The Great and Secret Show

The Great and Secret Show by Clive Barker was suggested to me by The Elder Son. I think he has the second of this trilogy, and I'll be borrowing it from him soon.

from the back of the book:

In the little town of Palomo Grove, two great armies are amassing; forces shaped from the hearts and souls of America. In this New York Times bestseller, Barker unveils one of the most ambitious imaginative landscapes in modern fiction, creating a new vocabulary for the age-old battle between good and evil. Carrying its readers from the first stirring of consciousness to a vision of the end of the world, The Great and Secret Show is a breathtaking journey in the company of a master storyteller.

In an interview Barker said,

My reality is open every minute to transformations, to transfigurations - a ghost haunted, vision haunted world in which magic and demonic doings can erupt at the slightest invitation... What preoccupies me in The Art is the idea of the dream show, what happens to us in the 25 years of our lives when we sleep. Our psychologies are so complex. We are telling stories to ourselves all the time. In the Great And Secret Show, the story is one which turns out to have a relevance beyond the realm of sleep. In other words, what we discover in the first book (albeit briefly, because there's a huge story yet to be told) is that sleep is a door, that dreams are more than casual fictions we whip up for our own delectation. Dreams are part of a matrix of mythologies where we are given clues for our survival and that intrigues me immensely. It's one of the reasons I love this kind of fiction. I value it because it's a manual for survival."

The New York Times review closes by saying,

From ''The Great and Secret Show,'' it is clear that Mr. Barker's intention is to force the horror genre to encompass a kind of dread, an existential despair, that it hasn't noticeably evinced until now. This is a tall order, one that this novel, which is skillful and funny but ultimately overwrought, doesn't quite accomplish. But, having announced the intention of writing a trilogy about the Art and its mysteries, he may yet achieve his goal.

The President's Analyst

The President's Analyst is the last movie we'll watch for our fun Family Film Festival focusing on political satires. It stars James Coburn, a favorite of mine, and also has Godfrey Cambridge, William Daniels, Arte Johnson and Will Geer.

Roger Ebert cuts right to the chase, beginning his review with this: "The phone company is the enemy."

trailer:

Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination

Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination: a Handbook to Jesus on DVD, by Jeffrey L. Staley and Richard Walsh, focuses on describing and scene-indexing Gospel parallels from the following 18 films:

The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ
From the Manger to the Cross
Intolerance
The King of Kings
King of Kings
The Gospel According to Saint Matthew
The Greatest Story Ever Told
Jesus Christ Superstar
Godspell
Jesus of Nazareth
The Jesus Film
Monty Python’s Life of Brian
The Last Temptation of Christ
Jesus of Montreal
Jesus
The Miracle Maker
The Gospel of John
The Passion of the Christ

I've long had an interest in films on the life of Christ. This book is a helpful resource. This link is included for some supplementary material. I am also interested in Christ-figures in film, and there is a short section at the end of the last chapter ("Teaching Jesus Films") on "Christ-Figure Films". 2 books are recommended: Movie Christs and Anti-Christs by Peter Malone and Imaging the Divine:Jesus and Christ Figures in Film by Lloyd Baugh, both of which look good.

My 3 frustrations were

1) the lack of an index;

2) inconsistent references to the films such that some chapters referred to the films by their titles while others referred to them by the directors' names alone, so finding which film is referred to when it is called "Zecca" requires a better memory than I have or searching through other sections of the book [thus my need for an index];

3) no addresses or contact information for the DVDs, so that "The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ" references "Image Entertainment" but gives no further information on address/phone/web addy to contact them or obtain the film. A search of amazon.com is easy enough, I guess, but I'd have thought the web address to the company (or even a direct one to the film, though I guess that kind of specific information might not be stable) would have been easy enough to include.

from the back of the book:

Movies depicting the life of Jesus continue to be a captivating way to consider how the Gospels present an image and a narrative of Jesus. In Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination, Jeffrey Staley and Richard Walsh employ their biblical knowledge and admiration for films to summarize eighteen popular Jesus movies and to provide readers with the precise hour/minute/second on a DVD where each movie parallels the Gospel accounts of Jesus' life. This distinctive handbook includes practical suggestions for using Jesus films to teach, enhancing the value of this resource for pastors, those, leading discussions of films, church study groups, and libraries.

