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In The Hollow Boy, the third book in Jonathan Stroud’s Lockwood & Co. series, Lockwood, Lucy, and George are still attacking the Problem: their alternate-world London is being stalked by ghosts that only young people can see — and defeat. I talked with Jonathan about world-building, series-continuing, and negotiating the needs of fans.
Roger Sutton: I’m curious about — in particular with the Lockwood series, but thinking about Bartimaeus as well — two things. You want Question One first or Question Two first?
Jonathan Stroud: Well…we can make it Question Two, right?
RS: Okay, Question Two is: When you have a world, as you do in the Lockwood & Co. books, that is like ours if not quite ours, how do you decide what the rules of that universe are going to be? Or is that something you work out as you go?
JS: It’s an organic process. I kind of work from the middle outward, I suppose. Both in Bartimaeus and in Lockwood, that middle-beginning comes with the key characters. I’ll start with the idea of a djinni as narrator who’s being controlled by dodgy human magicians. The first scene I wrote is the djinni meeting this kid who’s his master. At that point I knew nothing more about the world, really. I gradually pieced it together around that initial sequence. With Lockwood, I began with a boy and a girl walking up to a door in modern London, and they had swords at their belts, and they were going to deal with a ghost. I had them talking to each other, sort of bantering, but I knew nothing about the logic of the world. Why were children doing that? I had no clue.
RS: So you hadn’t even thought of “the Problem” at that time?
JS: Exactly. I wrote maybe three pages of the first chapter, just these two kids talking. And then I put it down, and I had to pause some while I was sitting there scratching my neck and wondering what reason it would be that they’re there without any adults, and what happens when they go inside. It took quite a long time to actually get them in the door, because I had to set some ground rules straightaway. You don’t get those all in one go. But clearly whatever rules I invent for the first book in a series, I have to make sure they remain fast.
RS: Right, and I think you do a good job of parceling them out. It’s not like we have to digest all the rules at the beginning.
JS: I’ve read books, and I’m sure you have too, where you just get hit between the eyes at the beginning with huge amounts of exposition about how everything hangs together. It’s unnecessary. The real world doesn’t work that way. We’re still discovering subtleties about how the world operates. You’re constantly fleshing it out. There’s no reason why an invented world should be any different.
RS: Have you read Margo Lanagan’s Black Juice? It’s a collection of short stories set in these completely unexplained worlds. And she just-sort-of-maybe drops in a rule about how that world works, and maybe she doesn’t. It’s almost as if they’re tales of straightforward realism set in very odd places.
JS: And you buy it, don’t you? If it’s done well.
RS: It’s very disorienting at the same time.
JS: Yes. It’s a fine balance, isn’t it? In fantasy, there’s nothing worse than feeling that the ground is shifting beneath your feet, where the rules suddenly change halfway through. The author has to play fair. But you’re right, part of the fun is throwing in the odd little detail and letting the ripples of it stretch out in the reader’s mind, even if you don’t necessarily ever refer to it again. It’s there, part of the furniture.
RS: I would think, too — and here is Question One — that the use of magic has to be handled very carefully, so that it doesn’t become a substitute for plot development.
JS: With Bartimaeus, one of the things I discovered — it wasn’t intentional — was that as a djinni he had all of these protean abilities, magical powers, but when he came to Earth he was immediately constrained by the binding that the kid had put upon him. So the whole energy and the frisson of the books is that he can’t do what he wants to do, and it becomes a problem for him and an amusement for us. If it were easy for him, it would quickly become very tiresome for readers.
RS: That’s why Superman needed kryptonite.
JS: Yeah. It’s why I think a lot of these superhero movies and comics ultimately get a bit tiresome. (I’m saying that as a big fan.)
RS: Oh, you’re in trouble now.
JS: There has to be an element of danger. Things get rebooted so often, and the characters get in all sorts of peril, but ultimately they always seem to dust themselves off and hitch up their britches and walk away.
RS: How does a writer deal with that? I think about this when I watch cop shows on TV, even — that you want to have your characters in the greatest peril, and you want the viewer, or the reader, to feel the terror along with that person, but you know the hero has to survive for the next episode. There was that one show Spooks [MI-5 in the U.S.], though, do you remember it? On BBC?
JS: Yeah.
RS: Spooks knocked off main characters left and right. But you can’t really do that in a book for kids. Or in a book for anybody, really.
