Sally Carpenter penned a new delightful series, A Psychedelic Spy Mystery, introducing Noelle McNabb. It’s 1967 with its flowery fashions, princess phones, vinyl records, and attitudes sans the contemporary “politically correct” filter.
Barry Lancet’s Japantown (2016) introduced readers to Asian art dealer/Japanese detective agency owner Jim Brodie and both his divergent firms—one in San Francisco, the other in Tokyo—readily making available a cornucopia of possible plots that could occur in the US or Japan, or both, and by no means restricted to either locale. Lancet followed this intriguing debut with Tokyo Kill (2015), in which a veteran Japanese soldier comes to Brodie in Tokyo, certain that his friends and former unit are systematically being murdered, putting a WWII twist to the plot and making readers wonder to what degree Japanese culture still labors under the weight of that particular history.
Sam Mendes (American Beauty), who also directed 2012's Skyfall, does a wonderful job with the opening scene. The Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) parade through the City of Mexico is nothing short of dazzling. The energy and palpable power that Daniel Craig exudes is exactly as a Bond movie should be. Even the opening credits, replete with the Octopus' smoky dark ink swirling about as the feminine forms' hair, are ingenious cinematic art.
Of course we were all little pint-size patriots in those days. We had a small gang there on North Indiana Avenue when it teemed with the post-war baby explosion. There were four of us, just from our end of the block, all in the same room in elementary school, and we were all red-blooded Americans; after all, every one of our fathers had fought in the war!
A show about cast out spies, Burn Notice delivers roaring action, great family dynamics, and a good love story between its leads. I don’t know why I waited so long to catch up with this show and am glad I didn’t wait any longer.
