September 2016 – Benjamin L. Clark, writer

26 September 201626 May 2020

Book Review: Shamus in a Skirt by M. Ruth Myers

IT KEEPS GETTING BETTER

Each book in M. Ruth Myers’ series featuring Maggie Sullivan, a lady private detective just gets better and better.

In Shamus in a Skirt, Maggie is hired by a strange couple of former theater performers who now run an upscale and very discreet hotel. The hotel caters to the wealthy and powerful, but someone is breaking into the hotel safe — or are they? When a young cleaning lady is found dead in the alley behind the hotel, Maggie must learn if certain murder is connected to possible thievery.

Shamus in a Skirt is a very good historical mystery focused when World War II is breaking out in Europe, and many in the US asked if we’d be involved in another European war.

Shamus in a Skirt, like all of her Maggie Sullivan books, feels so … immediate. I don’t really feel like I’m reading historical fiction when I read these books, though the historical details are very good. So good in fact they fit seamlessly in the narrative. If you’re looking for a historic mystery series of quick reading books you can really submerge in, pick up the first book No Game for a Dame in ebook format for FREE. And maybe like me, you’ll find yourself keeping an eye peeled for the next word of Maggie Sullivan.

About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes historical mysteries and works as a history museum curator.

About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes and works as a museum curator.

21 September 201626 May 2020

In The Museum: Some Days are Not Glamorous

Glasses with built in hearing aids Not every day in the museum involves solving mysteries surrounding JFK, tracking holy relics and appearing on TV. Some days, you’re working on exhibits about hearing aids.

These hearing aids are built into a pair of glasses. I wear glasses every day and these would be awful, even tiring to wear they’re so heavy.

And no, there’s no big reveal like these were found at Area 51 or were bequeathed to Elvis from Sasquatch. These are simply one evolutionary step in our current technology that helps so many people around the world hear.

Days like these may not sound very exciting, but every day is different and I wouldn’t have it any other way!

Like this post? Here’s more about life behind the scenes in museums and archives:
BINGO! At the Intersection of History and Slang
How to know Things are Bound to get Worse
How to Research History Like a Novelist
In the Museum: A JFK Autograph Mystery

About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes and works as a museum curator.

17 September 201629 November 2017

In the Museum: A JFK Autograph Mystery

“That’s it?!”

I admit, it doesn’t look like much, but the cameraman’s tone stung. This book is a treasure at the museum where I’m curator. But with a book collector’s eye, yes it’s in tough shape. But what a story behind it!

Someone somewhere in our large organization decided to create and promote some short videos about fascinating objects in our collections. They needed a list of suggested artifacts and this one was high on our list.

In 1940, a young John F. Kennedy’s senior thesis at Harvard was published as Why England Slept. Not long after that, an autographed copy from the young man from a prominent family was given to Father Edward J. Flanagan, of Boys Town fame. Father Flanagan was one of the most famous Catholics in the United States in 1940, just two years following the film that earned Spencer Tracy his second Oscar.

We’re still not 100% sure how the book came to have been gifted to Father Flanagan, but he and young Jack Kennedy’s sister Eunice Schriver served on a committee studying juvenile delinquency around that time, and that was the best guess according to long-time staff at the museum.

Then I found this November 1940 photo online at the JFK Presidential Library of young JFK signing the book for Spencer Tracy. Father Flanagan wasn’t the only priest played by Tracy, but he did play him twice. First in 1938 in Boys Town, and a little-known sequel Men of Boys Town in 1940.

It makes sense if this was on the set of Men of Boys Town with Tracy reprising his role as Father Flanagan. Did young Jack Kennedy sign a copy for Father at the same time as Tracy’s? Someone on staff asked if JFK made it out to Father Flanagan, giving it to Tracy!

Nothing turns up in our archives of correspondence between Tracy and Flanagan about the book, but there’s a decent probability Father Flanagan was on set at Men of Boys Town, so he could be just out of frame in this photo! We’ll probably never know.

We do know that we’ll have a nice video telling the fascinating story behind this particular book and the strange and roundabout way it came to the museum.

More About Working In Museums:
VHS is Dead
How to Research Like a Novelist

WHY NOT SUBSCRIBE TO MY NEWSLETTER?

13 September 2016

Happy 100th Birthday Roald Dahl

Where would we be without Roald Dahl’s books? Separate the man if you can and consider his work. This past week I read aloud to my partner Susan The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and other stories. It’s a fantastic collection of fiction and non-fiction. Some of it horrifying (I’m looking at you, bullies and the swan story!), but all of it perfectly RoaldDahlian. That perfect mix of weird and wonderful, macabre and marvelous.

Modern Moms and Dads sometimes say his stories are too dark. Too gross. Too profane, and are too mature for young readers. Bull. Shit. Dahl was brilliant (and yes grouchy), but I’d never tell a parent how to parent (now that I am one, I get it) however I will judge you silently. Everyone from Tim Burton to Stephen King and those who follow them, like Stranger Things’ Duffer Brothers, stand on Roald Dahl’s shoulders today.

What would I be without his strange sense of wonder, his fascination with life and death, and his sense of justice? And acceptance? Like that of a grandmother and her grandson who has been turned into a mouse and will never be a boy again. Reading Dahl as an adult teaches me far more lessons than when I read him as a child. I think that’s the point.

We read The Witches in the last month or so waiting for the birth of our son last year. Reading aloud to one another each night and taking a few moments to talk to the baby yet to make his debut. Each chapter is a prayer to be able to love, to be brave, and stand up to wrong no matter the odds. It was perfect.

Month: September 2016