...just a bum who can write.
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Hedy Lamarry, as I recall. Louis Shalako Coming soon. The Dead Man’s Touch is the eleventh in the Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery Series. Still recovering from a fractured skull and temporary amnesia stemming from the Dead Reckoning case, Inspector Gilles Maintenon accepts three cases from the hand of Roger Langeron, head of the Sûreté in Paris . Two are baffling enough, and one seems…
"Broadsword calling Danny Boy." Louis Shalako On Alistair MacLean. I was just watching the 1979 film of Alistair MacLean’s Bear Island. It has been said that the quality of his work was uneven. You could say that about any writer, if one compares the first thing they ever wrote against the last thing they ever wrote, along with some of the really great stuff when they were at their peak. Of course…
He loved the stories. Louis Shalako Why I Love Louis L’Amour. I love Louis L’Amour books and stories. I like the highly-romanticized version of the American West, which is only half myth. Some of it might even be real. And a lot of the rest is bullshit— We’ll talk about that some other time. I suppose it’s the action, the adventure, the escape into a world where the moral questions are easy…
730 square feet. Louis Shalako The new federal government of Canada is promoting home-building, and one aspect of the plan is pre-approved home designs. There have been references to ‘war-time’ housing, which was built in large numbers and all across this country after WW II. Large numbers of service men and women were coming home from Europe and other theatres, and they needed two things. They…
Louis Shalako Here’s a funny thing. John Wayne wasn’t acting. In the early days, he might have had to do some acting in order to become the role. Those were all westerns, and Mr. Wayne could ride a horse, he was from Texas. He enjoyed the outdoors, shooting, hunting and fishing for example. (If you ever see me on a horse, you can assume I am not only acting, but way out of my depth.) It wasn’t a…
Borrowed image, for the purposes of training and other scholarly purposes. Louis Shalako Zen, and the Manly Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance. It really does something for the male psyche to take something apart and put it back together again. And it works better than it did before. There is the challenge of manual dexterity, there is the psychological component. It is a mental challenge as much as…
iStock. Louis Shalako Bogus Social Policy and the Price of Ignorance. I hate it when people ask me for spare change in front of a business, a store, a bank. I hate it even more, when all I want is a twenty dollar bill so I can go to work—and there are three fucking crackheads, all lined up in a row, using the little ledges under the ATMs in order to heat up their little rocks on tinfoil and…
Louis Shalako With the Beretta tucked into the back of his belt, hidden by the long shirt-tails, and keeping his left side turned to them in what must appear an odd move, he moved forward three or four metres. It kept them thinking. He kept those hands up, and that’s all they needed to see. He needed to get well clear of the door, and to divide their attention. The MAB, standard issue service…
Louis Shalako Capucine’s heart was full as she packed her handbasket, with whatever she’d bought, whatever she could afford on her limited pay. Whatever was in the garden. Whatever she could scrounge, essentially. Quite frankly, she didn’t know what to think of all of this— Thoughts of Éliott and the old man filled her mind as she left her mother’s house, and headed off, up the road, and onto the…
Louis Shalako “How much authorization do we need.” It was one hell of a question. Alphonse had finally been located. Roger, as it turned out, was in some big meeting with the Minister and a bunch of other bigwigs, and would be out of touch for quite some time according to his personal secretary. “Fuck. Is the car gassed up?” Hubert would have liked to have had the opportunity to phone home and let…
