British actor Michael Caine reprises role of Jack Carter in Harry Brown.

In 1971 Michael Caine starred in an interesting movie from a first time director. In “Get Carter,” Caine plays a stone killer in a London mob. He learns that his brother has died under suspicious circumstances up north in his home of Newcastle. He goes back home to find the people who killed his brother to enact revenge on the murderers and those, it develops, who prostituted his niece.

Fast forward to 2009, forty years to a movie called “Harry Brown.” It’s the story of a former marine, played by none other than Michael Caine who has had a fine career in the interim. When the film opens, Brown’s wife has just died and he is bereft. He has but one friend, Leonard Attwell. Then Leonard is murdered by the bullies who have over-run the estate where Harry has retired in something just above poverty level. These estates, which are scattered across the UK, and were apparently constructed as ways to house all manner of low-income citizens, have become, in some cases, seething sites of crime.

So, for somewhat similar reasons, Michael Caine becomes, once again, a sort of avenging angel, calling on his skills as a veteran marine, to largely lay waste to the criminal element in his neighborhood. There are several parallels in the films, some of which must have drawn Caine to the latter project. The directors of both were first-time feature directors, the character of Carter-Brown is similar, the underlying theme of vigilante justice is consistent. Both feature violence of the most explicit kind. Even the sex is fairly explicit, although, given his age, Mr. Caine is a viewer in the latter, instead of a performer as in the former film. “Get Carter,” disabused film audiences once and for all that British gangsters are as nasty as American, and perhaps just as important, that British film directors can be as subtle as any others. Just pay close attention to the people and their jewelry, in the compartment in “Get Carter,” as he goes north to Newcastle.

Both films are well done and Caine is first rate in each. Anyone who follows Caine’s film career will want to become familiar with both these fine films.

Another brilliant performance from the Minnesota Orchestra

The Minnesota Orchestra performed brilliantly under guest conductor James Gaffigan this week. A piece by Mussorgsky, another by Tchaikovsky (The Pathetique). They bracketed the enormously difficult Prokofiev Sinfonia concertante,  for ello and orchestra. Anthony Ross, the orchestra's long time principal cellist was the solo performer. The piece was famously inspired by master cellist, Mstislav Rostopovich. The piece requires complete accomplishment of all possible techniques on the instrument and covers a range usually reserved for the violin.

THRILLER MEASURES UP

Under The Dog Star

by Sandra Parshall

ISBN: 978-1-59058-878-9

a 2011 Poisoned Pen release,

303 pages

The story is already in full-bore action when you open the book. “In the silver moonlight, the dogs appear as a dark mass moving down the hill and across the pasture.” Contrast of light and dark. Questions immediately arise. Are these dangerous dogs? Feral dogs? Where are we and who is observing this? Why should we care?

In the hands of this careful, experienced writer, you know you are in for a wild ride. Veterinarian, Rachel Goddard, runs an animal clinic in the mountains of Virginia, a place where people are used to taking care of their problems in direct fashion. Wild dogs threatening livestock? Never mind they are or were somebody’s pet, shoot ‘em. This is anathema to Rachel and she mounts a county-wide attempt to trap and rescue the dogs before they are shot. The county is thrown into an uproar and her competence is questioned when a prominent physician is discovered with his throat torn out and plenty of evidence that a dog was the culprit.

Rachel’s lover, Tom Bridger, a deputy sheriff in the county is worried about Rachel’s safety as he struggles to understand the crime. Both Rachel and Bridger come up against one of them most dysfunctional families I have ever read about. There are other complications and false trails that have to be dealt with. The author handles dog fighting and other crimes is a forthright yet sympathetic manner. Readers will get the vivid pictures the author draws, but won’t have to wallow in the degradation. Parshall makes her points cleanly and evocatively, just as she illuminate the settings, both by contrast and depiction.

There were times when I wanted to grab Rachel and inject a little backbone into her and Bridger is sometimes entirely too controlling. Nevertheless, this is a strong, well-written chiller with crackling dialogue, great characters and a powerful resolution.

Haftmann's Rules a dark, bumpy PI novel

Haftmann’s Rules

by Robert White

ISBN: 9780982945971

a 2011 release from Grand

Mal Press, TP 236 pages

Thomas Haftmann is an ex homicide cop living in Ohio. Now he’s a private investigator pretty near the end of his profession. Clients are few and he’s struggling with some major physical and mental problems. Haftmann is not your typical upstanding white knight of a PI. He confronts his drinking problem by hanging out in sleazy bars, has sex with women he finds on the Internet, and abuses the good will of the few friends he still retains.