JS: No. In Bartimaeus I did do it, ultimately, and unexpectedly. I think there always has to be a sense that you could do it, that you are prepared to do it, and if you don’t, the character is lucky, and the reader feels that luck. That gives you the sense that the peril is genuine, and the relief is genuine too.
RS: I also think you can, as you have in the Lockwood series, leave your characters with genuine scars, both psychic and physical, from encounters that they have with (in this case) the Problem.
JS: That’s right. In the world in which you and I live, a fatal disaster is not so common — heaven knows that’s not always the case — but for us it is more about the psychic scars, the minor battering that you get as you go through life. So you do want your characters to have bruises from the things they experience. That makes them more lovable and identifiable, I think, from the point of view of the reader.
RS: I’m trying to figure out a way to phrase this question without giving away the ending of your book, because we don’t want to do that — but something very dramatically changes in the last sentence of The Hollow Boy—
JS: Yes, true.
RS: —and how do you pick up from that in starting the next volume?
JS: Usually with a series — it was the same with Bartimaeus — I will have a vague idea of where I’m going, but it’s only vague, and it can be altered at any given moment. Funny enough, as you rang, I was just working away on the structure of the next book. I’d actually done a very, very early version of that a year ago, when I was thinking about book three. I already had in my mind a possible way of continuing the story. And yet you have to be ready to throw that away if necessary. Now I’m trying to firm it up. Part of the beauty of it, part of the challenge of a writer, is to try to keep that balance: forward planning with improvisation. The two have to coexist. If you have everything mapped out from the beginning, it becomes arid. Similarly, if you fly by the seat of your pants entirely, it’s a bit high-risk. So I’m constantly trying to think ahead, but at the same time, not paint myself into a corner. I need there to be varied options. That links back to the question about what happens to the characters. With the Lockwood books, I genuinely don’t yet know what’s going to happen to my characters at the end. That means there is a potential threat hanging over them like an ominous cloud. I treat it with respect and my reader with respect, but I do keep it open as I go.
RS: What do you think adding a fourth ghostbuster in this volume does to the dynamic among the characters?
JS: I was quite pleased with it as a way of shaking up the existing dynamic. You have a nice triangular relationship between Lockwood, who’s the dashing central character in a way — he’s the titular character — but in another way, the central character is Lucy, the narrator. It’s her emotions we primarily follow. And George, who’s the third guy. [Ed. note: Poor George.] The three of them have a very nice, close, interconnected dynamic. And bringing in a fourth, and indeed female, character, Holly, really destabilizes things from Lucy’s point of view. That’s really been fun. It allowed me to focus more closely on Lucy’s emotional state, foreground it, and make her that much more affecting.
RS: At what point did you know there was going to be a series of books, not just one?
JS: Fairly early on, it had that potential. I remember with Bartimaeus, all those years ago, I wrote about fifty or sixty pages of the first book before I realized that there was too much going on for it to be one book. This time, because I’m a bit older and grayer and more grizzled, I sat there thinking about the problem of the Problem, what the Problem was, and what the book was going to try and do. I figured out almost straightaway my plan would be to have a series of very traditional ghost-hunting narratives, but then surround that with this wider issue of why the ghosts are coming back, and the social implications of it. That was quite interesting, embedding traditional ghost narratives in a wider social context. That is something I couldn’t do in one book. It was going to have to be a series.
RS: I thought it was pretty brilliant to make one of the rules the fact that only children could really deal with these ghosts.
JS: It was the first rule that I had to figure out. Why were these kids there? Where were the grownups? There had to be some pretty basic reason. It’s not just the old Scooby-Doo type thing where you’re a bunch of kids having an adventure. There are real ghosts. They’re really dangerous. And the adults can’t see them. That immediately has implications for how the society functions. The adults are vulnerable, but also still control things. They try and remain safe, but send kids into the houses to deal with the phantoms and potentially get killed. The adults stay at home at night, and the kids go out after dark. It’s fun to play with that.
RS: Will we see in the fourth volume — I don’t want to say a resolution to the Problem, but will we get a bigger picture of it?
JS: We will. As I’m speaking now, I’m thinking that I may do five books, and the fifth one will be the one that has the ultimate resolution. But, yes, having focused quite closely on the emotional dynamics of my heroes in book three, I think book four will open out again a little bit more and give a few tentative answers.
RS: Do you have any demands from fans as to how certain things happen or don’t happen?
JS: Well, yes, actually. There’s definitely a large number of people who are quite keen, particularly, on there being an emotional resolution to the Lockwood and Lucy relationship. That’s of interest to a fair number of readers.
