famous by artists, such as Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. The nightclub is still a tourist attraction today and iconically known for the “red mill” lighting up its exterior by… Read More ›
Murder in Passy
“You think life finally makes sense, then…Pouff, it turns upside down,” says Commissaire Morbier to his goddaughter, Aimée Leduc, in the opening pages of this eleventh book in the Aimée Leduc Investigation series. It’s Aimée’s first day back to work after a month’s recuperation from “the explosion that had laid her low on her last case,” Murder… Read More ›
Murder at the Lanterne Rouge
J’adore Paris. Et vous? San Francisco-based author Cara Black sets her Aimée Leduc Investigation series in Paris, which the author frequently visits. Each novel features one of Paris’ twenty arrondissements, and in this tweflth entry, it’s time for the 3rd Arrondisement—wherein lies Paris’ oldest Chinatown—to shine. Aimée Leduc accompanies her long-time business partner, René, to dinner in… Read More ›
Murder on the Blackboard II
“But I’m not a detective. I was mixed up in one murder case because I happened to be at the Aquarium when a dead body appeared in the penguin tank upside down, and in another because I was having tea with the Inspector when he heard the alarm…” So says Miss Hildegarde Withers when asked… Read More ›
Friday Cocktail
Toast a Legend with this Friday’s cocktail, the Mary Pickford! During the Silent Film era, petit blond Mary Pickford (1892 – 1979) was the reigning queen and one of Hollywood’s first stars. “‘She was not just the first screen idol’, said B P Schulberg, an executive and producer at Paramount, ‘She had become a national… Read More ›
The Poisoned Martini 