He’s bright and the novel is littered with his political and philosophical ruminations. His intimacy quotient is low, as his ex-wife would quickly testify. Somewhere in his core, however, is a moral kernel that leads him to put his sanity and his life on the line to try to tease out an unusual serial killer operating in the sleaziest sections of Boston. His entry into this dark and dangerous segment of society, in a town where he has no resources at all, is a search for his client’s missing daughter who may be stripping in one of Boston’s unsavory clubs.

The novel is well-written, coherent and fast-paced. Make no mistake it is very dark, violent and pretty explicit in several instances. It is a very modern story in that much of the motivations on the dark side are rooted in some of the nastier beliefs of today. The novel takes some effort to get into but somehow, for this reader at least, Thomas Haftmann, in spite of his bizarre rules, grabbed me by the collar and held my interest until the ride was finished.

AMAZING MUSICAL EXPERIENCE

The Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute, in its eleventh year, once again provided a marvelous forum for an unusual music experience. Six young composers presented recent works.  Three received their world premieres, the others first performances by a major orchestra.

It was an amazing evening at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis. Michael Holloway’s “Theta Beta Theta” evoked heart and brain rhythms, with oriental underpinings, particularly in the center section.

Andreia Pinto-Correia’s “Xantara” certainly evoked misty shores and images of mysterious Moorish castles floating above swirling fog banks. There was no evidence of her jazz background in the piece, but there was a sense of directional loss at times.

Hannah Lash offered up a piece in two parts, “God Music Bug Music,” a polyrhythmic brass-heavy clash of subtle tonal changes and an incessant driving pulse.

Shen Yiwen, from Shanghai provided the most American-sounding piece. His “First Orchestral Essay” provided immediate connections to Aaron Copeland and was the most melodic work of the evening.

Adrian Knight’s “Manchester,”  brought to mind a series of musical interludes from the West Coast, called  Music of the Spheres. Composer Brian Eno had a persistent presence in that series. This was a quiet, peaceful, contemplative work.

The evening ended with Brian Ciach’s strange and sometimes wonderful offering called “Collective Uncommon: Seven Orchestral Studies on Medical Oddities.” He had a very specific point in this piece.  It was written for the Mutter Museum of Medical Oddities, located in Philadelphia. A number of non-traditional sound producers were utilized, including sundering heads of lettuce, and talking dolls.

Fred Child of NPR handled the host duties, introducing and interviewing each of the composers, Osmo Vanska led the brilliant orchestra. The Institute and this program of “Future Classics,” was under the able direction of Aaron Jay Kernis. The composers were warmly received. I think the audience recognized the enormous efforts these compositions represented, as well as considerable effort from the orchestra. Altogether, this was an enthralling, sometimes difficult but really interesting evening.

Interesting protagonist, exotic setting enhance fine crime novel

Assignment:Nepal      

By J.S. Squires

ASIN: B005VFMK6Q

2011 E-book release from

Echelon Press

Readers of this review should be aware that this press has published some of my crime fiction and I am acquainted with the publisher, though not with the two authors writing under a single pseudonym.

The protagonist is named Irene Adler. Not the woman who beat Sherlock Holmes at his own game, her modern namesake, a Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology at Boston University. Adler has a demi-cynical outlook on life and it turns out she supplements her income by playing poker; specifically Texas Holdem in the gambling parlors around the New England area. Irene Adler is a bright, smart, single woman, an endearing protagonist.

Her former advisor, a fellow faculty member, prevails on Ms. Adler to travel to Nepal to inquire into the life and times of a former fellow undergraduate student of Irene’s, a Margot Smith, who’s in Nepal doing research on one of that country’s goddesses, one Chwwaassa Dyo. The problem is that there appears to something awry with Margot and her physician husband and Adler is supposed to sort things out. What needs sorting turns out to be only part of the story. Irene agrees to go half-way around the world to see a woman she barely knows. From this most unlikely beginning, the plot drives poor Adler into one complexity after another.

Her assignment clearly has unstated dimensions about which neither we readers nor Irene Adler herself are clear. Now, Nepal is an exotic nation from which assaults on Mount Everest are mounted and the ubiquitous Sherpa play an important part, as do digital cameras, former Cold War adversaries, political unrest in the country, and a whole series of meddlesome individuals who seem to still show up on the fringes of the former English Empire.

The novel winds its way through a variety of conflicts among wanderers, a boorish American tourist couple, and murder and bomb blasts. At times the narrative suffers from a pedestrian pace and some lapses of editing discipline over the point of view. Still, the story is interesting, Irene is definitely a character to build a series around,  the exotic setting in and around Katmandu is, well, exotic, and a satisfactory conclusion is fashioned.