RS: Are you seeing fanfiction about the two of them?
JS: I know it exists, but I don’t read it. When I do a naughty Google search, I’ll find all sorts of excerpts about Lockwood and Lucy. There’s a lot of fan art kicking around, and quite often that’s fairly…well, Lockwood and Lucy in loving clinches. So I’m under no illusions about what people would like. I guess to a certain extent one has to detach oneself a little bit from that and try and follow the way you want to go.
RS: And it is kind of a nice problem to have. It wouldn’t happen if people weren’t so wrapped up in the story.
JS: No, it’s the best. It suggests that your characters are living, breathing creations outside the little bits of paper in your messy old study. I remember, back with Bartimaeus, that somebody sent me a letter with an alternative ending to the series. There’s quite an apocalyptic finish to the third Bartimaeus book, and a girl wrote me a lovely alternative ending where everything was resolved in a much more upbeat way. It really moved me. It was wrong from an aesthetic point of view—I didn’t think that as a story ending it was correct. But from the point of view of wish-fulfillment and wanting the best for my characters, it actually made me feel very moved.
RS: In the Talks with Roger interview I did with Lisa Graff, we talked about J. K. Rowling’s periodic announcements about this or that character after the books have been published. You know, like when she told us that Dumbledore was gay. How much ownership do you feel over these characters?
JS: The only character of mine who could almost exist independently of me is Bartimaeus. A djinni that’s been around for thousands of years — it almost feels natural that I can assert him as being present in a couple of different epochs. People ask me if I’m going to write another Bartimaeus book, and I think yeah, sure, I could. He’s out there somewhere having adventures, and I no doubt could tap into it. He does have that sort of life for me. Beyond that, you give it your best shot in the book. You have a certain number of pages; you put down what you can, and then you leave it to other people to extend it. I think it would be wrong to keep adding footnotes and explanations to something that should be a finished text.
RS: That people can take and do with what they will.
JS: Fanfiction, which is great and lovely. That’s what we all do. Every time you read a book, you see things in your own unique way. The way you read Harry Potter will be subtly different from the way that I read it, and we’ll get different things from it. There’s no right and wrong answer, and if we want to go off and have fantasies about Dumbledore or anyone else, that’s certainly correct.
RS: What about George and Lockwood, nudge-nudge-wink-wink?
JS: Well, yes. Old George, you see, he’s a bit unnoticed. Lockwood’s sort of swishing around with his long coat, and Lucy’s looking after him with her big eyes, and old George is there on the sidelines. Absolutely. What’s his take on it? I think a lot of people would probably identify with George. I think, in a way, I identify with George.
RS: Me too.
JS: Most people probably have a little bit of a soft spot for him.
RS: All right, I’ve got tons of material here, Jonathan, and I can let you go.
JS: Okay, that sounds brilliant. I look forward to the headline on top saying “Stroud Denigrates Superheroes.” Oh, dear.
More on Jonathan Stroud from The Horn Book
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The Amulet of Samarkand: The Bartimaeus Trilogy, Book One
by Jonathan Stroud
Middle School Miramax/Hyperion 462 pp.
9/03 0-7868-1859-X $17.95
The magicians ruling the British empire in this anachronistic modern fantasy derive their powers from demons — marids, afrits, djinn, imps — who, though summoned to work the magicians’ wills, are always looking for a loophole through which to destroy them. Bartimaeus, a smart-mouthed bruiser of a djinni, called by a stripling magician to steal the Amulet of Samarkand, finds just such a loophole when he learns his master’s secret birth-name. Nathaniel, however, manages to regain the upper hand with a time-delayed spell: Bartimaeus must protect the apprentice magician long enough to get the spell removed or spend eternity in a tobacco tin. Through guile, teamwork, and dumb luck the ambitious but green kid and the “Spenser for Hire”-type djinni uncover and foil a coup attempt masterminded by Simon Lovelace, the powerful and ruthless magician who is after them for stealing the Amulet. The pace never slows in this wisecracking adventure; chapters in Bartimaeus’s lively first person (with indulgent explanatory footnotes) alternate with third-person chapters on Nathaniel’s adolescent insecurities and desires. Stroud has created a compelling fantasy story in a well-realized world, but it is the complementary characters of Bartimaeus and Nathaniel that will keep readers coming back for the rest of the projected trilogy. ANITA L. BURKAM
The Golem’s Eye: The Bartimaeus Trilogy, Book Two
by Jonathan Stroud
Intermediate, Middle School Miramax/Hyperion 556 pp.
