The Queue
The jones for mysteries persists, and I hope to find in Mrs. Christie a far better practitioner of the form than C. S. Harris. I have enjoyed the latter authoress's three Sebastian St. Cyr novels, but each has featured at least one eye-rolling moment of detective expertise and, as the series progresses, St. Cyr, the Viscount Devlin, is beginning to take on all the trappings of an invincible superman. This is most unfortunate. Why Mermaids Sing is the weakest book of the three, in large measure because it is the only one not to feature a substantial subplot of Regency politics. Harris's mysteries are not strong enough to survive without a significant dose of political skulduggery. That said, I would be reading Where Serpents Sleep now instead of Death on the Nile had the former been available from McFarlen; instead, I've called dibs on the next copy to be returned and begun ahead of schedule my sampling of Agatha Christie's daunting body of work.

Recently
C. S. Harris, What Angels Fear
James Hilton, Lost Horizon
C. S. Harris, When Gods Die
C. S. Harris, Why Mermaids Sing

Currently
Agatha Christie, Death on the Nile
Jacques-Yves Cousteau, "Exploring a New World Undersea," Great Adventures with National Geographic

Presently
C. S. Harris, Where Serpents Sleep
Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None a.k.a. Ten Little Indians a.k.a. Ten Little Niggers
David M. Friedman, The Immortalists: Charles Lindbergh, Dr. Alexis Carrel, and Their Daring Quest to Live Forever
Saki, When William Came: A Story of London Under the Hohenzollerns (from The Complete Saki)
Ernest Shackleton, South
John Toland, The Great Dirigibles: Their Triumphs and Disasters (catch as catch can)
Sloane Crosley, I Was Told There'd be Cake
John Hodgman, The Areas of My Expertise
Kim Newman, Dracula Cha Cha Cha
Francie Lin, The Foreigner

Project TRITON
The spate of mysteries is my attempt to bend to my own purpose my impressionable nature. Project TRITON is a mystery and I have precious little experience with mysteries; I can only gain my reading more of them, both because my own skills will be sharpened and because it will help to keep my flighty mind focused on the task at hand. Eyes on the prize, old son, keep your eyes on the prize. Project TROIKA might have turned out substantially differently had it not been conceived, developed, and plotted while the Indiana Jones series loomed so large in my thoughts. When the time eventually comes to further develop my seed of a science fiction novel Man's Burden and its accompanying universe, I would do well to brush up on my H. Beam Piper and Robert Heinlein, as well as my Rudyard Kipling and Thomas Hobbes.

There are several proposed story ideas that might be developed into a sequel to the Project TROIKA novel, which once selected will be codenamed Project TRIANGLE. The Immortalists seems like it might be quite handy when the times comes to work on whichever idea becomes Project TRIANGLE.

Obamboozled
Under President Obama, we "will stand with the people of Iraq," says Secretary of State Clinton, even though we have in place a plan to withdraw all American combat troops: surrenderlink. So, if we won't be willing to fight alongside the Iraqis against the Iranian-funded, -trained, and -armed militias and the diehard remnants of al-Qaeda in Iraq, what exactly does standing "with the people of Iraq" mean? The way we stood with the people of South Vietnam in 1975 as the North Vietnamese invaded in open defiance of the Paris Peace Accords? Words alone without the possibility of martial backing are useless, as the European impotence to stop the Bosnian War and "ethnic cleansing" if 1992-95 demonstrated. Only when Secretary Clinton's husband threatened the use of American military might did the wholesale slaughter of Muslim Bosniaks by the Bosnian Serb death squads end. Sadly, both our charlatan president and our illustrious Secretary of State seem to be eager for a replay of the evacuation of Saigon in '75. Do those reckless fools realize how many helicopters will be required to evacuate all our personnel in the Green Zone?

Welcome to the parade of horrors, wherein America cravenly abandons those we have asked to place their trust in us.