Savage Sword of Conan (2024) #1

 Savage Sword of Conan has a long and storied history among comics fans. It was the longest-running of Marvel's black-and-white magazine titles, featured thousands of pages of beautiful artwork, and is probably still the most faithful adaptation of Robert E. Howard's character into any medium. 

So Heroic Signatures and Titan Comics had some big boots to fill when they announced the return of the title. Happily, they've avoided most of the pitfalls and created a first issue that augers well for future installments. 

Here's what I liked, in no particular order: 

1. The price point of $6.99 is low enough to encourage the casual reader to give the book a try. 

2. Roy Thomas returns to write an introduction that discusses the aforementioned history of the book. Thomas also appears to be slated as the writer of some future issues, as well. Perfect! With the exception of REH himself, no other writer so gets Conan. 

3. The paper evokes pleasant memories of the golden age of newsprint comics. 

4. The stories themselves — a main Conan adventure, a Solomon Kane backup, and a Conan prose story — capture the essence of the characters quite well.

5. Nobody wants a PC barbarian, but writer John Arcudi gives us a Conan who respects women yet is still lusty. It's a middle ground that works well for the character. 

Here's what could be better: 

1. Max von Fafner's art, while in the main excellent, suffers from the decision (his or the editor's) to render the dinosaurs in some sort of ink/digital hybrid. Other commentators have noted that it took them right out of the story. While I won't go that far, the effect is jarring and probably would look much better in color. 

2. The reproduction on some pages is dark and muddy. I struggled to tell what was going on in some of the panels. Maybe it was just my copy. Again, if the intent was to print this on better paper or in color, the art would pop more. 

Other than these two concerns, it was a great first issue. I'll be back for more, by Crom! 

Teenage jobs

Image Courtesy Stockio.com

Here's a column from 2006. Maybe it will remind some folks of work they've done or conversations they've had with parents or children. 

My daughter and I are having a running debate over whether she should have a job while in high school.

I say “running” because when I bring up the subject, she runs.

An after-school job is just the thing to teach responsibility, I believe. Athletics instill valuable lessons in teamwork, but they are also one huge money pit. The hand is always out – for shoes, warm-ups, donuts before the car wash fundraiser, gifts for the coach, money for dinner on the way home from a game or meet.

Then there are the assorted costs of the teenage years that have nothing to do with sports. Dances, movies, trips to the store for supplies to complete school projects, retainers mangled beyond recognition by the dog – all keep a parent’s finances on life support, with a weak pulse and a dicey prognosis.

I don’t begrudge my daughter any of this. Like most parents, I wail and gnash my teeth over the vacancy sign in my wallet, but I still pay and pay and pay. (A friend once said that Dad comes last when the money train pulls into the family station, and that the boxcars are often empty when it comes time for him to take his fill. Boy, do I believe it.)

But as my daughter approaches the magical age of 16, I have begun to talk about the bonding experience of driving together from one fast food joint to the next, collecting applications the way a baseball fan collects autographed cards, and bringing them home to fill out, one after another.

Except she doesn’t want to.

Doesn’t want to drive from place to place, doesn’t want to get a job, doesn’t want to compromise her teenage years.

Suddenly, she wants to focus on academics.

This is a laudable goal. The only problem is that the words “focus” and “academics” have never before issued from her mouth in the same sentence. It doesn’t help that she utters them while staring vacantly at the television, a pastime where her mother and I must periodically remind her to blink and breathe. Maybe MTV is teaching her geometry, but I doubt it.

I think back to the succession of odd jobs I held during high school and I wonder how I could have fathered a child so alien to my own work ethic.

At age 14, my mom sent me to work on a mink farm. It was nasty, filthy work, and my only option was to do it. I waded through muck up to my knees and filled the animals’ water dishes. A co-worker once pulled an esophagus from a barrel of tripe and pretended a dead cow was speaking. I could never have learned that in school.

By age 16, I graduated to washing dishes at a restaurant, learning the ropes from a certified psychotic who relieved boredom by juggling steak knives and sucking his own blood when he nicked a finger or thumb. “Renfield” would often refer disparagingly to his “old lady,” who in my innocence I thought was his mother, until he referenced doing things to her and with her that weren’t part of normal mother/son relationships. Again, where else could I have picked up valuable street slang and smarts?

I thought of all the late nights spent hosing grease off various restaurant equipment, how dishwater would back up on the floor and seep into my shoes, leaving my feet smelling distinctly of shrimp or sirloin or whatever the day’s special might be.

I remembered the manager who tried to get me to smuggle steaks in the trashcan out of the building, the customer who hit me in the temple with a T-bone steak that he said wasn’t cooked properly, and on and on.