9/04 0-7868-1860-3 17.95 g
This second book in the Bartimaeus Trilogy focuses more on the politics and society of the corrupt, magician-ruled London posited here and less on the personal stories of the orphan Nathaniel and the djinni Bartimaeus, with a noticeable drop in the entertainment quotient. Oh, there’s action and intrigue aplenty — the now-adolescent Nathaniel, with Bartimaeus’s reluctant help, must overcome two seemingly unstoppable villains: a golem activated by an unknown traitor in the government and an insane, murderous afrit encased in Gladstone’s skeleton. As if that weren’t enough, Stroud adds a new major character to the mix — Kitty Jones, commoner and Resistance member. Kitty’s story as oppressed, brave rebel is compelling, and readers will find her admirable, balancing out the increasingly unlikable Nathaniel, who, as “John Mandrake,” power-hungry junior minister, is amoral and self-important. But pages spent with Kitty and Nathaniel/Mandrake mean fewer spent with Bartimaeus, and that’s a loss: the djinni’s dryly humorous, supercilious, often rude persona is one of the books’ strengths; also, it’s his voice that gives readers that insider’s view of the book’s highly inventive magical world. With most — but not all? — of the villains vanquished, Stroud brings Kitty and Bartimaeus together and spells out the similarity of their lots: both commoners and magical beings suffer at the hands of the all-powerful magicians. The potential for a Bartimaeus-Kitty partnership, plus one or two loose ends left untied, will leave readers eager for book three. MARTHA V. PARRAVANO
Ptolemy’s Gate: The Bartimaeus Trilogy, Book Three
by Jonathan Stroud
Middle School, High School Miramax/Hyperion 503 pp.
1/06 ISBN 0-7868-1861-1 $17.95
This closing installment is the best yet, as the fates of the djinni Bartimaeus, the magician John Mandrake (true name: Nathaniel), and the commoner Kitty Jones grow ever more tightly entwined. The situation in Stroud’s alternate-universe London has gone from bad to worse, with an unpopular overseas war draining men and resources; the ruling magicians corrupt; and the populace increasingly desperate. Now in hiding, Kitty is secretly learning all she can about Ptolemy, an ancient-Egyptian scholar whom Bartimaeus served — and loved — who aspired to break the cycle of enslavement between spirits and humans. Meanwhile, Bartimaeus, his essence sadly diminished by two years’ continual service in the material world, seeks his release; Nathaniel, now a cynical top minister, needs him to investigate a plot to overthrow the government. When the attempted coup goes horribly wrong and powerful demons ravage the city, Nathaniel, Bartimaeus, and Kitty find themselves fighting on the same side—and, in the case of Bartimaeus and Nathaniel, even in the same body. Stroud is a masterful storyteller, balancing touching sentiment with humor, explosive action scenes with philosophical musings on human nature. He ties up the loose ends from previous installments (the identity of the government traitor, etc.) early on, freeing the book from the usual duties of a wrap-up volume and allowing it considerable momentum and power. Skillfully intertwining the various plot strands, Stroud builds to a thrilling, inventive climax. The final scene manages to take the reader completely by surprise and yet seem, in retrospect, inevitable: a stunning end to a justly acclaimed trilogy. MARTHA V. PARRAVANO
The Ring of Solomon: A Bartimaeus Novel
by Jonathan Stroud
Intermediate, Middle School Disney-Hyperion 398 pp.
11/10 978-1-4231-2372-9 $17.99
Bartimaeus, the wisecracking djinni, returns in a prequel to his earlier adventures that began with The Amulet of Samarkand (rev. 11/03). Th is time he is bound into slavery to one of the evil magicians in King Solomon’s court. Meanwhile, the queen of Sheba refuses Solomon’s marriage proposal and, in retribution, the apparent tyrant threatens her kingdom with immediate destruction. Asmira, the queen’s most trusted guard, is sent to Jerusalem on a desperate errand: to assassinate Solomon and capture his legendary ring, the source of his enormous power. As the plot wends its way to the end, Asmira comes to realize that her blind obedience to the queen is just as confining as any form of slavery. Stroud has crafted a worthy companion to the Bartimaeus trilogy, keeping what worked (the snarky first-person voice, the labyrinthine plotting) but adding enough new elements (the world of the ancient Hebrews and the characters that populate it) to keep it as inventive and satisfying as the previous books. So rarely do humor and plot come together in such equally strong measures that we can only hope for more adventures. JONATHAN HUNT
Heroes of the Valley
by Jonathan Stroud
Middle School, High School Hyperion 483 pp.
