Soul Circus
Last night I was listening to a radio adaptation of a Sherlock Holmes story called "The Boscombe Valley Mystery" based on the story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In this story a young man is accused of murdering his own father, but Sherlock Holmes believes that he is innocent, and determines to track down the real killer. It was a really good story, and one of the earliest of the Sherlock Holmes stories.
I also finished reading the novel Soul Circus by George Pelecanos. It's a crime novel, set in Washington DC, where private investigator Derek Strange is determined to protect a particularly violent drug dealer from getting the death penalty, not because Strange believes that he is innocent but because he doesn't believe in capital punishment, however as the tril progresses so does the tensions between rival street gangs. Added to that, Strange and his partner Terry Quinn discover that one of their clients has brutally murdered the woman that he paid them to find. It's a really good, tense and gritty novel, full of action, witty dialogue and laced with dark humour. Pelecanos wrote scripts for the TV series The Wire, and definitely if you like the show (which is awesome) then you should like the novel.
Later on I watched the 1992 movie Bram Stoker's Dracula, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. In 1897 a young English lawyer (played by Keanu Reeves) heads to the remote Castle Dracula in Transylvania to oversee a property purchase by the mysterious Count Dracula (Gary Oldman) who is planning to move to England. However while in the castle the lawyer discovers that Dracula is a vampire, a dead creature that has existed for hundreds of years feeding on human blood, and that Dracula has set his sights on the lawyer's fiancee (Winona Ryder) believing her to be the reincarnation of his long-dead wife. Despite some major changes the film is relatively faithful to the book. Visually it's very impressive and stylish and filled with visual tricks, for example in one scene where a character has to step through a doorway, they actually had to step over the doorway backwards and then it was played in reverse ro give it added strangeness.
It was another very quiet day at work and pretty dull. I left at five and got a suasage supper on my way home, which was quite nice.
I also finished reading the novel Soul Circus by George Pelecanos. It's a crime novel, set in Washington DC, where private investigator Derek Strange is determined to protect a particularly violent drug dealer from getting the death penalty, not because Strange believes that he is innocent but because he doesn't believe in capital punishment, however as the tril progresses so does the tensions between rival street gangs. Added to that, Strange and his partner Terry Quinn discover that one of their clients has brutally murdered the woman that he paid them to find. It's a really good, tense and gritty novel, full of action, witty dialogue and laced with dark humour. Pelecanos wrote scripts for the TV series The Wire, and definitely if you like the show (which is awesome) then you should like the novel.
Later on I watched the 1992 movie Bram Stoker's Dracula, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. In 1897 a young English lawyer (played by Keanu Reeves) heads to the remote Castle Dracula in Transylvania to oversee a property purchase by the mysterious Count Dracula (Gary Oldman) who is planning to move to England. However while in the castle the lawyer discovers that Dracula is a vampire, a dead creature that has existed for hundreds of years feeding on human blood, and that Dracula has set his sights on the lawyer's fiancee (Winona Ryder) believing her to be the reincarnation of his long-dead wife. Despite some major changes the film is relatively faithful to the book. Visually it's very impressive and stylish and filled with visual tricks, for example in one scene where a character has to step through a doorway, they actually had to step over the doorway backwards and then it was played in reverse ro give it added strangeness.
It was another very quiet day at work and pretty dull. I left at five and got a suasage supper on my way home, which was quite nice.
Labels: book, crime, Dracula, drama, horror, movie, radio, reading, Sherlock Holmes, thriller
posted by WildatHeart87 at 1:07 PM
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