If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him...

If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him... by Sharyn McCrumb is one of the Elizabeth MacPherson series and won the Agatha award in 1995. The only other book I've read by McCrumb is She Walks These Hills, which I liked but which was part of a different series.

The book is not a mystery according to the author, even though it won a major mystery award. She stated in this interview that

Actually the Elizabeth MacPherson novels are cultural satires, and not mysteries for the same reason that Pride & Prejudice is not a romance novel-- that is, unless you are reading with your brain in too low a gear. However, since I am utterly weary of explaining this to people in tones of decreasing civility, I’m afraid I’ve given it up. No more Elizabeth MacPherson novels, --- because of questions like this.

There's very little mention of this series at her web site, and those aren't readily available -I had to do a search of the site to find the few passing mentions of "Macpherson". At one point she describes this series this way:

Even the early "mystery" novels that I wrote reflect this sense of purpose, that a good book should have a message. The books featuring forensic anthropologist Elizabeth MacPherson have been described as "Jane Austen with an Attitude" for the way that they blend social issues into the plots. In each of the early novels, the murder is committed by someone who is trying to protect an assumed cultural identity-- not for greed, or revenge, or any of the usual motives. Cultural identity, I learned from my dual-culture childhood, is optional. The point of those novels is not to reveal "whodunit," but to satirize a pretentious segment of society: in Highland Laddie Gone, for example, the Scottish Wannabes at the Highland Games are lampooned. The last novel in that series [note: there is a later one published in 2000], If I’d Killed Him When I Met Him is a synchronically structured meditation on the dysfunctional nature of contemporary relationships: i.e. there is a war going on between men and women these days, and in this book, Elizabeth MacPherson becomes the war correspondent. These satirical novels reflect the culture of my mother’s South: the mannered society where appearances and social position matter.

Sad that the fun of the books is lost because of her felt need for everybody to recognize, understand and agree with her vision. I wish authors would let books stand on their own and not feel the need to control how readers enjoy and interpret them. It reminds me of Margaret Atwood's insistence that her books are not science fiction because, “Science fiction is rockets, chemicals and talking squids in outer space.” It limits the genre to fit her own prejudice. But, then, I am just a reader; what do I know. Or maybe I have my "brain in too low a gear".

from the back of the book:

When forensic anthropologist Elizabeth MacPherson becomes the official P.I. for her brother Bill's fledgling Virginia law firm, she quickly takes on two complex cases. Eleanor Royden, a perfect lawyer's wife for twenty years, has shot her ex-husband and his wife in cold blood. And Donna Jean Morgan is implicated in the death of her Bible-thumping bigamist husband.

Bill's feminist firebrand partner, A. P. Hill, does her damnedest for Eleanor, an abused wife in denial, and Bill gallantly defends Donna Jean. Meanwhile, Elizabeth's forensic expertise, including her special knowledge of poisons, gives her the most challenging case of her career....

The book is a wonderful balance of the different characters and various plots. I'll pick up others by her as I come across them.

The Mouse That Roared

The Mouse That Roared is a political satire that was not included in the yahoo list that inspired our fun Family Film Festival, but none of us had seen it and all of us got a kick out of it.

As in Dr. Strangelove Peter Sellers plays several parts. In this movie the smallest country in the world declares war on the United States in an effort to benefit from U.S. largesse after an American victory, only things don't turn out quite like they're planned.

The New York Times review is here.

trailer:

32 Sci-Fi Novels You Should Read

How to Split an Atom suggests these:

Foundation - Isaac Asimov
The Time Machine - H.G. Wells
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick
Animal Farm - George Orwell
War Of The Worlds - H.G. Wells
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
The Minority Report - Philip K. Dick
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Pattern Recognition - William Gibson
Accelerando - Charles Stross
I Robot - Isaac Asimov
Stranger In A Strange Land - Robert A. Heinlein
Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
The Giver - Lois Lowry
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea - Jules Verne
Ringworld - Larry Niven
More Than Human - Theodore Sturgeon
Spook Country - William Gibson
Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom - Cory Doctorow
Altered Carbon - Richard Morgan
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Dune - Frank Herbert
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
1984 - George Orwell
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
Ender’s Game - Orson Scott Card
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
The Andromeda Strain - Michael Crichton
A Scanner Darkly - Philip K. Dick
Timeline - Michael Crichton

and also adds these extras:

2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C Clarke
Old Man’s War - John Scalzi
Any good compilation of Venor Vinges short stories.
A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter Miller Jr.
The Star Fraction - Ken MacLeod
Spin - Robert Charles Wilson

Ones I've read are in bold print.