1/09 978-1-4231-0966-2 $17.99 g
Will the descendants of the “heroes” — long memorialized in bloodthirsty legend — abandon their peaceable recent traditions to turn their ploughshares into swords? Will protagonist Halli, the short, stumpy younger son of Svein’s House, survive nonstop action to realize his true nature? To Stroud’s credit, he keeps readers guessing — about plot turns, character revelations, and the novel’s philosophical implications — through many a deftly choreographed conflict. Counterpointing the main narrative are legends of progenitor hero Svein, a Beowulfian figure known for harshly subduing his own people as well as the fearsome, feared (but not seen for generations), troll-like Trows. Despite the valley’s long-ago decision to eschew weaponry and abide by the decisions of peace-preaching women, it’s Svein who inspires Halli’s journey to avenge a murdered uncle. Halli’s actions, clever and well-meaning though they are, tend to have unintended consequences, causing commotion all over the valley and propelling the plot. Pursued, he takes refuge at Arne’s House, where Aud — equally intelligent and rebellious — hides him, becomes his valiant friend and bickering partner, and shares her family’s thought-provokingly different versions of the legends. She assumes a key role in a well-earned denouement, first during a siege involving some nicely inventive improvisation and again when the question of the Trows’ existence finally comes into play — with surprising results. Much fun. JOANNA RUDGE LONG
The Screaming Staircase [Lockwood & Co.]
by Jonathan Stroud
Intermediate, Middle School Disney-Hyperion 374 pp.
9/13 978-1-4231-6491-3 $16.99 g
With a morbidly cheery tone and sure-footed establishment of characters and setting, Stroud (the Bartimaeus trilogy; Heroes of the Valley, rev. 1/09) kicks off a new series that is part procedural and part ghost story, with a healthy dash of caper thrown in for good measure. No one knows how the “Problem” began, but ghosts have become the world’s worst pest infestation, causing rampant property damage and personal injury, even death. Protagonist Lucy’s extreme psychic sensitivity (a talent found only in young people) is rivaled only by her dislike of obeying stupid orders, so she joins Lockwood & Co., a scrappy independent agency run by teenage operatives who scorn the usual requisite adult supervision. After a job goes awry, the agency is forced to take on a high-profile, high-paying haunting from a client who is, of course, not telling them everything. The setup is classic and is executed with panache. Lucy’s wry, practical voice counterpoints the suspenseful supernatural goings-on as she, agency owner Anthony Lockwood, and dour associate George attempt to stiff-upper-lip their way through the ultimate haunted house. Tightly plotted and striking just the right balance between creepiness and hilarity, this rollicking series opener dashes to a fiery finish but leaves larger questions about the ghost Problem open for future
exploration. CLAIRE E. GROSS
Stroud, Jonathan The Whispering Skull
436 pp. Disney/Hyperion 2014. ISBN 978-1-4231-6492-0
(3) 4-6 Lockwood & Co. series. The ragtag juvenile ghost-hunter agency, Lockwood & Co., takes on its second big-ticket case, this one involving sinister artifacts with possible links to the genesis of Britain’s ghost “Problem.” Stroud unfolds an intricate plot that inches readers closer to the central supernatural mystery, offering a cozy, creepy tale that balances ghostly peril with hefty helpings of stiff-upper-lip snark. Glos. CLAIRE E. GROSS
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I have always loved the idea of magic, ever since I was read my first fairy tales. It didn't matter whether they were twinkly ones with fairy godmothers and wonderful pink ball-gown confections, Ladybird books with powdered Regency princes, or the dark, tangled, thrilling tales in Andrew Lang's collections, illustrated, preferably, by Arthur Rackham. All of them had magic, and so all of them had something that fed my strong desire for the unknown, the extraordinary.
As I got older, I graduated to C.S. Lewis, Susan Cooper, Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones - wonderful, glorious books that made it seem entirely plausible that there was magic in the real world, or at least held out the chance of slipping into other worlds where magic existed. As an adult, I veered away from fantasy (mainly because most adult fantasy conforms too closely to the model lampooned so hilariously by Diana Wynne Jones in her Tough Guide to Fantasyland) but I never really lost the sense that magic was out there, just out of reach, visible in the corner of your eye.
