CAPSULE COMMENTS

March 15, 2007

Book to Movie to DVD: Mystery

The following materials are available to Library patrons and may be checked out from the main library.

IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, by John Ball

On a hot August night in a Southern town the corpse of a white man lies sprawled on the pavement. It’s the body of a musician who was part of a plan to bring culture to the town. The police go cruising for the usual suspects and are delighted to pick up a man who is a stranger to them and a Man of Color to boot. Unfortunately for them the stranger turns out to be a homicide cop from California. Or is it unfortunate? The local Chief may be a racist but he know his politics – if the California Homicide investigator can crack the case, everybody wins; if he can’t, he can be blamed for the failure. Written in 1965 this is the first title in the Virgil Tibbs series which also includes Singapore : a Virgil Tibbs Mystery and Then came violence.

The book was made into a movie in the mid-sixties starring Sidney Poitier and later adapted quite freely into a TV. series starring Howard Rollins as Tibbs and Carroll O’Connor as the far-more-benign-than-in-the-book Chief of police.

The library owns the book and the original movie in both VHS and DVD formats.

PERFECT MURDER, by H. R. F. Keating

If you like your detectives to be underdogs and/or ordinary decent people striving against the world’s corruption – not least the corruption of the very agency they work for – then you will like Inspector Ganesh Ghote.

Amidst the "bribery, corruption also" of the Mumbai police force and under constant pressure to prove himself to his superiors, Inspector Ghote is required to solve the apparent murder of a rich man’s secretary, the nominal Mr. Perfect; a case of major diamond smuggling; and the theft of one rupee (roughly 2¢) – ah but it’s a very important rupee in that it was stolen from the desk of the Minister of Police Affairs.

"Helping" Ghote is a visiting Swedish criminologist whose style clashes mightily with Ghote’s. However the ever-polite Ghote makes it work as do the actors who include Naseeruddin Shah (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Monsoon Wedding), Stellan Skarsgard (Amistad, Pirates of the Caribbean), Madhur Jaffrey (ABCD, Shakespeare Wallah). The Library owns this title in audio and DVD.

THIN MAN, by Dashiell Hammett

The year is roughly 1930. Nick Charles has retired from professional life as a detective and married a wealthy woman, Nora. While reading the newspaper Nick sees an article mentioning the murder of the secretary of former client, Clyde Wynant. The body of the secretary (and possible girlfriend) was found by Wynant’s ex-wife who says she was in the secretary’s apartment looking for her ex-husband who is missing. Whodunit, not to mention what, exactly, has been done?

Some Hammett fans feel that in writing the Thin Man Hammet abandoned his former zeal for exposing corruption; others find it’s lighter tone and witty repartee more appealing than say, The Continental Op.

In her book, Private Investigations: The Novels of Dashiell Hammet, Sinda Gregory contends that Hammet’s usual themes are there, just overlaid with the comedy-of-manners technique.

Hollywood liked The Thin Man so well that it was made into a movie based on the book and then five additional movies were spun off from that. William Powell stars as Nick with Myrna Loy as Nora.

The Library owns this title in print, sound recording, VHS and DVD formats.