HT: SFSignal

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior

When we saw The Road Warrior on that yahoo list of political satires we had a hard time remembering the movie in those terms, but we thought we had just missed that part of the film and would realize what made it fit in that category once we'd seen it again. Nope. I can't imagine why this film would ever be classified as political satire. Post apocalyptic dystopia, yes. Political satire, no way.

That said, it was fun to see it again, and The Younger Son had never seen it. I had forgotten parts of it. You'd think I would have remembered this movie when I first saw the Reavers in Firefly, but I didn't. And I still think the wardrobe of some of the bikers is impractical to say the least -I wouldn't want to ride a motorcycle in a leather thong.

Roger Ebert closes his review by saying,

This is very skillful filmmaking, and "Mad Max 2" is a movie like no other.

The New York Times says it

is not exactly fine art, but, in its stripped-down, cannily cinematic way, it's one of the most imaginative Australian films yet released in this country.

SciFi.com praises it as

a fine example of the kind of action film increasingly rare today: One that exists not as a thin collection of emptily explosive set pieces, but as a story of character, in which the action, however kick-ass, advances our understanding of the people at its core. It gives you reason to care.

trailer:

100 Books You Can't Live Without

The list is from a British survey done last year. Ones I've read are in bold print.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (Not the complete works, but I've read many of the plays and sonnets)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (listed separately from Chronicles of Narnia?)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (I've read some of them. Does that count?)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

HT: Everything is Temporary, with whom I agree on this:

I will add that the fact that The Davinci Code is on a list, of any sort, placed before Hamlet and A Prayer for Owen Meany, seriously calls into question the sanity of everyone in the UK.

Mad Max

Mad Max is not on the yahoo list of political satires, but it's the prequel to a film that is, so we watched it in preparation for the 2nd in the trilogy. I had to leave during part of it, because I could just tell what was going to happen and I didn't want to see it. We did watch the original film with its Australian voices rather than the dubbed Americanized version.

The New York Times reviews it here.

trailer:

We went to the zoo, zoo, zoo

Today Mother, The Younger Son and I went to the zoo. Mother had never seen the China exhibit, though we had seen pandas at this zoo before many years ago, and she had not seen the Northwest Passage exhibit where the Polar Bears are. Today was "free day" during which there's no admission charge between 2 and 5, and I have never seen the zoo so crowded. The cars were lined up all the way out to Poplar Avenue, and the parking lots were full so cars were being lined up in the adjoining field. I guess we've just never come to a free day during the summer.



The China exhibit houses the pandas which were asleep, as they most often are when we go. The zoo has a PandaCam here. There is video of one of the pandas eating here. The Younger Son's favorite animals at the zoo are the otters. He was very disappointed when the China exhibit opened and they moved the otters there, because it requires a separate $3 per person entry fee to enter that section. [see comment below: I think this is included in regular admission and only has a separate charge on "free" days.] We talked to a zoo employee today when we were unable to locate the otters after searching their area for a while. She was very nice and called "Lucy" for us. She located Lucy's paw and tail sticking out from under a piece of wood where she was sleeping. It seems there's only the one otter left at the zoo now. The wikipedia article on this Asian Small-Clawed Otter, the smallest of the otters, has pictures. Here is video of the Memphis Zoo otters when there were more than one in this exhibit. The photo above is of the Bell Pavilion at the entrance to the exhibit.


Mother was disappointed to find out that most of the bears that used to be at the zoo are gone -no Sun Bears, no Spectacled Bears, no Grizzlies.... Only the Polar Bears and Black Bears in the Northwest Passage exhibit remain. I love the bears and still miss them. I don't understand why the zoo got rid of them. The polar bears do have a much better home now. The picture above is one I took today. The zoo has a PolarBearCam here. There is video of one of the polar bears swimming here. The sea lions are in this section also, and there is a video of them here.

