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  WITNESS IN THE CITY aka UN TEMOIN DANS LA VILLE (1959) A man's wife is murdered by her lover and the lover gets away with it in the eyes of the law, but the husband has other ideas. What starts out as a simple tale of revenge descends into nightmarish complications. I was reminded of Fredric Brown's classic thriller novel HIS NAME WAS DEATH with all the creeping horror and relentless turns of the plot. The film originates from no less than Boileau-Narcejac, the French writing duo who wrote the source novels for Hitchcock's VERTIGO and Clouzot's LES DIABOLIQUES. Hitchcock would have hit the humorous moments better, but Molinaro was no slouch in the director's chair. This is a good movie.
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  A MAN CALLED NOON by Louis L'Amour This book features a minor villain named Lynch Manly - possibly the most over-the-top bad guy handle I have ever encountered in my life. Bravo, Lou!
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I'm writing a crime novel and I just made an off-hand reference about the 1980 novel EYE OF THE BEHOLDER by Marc Behm and I am struck by the thought that maybe no one else has ever read it. This doesn't matter the least little bit in the greater scheme of things, but it nags at me all the same.
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  "Gara scuffs apart the horse dung with the toe of her boot. The seeds from a plant spill out of the dung and they tell her what part of the world the horses came from. She's familiar with the tribe in that area and the knowledge makes her frown. She has always hated those pricks." -excerpt from a fantasy novel I'll be writing later this year (God willing)
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Words of wisdom courtesy of Bok the Dragonman. (Excerpted from the current Flash Gordon comic strip by Dan Schkade, which has my highest recommendation, by the way.)
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  "Now, in stories I'd read...when a man passed out he would always come to hisself with a pretty girl a-pattin' his brow... When I come to it was dark, and wet and muddy." -excerpt from TUCKER That's Louis L'Amour poking fun at himself in 1971 because the cliche he's describing occurs in almost every book he wrote in the '50s. Made me chuckle.
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  ON THE WANDERING PATHS (2023) Plot? No. Story? Yes. I liked it a lot. I didn't move once during the 88-minute runtime. Jean Dujardin plays a writer who, once he learns to walk again after suffering a bad accident, sets himself the task of crossing the length of France - all 1300 km - on foot. Based on the real-life experiences of author Sylvain Tesson, France's answer to Henry David Thoreau.
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