I thought I had learned a lot from all those experiences, but in reality, I only learned two things: respect for people who made careers of such work, and the knowledge that I didn’t want to be one of them.

The more I think about the weird assemblage of people with whom I came into contact, the less likely I am to want to expose my child to them. Because those people are still out there – juggling knives, hurling steaks, practicing ventriloquism with cow parts.

And I’m starting to think that “focusing on academics” isn’t such a bad idea, after all. Maybe she can get a job in an office, answering a phone or filing papers.

Maybe if I’d been smart enough to think of that, I might have avoided the squishy sound one’s shoes make when filled with dirty dishwater.

A sound which, incidentally, still haunts my dreams.

'Earth Abides' and our changing mores

I first became aware of George R. Stewart's Earth Abides a few months ago, after hearing a radio adaptation on Escape! That two-part episode aired Nov. 5 and Nov. 12, 1950, just a year after the novel was published. 

Some online sleuthing told me the book had been an influence on Richard Matheson, whose world-ending vampire plague I Am Legend is one of my favorites, and Stephen King, who went all apocalyptic—and post-apocalyptic—in The Stand.

Long story short, I decided to give Earth Abides a shot. A newish re-release from 2020 includes a terrific introduction by sci-fi writer Kim Stanley Robinson that provides context for Stewart's story. It also points out the resurgence in the book's popularity in the wake of the COVID pandemic. 

The novel itself has a lot to recommend it. The main character, Isherwood "Ish" Williams, is one of the few survivors of a highly lethal pandemic. He spends the first half of the book wandering from one side of the United States to the other, serving as a human version of Marvel's Uatu the Watcher and chronicling the end times. 

Eventually, he meets some other folks and they form a loose-knit community that survives by pillaging the past—canned food from area grocery stores, clothing from department stores, and the like. Ish finds himself a reluctant leader in this tribe, even though everybody involved goes out of their way for as long as possible to avoid creating laws and rules. It's a be-on-your-best-behavior, honor code type of deal. 

The tribe's successes and failures make up the bulk of the book's remaining pages and are often characterized by collective procrastination, waiting as long as possible before addressing various fundamental issues, like what to do when the water supply peters out. (Today, these survivors would probably be diagnosed as suffering from global trauma.)

Stewart's novel is short on action and long on Ish's philosophical musing. He fancies himself an intellectual and often comes off as stuffy or smarmy when he observes, repeatedly, that his post-apocalyptic wife, children, and neighbors are hard workers but not very intelligent. He ranges from sympathetic to insufferable, sometimes on the same page. For example, Ish observes: 

George was a good man, too, in his fashion. He was a first-class carpenter, and had learned to do plumbing and painting and the other odd jobs around the house. He was a very useful man, and had preserved many basic skills. Yet Ish always knew that George was essentially stupid; he had probably never read a book in his life. (p. 187)

The last section of the book chronicles Ish's mental decline and eventual passing, where he is seen as The Last American, a term that carries almost spiritual significance with subsequent generations of survivors, for whom "America" is a nebulous term. 

I like that Stewart intersperses the story of humanity with the resurgence of the natural world. Vignettes every few pages let readers see how various other species adapt to the fall of humanity, and how the world heals. For 1949, this is pioneering eco-friendliness. 

Unfortunately, other parts of the novel have not aged so well. In particular, the way Ish and the rest of the community treat Evie, a mentally challenged woman, is problematic. At one point, an outsider—Charlie— preys on Evie and begins to abuse her sexually. Yet the best charge that Ish and company can devise against him is that "we don't want a lot of little half-witted brats running in on us, the sort of children Evie would have." 

The book also displays a post-apocalyptic vibe similar to Alas Babylon and a few others that intimate how a worldwide pandemic or nuclear disaster might actually be a good thing, a cleansing and rebirth, a chance to live more in touch with one another and the land. Your mileage with such an attitude may vary, but I find it, I don't know, communally condescending? As if the only thing standing between humanity and perfection is a few billion too many people, so why not sacrifice some today? 

I was glad I read the book and appreciative of Stewart's far-ranging imagination. Leaning into a more philosophical take on the end of the world was a gutsy narrative move, and if Isherwood "Ish" Williams is insufferable at times, at least Stewart gives us plenty of evidence to chew on, along with contradictions in character that make him more realistic. 

After all, if each reader had to face pages of his own thoughts written down over decades, wouldn't he or she find more than a few that are troubling, disingenuous, and downright wrong? In Earth Abides, these provide verisimilitude, and no matter what readers think of Ish by the final page, they can't deny knowing him. 