The Butterfly exhibit is beautiful -lots of butterflies and the promise of more as the season progresses. The flowers are a treat. The adjacent spider exhibit is closed right now. We also saw the giraffes, zebras, elephants, rhino, Primate Canyon, the lions, but we didn't see everything. After all, we were only there a little over 3 hours.

7/2/2008:
I was sure Mother would be tired and sore after walking so much at the zoo, but she was not. When I talked to her today she said the trip had done her good. Everything went smoothly even though it was so crowded, and it was a treat for her to see all the changes that had been made in just the few years since she was last there. She was most impressed by all the space and water available to the polar bears and the viewing area for that exhibit, including seating inside.

8/12/2008:
The Memphis Business Journal reports that the Memphis Zoo has been ranked "the best zoo in the United States by TripAdvisor editors and based on traveler popularity".

Erik Satie

Today is the anniversary of the death in 1925 of Erik Satie. There are short biographies here and here.

The Gymnopédies:

Mongol

The Younger Son and I decided Mongol would be worth seeing on a theater screen if it played here, and lo and behold it did. We were surprised The Husband wanted to come along -it is, after all, a foreign-language film with subtitles- but he came with us. And did not like it at all. No surprise there. The Younger Son and I both liked it. I don't know how it did on opening weekend, but there were eight or so of us, I think, in the theater for this Monday matinee showing. I'm continuing to struggle with the price: $7 each for a weekday matinee!

I do wonder why it received an R rating. I don't remember the LOTR films having less gruesome scenes. Ratings seems inconsistent.

The Christian Science Monitor says:

Actually, as revisionist epics go, "Mongol" is often startlingly good. It has epic power and plenty of big battles, but director Sergei Bodrov also has a feeling for the small, intimate moments in the life of Genghis Khan

I was struck by these "small, intimate moments" and felt a connection with the characters. It was as much about the personal relationships as it was about epic battle scenes.

The Cinematical reviewer didn't like it:

Mongol does a lot of "sweeping." It moves from sweeping vistas to sweeping battles and when it stops sweeping, it really has no idea what to do; it merely waits for the next opportunity to sweep.

The New York Times describes it as

a big, ponderous epic, its beautifully composed landscape shots punctuated by thundering hooves and bloody, slow-motion battle sequences.

and says,

While it takes a sympathetic view of young Genghis Khan — whose name, in the West, is a synonym for rapacity — it does not force him into conformity with modern sensibilities. His world feels authentically raw and refreshingly archaic, and also strangely beautiful.

TimesOnline reviews it here. Slate wonders how such a nice man can become Khan. Roger Ebert didn't like it.

trailer:


The picture at the top of the post is of the Ridgeway Four, the theater where we saw the movie, and is from Wikipedia.

7/8:
Positive Liberty has review.

Robert McCloskey

Today is the anniversary of the death in 2003 of Robert McCloskey, author of Make Way for Ducklings and Blueberries for Sal. These were 2 of our favorite books when the kids were little.

There is a short biography here. The photo above is from the Library of Congress "Living Legends" page.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Since today was Sunday I thought Monty Python and the Holy Grail would be the most appropriate movie from the political satire list to watch for our fun Family Film Festival. Except The Younger Son has seen it before and didn't stay past the first scene, thinking playing Morrowind would be more fun. And I fell asleep. So riveting entertainment it isn't for some of us. But it is political satire, we're agreed on that.

The Black Knight scene and a Star Trek mash-up are embedded here. Slant Magazine reviews it here.

trailer:

Paul Klee

Today is the anniversary of the death in 1940 of artist Paul Klee. There is a short biography and pictures of some of his work here and here. SwissInfo.org has a website devoted to him. MoMA has information on him here.

The picture above is of his Head of a Man. The picture below is of Twittering Machine.

