It’s not every day you can say you remember where you were fifty four years ago, but today I can. I was on a freezing, foggy, school football pitch in Wolverhampton and I can remember the exact patch of grass, rimed with white frost, which I stared at bleakly when they told me The Busby Babes were dead. The Manchester United plane, bringing the team back from a match in Belgrade, had crashed in Munich while attempting to take off after a refueling stop, killing most of the shockingly young and astonishingly gifted squad, while leaving us a lingering hope that Duncan Edwards, the gifted gift to English football, might survive. Sadly he didn’t, and our hopes that our generation might escape death also died.
It’s odd to say of a school consisting of boys whose fathers had been killed in the war that this was our first experience of death, but this was a very personal death. Though we of course were Wolves fans, nonetheless we loved all the young Manchester stars who played for England, and the thought that one day, even for the brightest and the gifted, death could spring out of nowhere and snatch you away, was a hard lesson.
Three years later, the death of Buddy Holly, also in a plane crash, would complete the process; even our rock and roll heroes could die. True Love Ways released in the UK after his death, with its strings and mournful wailing sax, somehow seemed to be about that, and we listened with tears in our eyes.
Now, my generation are accustomed to death. We walk in its shadow. We are the bulging group on the edge of the runway, wondering who’s next. Send not to ask, it tolls for thee.
So always look on the bright side of death….
And a fond farewell to all our former heroes.

Couple of new thrillers in. Oddly both deal with the trade in body parts.
First the new Elmore Leonard, Raylan.
And the second the return of your favorite Thai Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep in John Burdett’s new Bangkok novel: Vulture Peak.
Oh and I picked up Shortcut Man at Book Soup, by P.G. Sturges, a noir which I very much enjoyed.

There is a delay on the very big announcement. It will be sometime in the week of February 20th and I’ll be on Ferguson hopefully. I’ll post details.

And by the way these Python reunion rumors are just bollocks. Some greedy bastard producer in Hollywood floating an idea. It’s annoying but there seems little we can do about this sort of thing, except to release his name for public abuse, which I am reluctant to do as he is a soccer fan. So watch it or you will be outed as a twat dear….. (Name and address to follow)

Shockaholic by Carrie Fisher.

C’mon. Buy it. It’s short, wise and very funny. Like its author.