Blue Oyster Cult: 50th Anniversary Live in NYC First Night

 

Blue Ӧyster Cult's three-night anniversary celebration in the Big Apple has been immortalized in a series of recordings, the first of which was released earlier this month. 

50th Anniversary Live in NYC First Night, recorded at Sony Hall in September 2022, is the chronicle of a band that has weathered the ravages of time, touring, and changing musical tastes with grace and good cheer. The two-CD/one-DVD set showcases rock veterans who still look and sound terrific. 

The set opens with a performance of BӦC's debut album in its entirety. That self-titled diamond is the blueprint for all that came after, even if some of the songs—"I'm on the Lamb But I Ain't No Sheep" and "She's as Beautiful as a Foot"—are not among the band's biggest hits. Nevertheless, the decision is also a chance for BӦC to cut loose on a few bonafide classics, including "Stairway to the Stars" and "Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll." (Future releases of nights two and three will feature BӦC's second and third albums—Tyranny and Mutation and the sublime Secret Treaties—as the openers.) 

The second half of the set is a mixture of have-to-plays and rarities, with a curious focus on cuts from Mirrors, an album not held in high regard by many fans. After 50-plus years, however, the band can damn well play what it wants, when it wants, and so fans are treated to the dubious charms of "Doctor Music." 

In happier setlist news, it is an unexpected treat to hear so many cuts from The Symbol Remains, BӦC's 2020 studio album and its first in nineteen years. "Tainted Blood," "Train True," "Box in My Head," and "That Was Me" are reminders that Blue Ӧyster Cult is still more than capable of pumping out the thoughtful hard rock and heavy metal that it built its reputation on in the 1970s. 

Co-lead vocalist and lead guitarist extraordinaire Don "Buck Dharma" Roeser proves again what his considerable gifts have brought to the band. He sings and solos like a performer one-fourth his age, casually transitioning from words to strings with the ease of a virtuoso who has spent thousands of hours on stage.  

Not to be outdone, co-lead vocalist Eric Bloom still emotes with the best of them, adding his powerful rasp to everything from country-adjacent "Redeemed" to stone-cold Cult classics like "Godzilla." 

Rounding out the band these days are drummer Jules Radino, bassist Danny Miranda, and all-around utility player Richie Castellano, who sings, plays keyboards and wields a wicked guitar second only to Roeser's own. Also enlivening the night is BӦC veteran Albert Bouchard, back as a special guest for these anniversary performances and leaning into the SNL parody of a crazy cowbell player on the band's best-known track, "Don't Fear the Reaper." 

A bonus DVD sounds great but is a little disappointing visually. The stage is small, the band's vaunted laser shows are long since retired, and the camerawork is only serviceable. Still, it captures everything that matters: the band's enthusiasm for the material, their mad skills, and the audience's appreciation. 

Both casual and hardcore Blue Ӧyster Cult fans will appreciate 50th Anniversary Live in NYC First Night. I look forward to the next two releases. 

 

Sixty-Second Solutions 12

The moving truck backed up to Samantha Spade’s garage, its tires spinning in the freshly fallen December snow.

Samantha lifted the garage door. She had a book bag slung over one shoulder; inside were her copies of The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, and her two-volume Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

Her father, Kent, jumped out of the driver’s side of the truck and almost slipped. He had left earlier two hours earlier to pick up the truck and cancel various utilities around town, including the electricity and telephone service.

“How you doing, sport?” he asked Samantha, adjusting the knot of his tie. “Did you get all that stuff stacked?”

She nodded her head. Behind her, on the concrete garage floor, were boxes filled with all their material possessions. Kent, a computer systems installer for CompuStall, had finished his work for the Sallami School System two weeks earlier

By this time next week, they would be in sunny New Mexico, where his next CompuStall job, wiring a security system for a Fortune 500 Company, was waiting. Kent had made Samantha stack all the boxes in the garage according to size, instructing her not to go inside the house until she had finished. The job had taken the better part of two hours.

The prospect of moving didn’t thrill Samantha. She and her dad had moved many times in the past few years, following Kent’s work across the country. He had been in the city of Sallami for longer than any past jobs, and Samantha had made quite a few friends.

She was going to miss Billy Archer, Flo Mason, Andy D’Brillo and the rest of her pals. Heck, she was even going to miss Vinnie Furnier, the teenager who lived across the street. He had given her some grief during her first few months in Sallami but had turned into a pretty decent sort after Samantha solved a mystery that allowed him to keep his job.

