The Perils Of Postage

OR - Murder In The Mail
I shan't apologise for using a South Canadianism as a title, because "Rumpus Via Royal Mail" just doesn't scan the same, nor is it as alliterative, so there.
     Anyway, this is bound up with my recent fiction consumption, which you might have forgotten about, so Lo! I shall apprise you of what I got.
     Firstly, James Crumley's "The Last Good Kiss", which, if Art can stir from his coal-induced stupor -*

My edition

     It rather reminded me of James Ellroy, in that our hero, C. W. Sughrue, is distinctly flawed and commits just as many crimes as the bad guys.  The milieu he operates in is a distinctly grubby one, full of people with dirty secrets, again as with JE.  Thus you get a panorama of seediness and evil, with an occasional righteous person thrown in (Rosie for one, and Stacey for another) just to leaven the mix.
     Anyway, that's not what I wanted to talk about - typical me, eh? cannot string a coherent string of thought together without wandering off at a tangent, or two, as with this sentence here - because I have also ordered, via Abebooks, the first three novels in the "Hap and Leonard" series by Joe R. Lansdale. Art! (I think the coke is wearing off)

With a quote from James Crumley!

     Because I am typing this at work, I cannot re-size the picture, so - allow me to quote the quote "I loved it man.  I thought it was a hoot from beginning to end."  It is laugh out loud funny in parts, especially the scene set in the Congo Bongo Club; Your Humble Scribe is glad he wasn't reading this on the bus, since a grim-faced old man bursting into a fit of the giggles can cause offence, or worry at the least.
                  
                          Leonard                  Hap                                      Leo                  Hap
     
      Those above are Leonard and Hap, the heroes of that novel above, though they are usually introduced as Hap and Leonard.  Hap is a bit of an idler with no great plans about anything, though he's an extremely able hombre when it comes to dishing out physical violence.  You have to work at him to get his temper up, however.  Leonard, on the other hand, possesses a ferocious temper and is quite happy to get into fights, which, seeing as how he's 1) black ( you may have noticed) 2) a Vietnam vet and 3) gay as anything, come along reg'lar, like.  There, a bit of East Texas argot for you.

Not sure which county they're in

      I shall now do the decent thing and warn you that there's a SPOILER ahead, except being me I'm not going to tell you when it turns up.**  Now, "Mucho Mojo" is not the first novel in this series, it's the second, but since it arrived first in the post, I read it first.  The first is "Savage Season", which arrived the next day  which was TOO LATE ROYAL MAIL, TOO DAMNED LATE! because I'd already read about how - okay, I relent, here's the SPOILER - Hap's ex-wife had been killed in their earlier adventure.  Thus I go into "Savage Season" already knowing part of the ending <sad face>.

Thus

      Now, since that injunction is still in force, I can only put down on paper what I'd like to do to the motley, and then post it to the wretch and watch it quiver with fear before it realises it is perfectly safe -***

 "Snow And Steel" By Mister Caddick-Adams
No need to bother with first names, is there?  It's not as if there's scads of Caddick-Adams lurking on the literary horizon <which means the fat old biffer has forgotten the author's first name - the ugly truth courtesy Mister Hand!>
      and they need - is that traitorous wretch Mister Hand up to his mischief again?
     Anyway, I noted at page 199 that ROGER <take that, Hand!> makes serious mention of the logistics burden placed upon the Wehrmacht by their weapons high rates of fire.  I, Conrad, have also mentioned this in passing. ROGER refers in this case to the widespread adoption of the Mp44 "Sturmgewehr" as a substitute for the Mauser Kar98.  Art?

Kar98 at top, Stg44 at bottom

   I can see your brains glazing over so shall keep this brief.  The Kar98 was a classic bolt-action rifle, with a relatively slow rate of fire; essentially, you-the-user were the rate of fire.  The Stg44, on the other hand, was capable of fully automatic fire at about 500 rounds per minute; it used an intermediate cartridge that was more powerful than a pistol round, but more compact than a rifle round.  It didn't shoot as far as a rifle, but then it wasn't intended to.  As ROGER points out, suddenly being able to fire 20 times as many bullets meant you needed to supply 20 times as many, which simply wasn't possible, given that the Wehrmacht was still relying on Horsey for transport.
     This is conducive to a bit of mathematical analysis.  We may revisit!

CAUTION! Not available in the UK.  Ever.

     Enough of mayhem, murder, military matters and <thinks> mushrooms, let us indulge in some harmless whimsy!

Ahem.  I think we need to educate Art in what "harmless" and "whimsy" entail

"Rock-A-Bye Baby"
A short while ago we logically de-constructed that tale of horror and woe that goes by the name "Humpty Dumpty", which Conrad thinks might better be titled "An Accident Waiting To Happen".  Let us now look at "Rock-a-bye Baby" -

"Rock-a-bye baby"

     Thoroughly unexceptional.  Unless they mean that the baby is present at a Black Sabbath concert as the parents were too tight to hire a babysitter, in which case Child Services will be having a little word with you, Parents.

 

"On the tree top -"

     HOLY CALVING COW ON A PETROL-POWERED POGO STICK! NO NO NO!!  And there I was worried about parents taking their kid to a music concert, shows how little I know.  Call the RAF's Air Sea Rescue and the Fire Brigade, and some especially brutal police, in order that those Parents can be given a thorough seeing too.  What were they thinking?  Were they thinking at all?  Sheesh, they're bad enough to feature in a James Crumley novel.
     I'm sorry, I'm too shaken to carry on.  Besides which, we've hit the Compositional Ton.

A shockingly sordid tale of parental drug abuse and neglect!

***  For now.
**  Heh
*  It was actually coke but you might have gotten the wrong idea.

Art's idea of fine dining