So, when I started write my own books for children, I knew they'd have magic in them. The question was, what kind? What would be the logic of the magic I wrote? Fairy-tale magic is mostly based on cauldrons, spells, witches and waving wands, although there are some strange and wonderful ways that magic works, too - feather cloaks that turn their wearers into swans; geese that lay golden eggs; combs that, thrown behind you, turn into mountain ranges. My first and best guide to magic in older fiction, though, was Diana Wynne Jones.
In Jones's Chrestomanci series, there are witches, warlocks and potions, ingredients like newt's eyes, snake's tongues and dragon's blood, and spells that are made by grinding, heating and muttering, as in all the best fairy tales. But she also has more powerful and exciting magic, magic that happens when someone with the right sort of power simply tells the world to be different - and it is. This is the magic that belongs specifically to enchanters, and when you realise that someone in a Diana Wynne Jones book has it (and you nearly always find at least one) you know you are in for some seriously delightful mayhem.
There's another, very different, magical logic at work in Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus books. Here, magicians lord it over the non-magical commoners, but their dark secret is that none of their magic is really done by themselves. Wizards' only power is the ability to raise afrits, imps, djinni and demons from the 'other place', and all their apparently wonderful spells are carried out by the sweat and toil of these enslaved and invisible beings. It allows Stroud to have a lot of fun with the quarrelsome, vain and power-hungry magicians of his alternative London, while also giving us possibly the best fictional depiction of a djinni ever - Bartimaeus himself.
Perhaps the most technically minded inventor of magic for children is J.K. Rowling. I thoroughly enjoyed the Harry Potter books (despite being slightly bemused at how much attention they received) but I find magic in her books to be very 'National Curriculum': once spotted at 11, you just have to learn how to do it the right way, and pass exams, and then you are a proper witch or wizard. Despite the constant reiteration that some wizards are more powerful than others, we never really see much evidence of this. Hermione Granger is said to be 'the best witch of her generation', but we get no sense of any raw power that is simply part of her very being - instead, we get the impression that she's just very precise and has a good memory. The witch as swot, rather than enchanter.
So when I wrote 'Frogspell', which is set in the mythical time of King Arthur, I decided to go with the cauldrons, spells and potions of fairy-tale and legend, but I also wanted a sense that magic was something not just anyone could do - there had to be a special part of you, a power you had that others didn't. As the stories progress, my novice wizard, Max Pendragon, discovers more and more about the logic of magic, learns to tell one person's magic apart from another's, and finally realises that he doesn't need potions or spells, he can (like his hero, Merlin) do spells with his mind. Max, in fact, is an enchanter, of sorts - and it's a power that is crucial, in the end, to his defeat of the icy sorceress, Morgana le Fay.
In the process of writing the whole series, I found myself discovering and exploring more and more about how magic in this world worked, and I realised something else that gave me a huge thrill. Writing is a little like doing magic. Finally, I am a kind of enchanter!
I did not sleep well last night. It might have been my bedtime reading. The Hollow Boy by Jonathan Stroud continues the ghost fighting adventures of Lockwood & Co. Lucy Carlyle, our narrator, wants everything to remain stable in the Lockwood household. She, Lockwood - the founder of the company, - and George of the thick glasses and love for research are busier than ever. However, they have NOT been called in to help with the HUGE outbreak of paranormal activity in Chelsea that has resulted in deaths and large scale evacuations. Of all the ghost fighting businesses, Lockwood & Co., alone, has been ignored. You can imagine that doesn't sit well with Lockwood.
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I love the Nero Wolfe connection with Lockwood & Co. so true and I love the Nero Wolfe books (actually prefer them to Poirot)
The buzz about BSC references in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt mayyyyy have played a role in my recent decision to join Netflix. I mean, Tina Fey was involved too. But BSC references!
Me too, though I enjoy both for different reasons.
Oh that wasn’t my review style–I was reviewing in the old Iron Chef judge style, breaking the books down to separate battles. Glad you liked it! My poor winning book is already dead.
But, Nathan, maybe it will come back from the dead — find out tomorrow! (Love knowing you were using Iron Chef methods for your decision.) (Monica, one third of the BOB Battle Commander.)
BSC on UKS? Whaat? I will have to be the last person I know to start watching this. And so should that Mystery ghost, I suspect. Paging Ellen Miles!
Seriously?! Someone didn’t tell you before me? Heck, if I’d been the showrunner I would have called you in your very home. Now wondering about Ellen. You’d better break the news to her gently, Peter.