The 35th Precinct

-( Harper's Island, Week VIII--SPOILERS )

-I've been reading Dan Simmons' The Terror which is an atmospheric, delightfully creepy historical horror/suspense thriller about a lost Arctic expedition and what might have befallen the doomed crew. It's predicated on real events and historical figures, but skewed to the eerily fantastical, with a tongueless Eskimo witch and a formless creature stalking the Arctic wastes in search of blood.

-I've set aside Caleb Carr's Angels and Demons. It started out with such promise but eventually bogged down into a tired courtroom drama with a cast of fusty Victorian tightasses. Reading it was like tuning in to an episode of CSI, only to have the Ben stone-era cast of Law and Order crash through the set ceiling and stage a theatrical coup. Add that to the fact that I had scant sympathy for anyone except the Linares baby and the quiet Cyrus Montrose, and I simply decided to waste my increasingly myopic eyesight on more interesting fare. It's as disappointing and turgid as The Alienist was refreshing and exciting.

-I watched Pathfinder this morning. Pure cheese, but also chock full of Karl Urban manflesh, including a shot of his gloriously bare, copulating ass. Why you'd take time to bump uglies while hordes of armored Viking warriors are in search of you, I don't know, but mmmm.

-Dear CBS, if your budgets for TV dramas are so tight that you're pleading poverty and "asking" your talent to take pay freezes, then mayhap it would behoove you to stop paying exorbitant sums to flash-in-the-pan celebrities of dubious acting ability. Sean "P. Diddy" Coombs as a lawyer on CSI:Miami is a case in point. Or you could scrap your plans for an NCIS spinoff featuring LL Cool J. Because, you know, the world was just hanging out for that.

It might also behoove you to trim the bloated cast of Numb3rs. When your ensemble is so vast that you're forced to rotate one or more of them out every week because you can't pay them, your casting director has clearly gone mad. Lose Bettancourt. She's an annoying version of Sinclair with tits, and she kills every scene she's in. You could also scale back the number of Robin's appearances. I know she's bonking Don, but there is no need to see her in every episode. The show did very well without the presence of a U.S. attorney in the shadows of every case. You could also limit Rob Morrow to one vat of bootblack per episode. Face it, the man is getting older, and no amount of dye is going to mask the crows' feet and the dull, waxy skin.

-Lawrence Fisburne was excellent on CSI when I finally broke down and watched an episode, but he simply wasn't enough to counterbalance the noxious, grating rankness of Riley, who screams spoiled brat badgrrrl wannabe every time I clap eyes on her. I guess it's back to World's Dumbest Criminals for me.

-I'm currently reading Caleb Carr's The Alienist, and it is fantastic, CSI for the Victorian age. The language of the narrator is adorably quaint, and I'm occasionally amused by the characters' goggle-eyed wonder at techniques that modern forensics either takes as a matter of course, like fingerprinting, or has dismissed as outmoded and fallacious, a la measuring the bones of individuals to establish identity, but the psychological insights into the human condition are mind-blowing, and the pacing is first-rate. The book is four hundred and seventy pages, a daunting number in today's world of neatly packaged two hundred and fifty-page, ADD-inspired lightweights, but I could happily read four hundred more and not feel overburdened by the plot or tired of the characters.

Actually, given the steep, psychological underpinnings, Alienist should be considered a Victorian episode of Criminal Minds, with Reid as the narrator and Rossi as the grizzled, old Laszlo Kreizler. Some of the best money I've ever spent on a book, and you can bet your ass I bought the sequel, too.

-More books on my To-Read pile:

A Lion Among Men by Gregory Maguire
Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
Angel of Darkness by Caleb Carr
House of Chains by Steven Erikson
Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson
The Overnight by Ramsey Campbell
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by Daniel Wrobleski
Miracle at St. Anna by James McBride