Sunday Psalm

Psalm 13

1 How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me?

2 How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? how long shall mine enemy be exalted over me?

3 Consider and hear me, O LORD my God: lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death;

4 Lest mine enemy say, I have prevailed against him; and those that trouble me rejoice when I am moved.

5 But I have trusted in thy mercy; my heart shall rejoice in thy salvation.

6 I will sing unto the LORD, because he hath dealt bountifully with me.

KJV

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

The Younger Son selected Dr. Strangelove to be tonight's Family Film Festival movie. We've seen it before -several times. There's a trailer here.

The film is on Roger Ebert's list of Great Films, and he reviews it here and here, saying that "Kubrick made what is arguably the best political satire of the century, a film that pulled the rug out from under the Cold War by arguing that if a ``nuclear deterrent'' destroys all life on Earth, it is hard to say exactly what it has deterred." Scifi.com calls it "Timely and timeless satire".

Cancer Survivors Park Labyrinth

Our church had a prayer retreat today at the Cancer Survivors Park. There was a short introduction to the origin of the labyrinth and its use in Christian devotional practice before we walked the labyrinth. Then we gathered again for a time of sharing of our experience. It seemed to be a meaningful time for everyone.

One of our members is a horticulturist and was involved in the creation of the park and its mural. It was interesting to have him there today to share some behind-the-scenes aspects of the park. There is some discussion of the plants and sculptures here. There is a photo tour here.

There are online labyrinths here and here. You can "walk" the labyrinth with your finger here and here or buy a wooden "finger labyrinth" here. There is a Labyrinth Society.

Mother and I walked this labyrinth about a week ago, and the experience was a bit freer with her, as there were just the two of us with no worry about getting in each other's way. We also talked a bit during our walk while the members of the church group maintained a silence throughout. I imagine the walk is different each time depending on the circumstances.

In the Spring there were tulips. Now there are native wildflowers:

Brazil, the "Love Conquers All" version

Brazil is on the yahoo list of political satire movies we're considering for our fun Family Film Festival. We watched the full-length version back in September and have been meaning to watch it again. It's one of those movies that seems to require more than one viewing. For tonight, though, we decided to go with the shorter version not approved by the director -the version with the happy ending. The only problem is that this version makes no sense at all. It's like excerpts from the longer version with some happy parts added, but if we hadn't seen the longer version we wouldn't have been able to make any sense at all of this one. The Husband said, "It reminds me of Brazil," and that's about the most we can say for it.

The New York Times has a review of Brazil here. Slashdot's review is here. Roger Ebert reviews it here. These are not specifically reviews of this shorter version.

The Criterion Contraption's review says,

In Brazil, Terry Gilliam asks the audience to imagine a world where the government wages a never-ending war with shadowy terrorists, a world where civil liberties are being destroyed in the name of security, a world where torture becomes official state policy in order to conduct more efficient interrogations of suspected terrorists. What's more, in Gilliam's fictional world, the central government is not just secretive but incompetent. Mistakes are made, leading to the imprisonment and torture of innocents.
...
Despite the description, Brazil is not a documentary.

Senses of Cinema has a page on director Terry Gilliam.

Edwin of the Iron Shoes

I read Edwin of the Iron Shoes by Marcia Muller because it is the first in a long-running series by an award-winning author. I've read somewhere that this book featuring Sharon McCone is the first literary example of a female private investigator. It surprises me that a book published in 1977 would be the first example of a woman P.I., and it's an important milestone.

from the back of the book:

Private eye Sharon McCone's first case opens when a small-time antique shop owner is found murdered-stabbed with a bone-handled dagger from one of her own display cases. The wirnesses aren't talking, for they are the mute inhabitants of the shop: Clothilde, a headless dressmaker's dummy; Bruno, the stuffed German Shepherd; and Edwin, the little boy mannequin with ornate iron shoes.

Among the suspects are Cara Ingalls, a socialite business tycoon; Charlie the junkman, who had once been the victim's lover...and a group of high-powered real estate speculators, each with his own reason for closing down the curio shops of San Francisco's Salem Street, and each seemingly willing to twist and break the law to get what he wants.

Patronized and discouraged by the homicide lieutenant in charge of the case, Sharon is determined to find the facts behind the death of the shopkeeper, her employers' client. And she is to discover that neither antiques nor people are exactly what they seem.

Bookpage interviewed Muller here.