Solving mysteries was what Samantha did best. She was Sallami’s number one amateur detective, a title she relished. Now, she would have to start all over again, building a reputation in Newbury, New Mexico.

“What came in the mail?” Kent asked.

“The usual,” she answered glumly. Her steel-trap mind could have rattled off each envelope: A farewell card from Billy, two pieces of junk mail, an envelope from CompuStall, and a yellow envelope from a local company called TechSec.

“I’m cold, Dad,” Samantha said. “I’m heading inside.”

Her father opened the yellow envelope. “Sure, whatever,” he said.

Samantha had just stepped inside the back doorway and flipped on the light switch, brightening the kitchen, when her father sprinted after her.

“Hey, Sam, hold up for a minute, huh?” he gasped. “I forgot, there’s a box on the front porch that I need your help carrying.”

“Whatever,” she groused. “I’ll just go out the front door.”

“Better not,” said Kent. “You’ll just track the place up for the next owners. Come around this way.”

Together, they walked back down the sidewalk and around the side of the house, the wind gusting snow in all directions. Samantha noticed several sets of footprints leading to the front door.

“What’s this?” she asked.

Kent looked down at the footprints and said, “Must be from me carrying all those boxes out to the garage earlier this morning. Come on.”

Kent trudged up the front porch steps, still gripping the yellow envelope in his gloved hands. Samantha followed but continued to stare at the footprints, even as she walked over them.

Suddenly, she stopped and smiled.

Kent turned, saw her grin, and said, “Hey, Sam, we don’t have all day.”

“When were you going to tell me, Dad?”

“Tell you what?”

Sam ran to him and hugged him tight. “About your new job at TechSec, where you went for a final interview today, and how we don’t need to move after all. And how all my friends are waiting inside to surprise me with the news.”

WHAT SIX CLUES GAVE SAMANTHA’S FATHER AWAY? SEE BELOW FOR THE FINAL SOLUTION TO OUR SERIES.


Samantha picked up on six clues.

First, her father was wearing a tie when he came back with the moving van, slightly overdressed for that kind of work. Secondly, he was supposed to have all the utilities turned off, but when Samantha flipped on the light switch in the kitchen, it still worked. Third, Kent opened the yellow envelope from TechSec before he opened the letter from CompuStall, his employer. Fourth, all the tracks in the front lawn went toward the front door; none came back the other way. Fifth, her father had been gone for two hours, more than enough time for the three inches of new snow to cover the old tracks. Finally, Kent had not wanted her to walk through the house to get to the front porch; she would have seen her friends waiting there and spoiled the surprise.

Kent had been secretly interviewing for a new job to keep him and Samantha in Sallami. He didn’t want to get her hopes up, so he didn’t tell her about the interviews earlier. Meanwhile, he and Samantha packed for his next assignment.

When Kent went to his final interview, he learned TechSec had mailed a copy of his contract in a yellow envelope the day before. On the way home, he dropped off a key to the front door to Billy Archer and told him to call all Samantha’s friends for a surprise “Welcome Home” party while Samantha stacked boxes in the garage. He still picked up the moving van to keep Sam off guard until the very end.

But there’s yet to be a mystery that Samantha Spade, the Sixty-Second Solution, has been unable to crack, even when it involves her directly!

The End

So, this is the last installment of Sixty-Second Solutions. I enjoyed revisiting these, and I hope you—whoever you are—enjoyed reading them. 

I still have one more serial, Dog Daze, to share here. I'll put it on my radar for 2024. 

Bradbury's 'Zero Hour'

Above: My beat-to-shit copy of The Illustrated Man, purchased at a garage sale sometime in the 1980s. 

Readers who don’t like science fiction often complain the genre is unrelatable. Robots, ray guns, little green guys in spaceships—what does any of it have to do with the so-called real world? It’s a fair question, but a misguided one. Like horror, another unappreciated genre, science fiction deals in metaphor, dressing up contemporary issues until they are almost unrecognizable, especially if the reader is blinded by the strangeness of it all. But beneath the odd names, alien landscapes, and cryptic languages are bedrock truths that speak to the issues of each writer’s time—and that sometimes speak to future times in ways the author may have never imagined.

Ray Bradbury is a case in point. Known today primarily for Fahrenheit 451, a novel about a dystopian society where firefighters burn books in a totalitarian government, Bradbury began his career as a short-story writer, grinding out pieces for popular men’s magazines of the 1940s and 1950s. One such story, “Zero Hour,” published in 1947 in Planet Stories and collected in 1951 in The Illustrated Man, forecasts many of today’s concerns, even if the author himself couldn’t have known it at the time.

“Zero Hour” is the story of a future society—the audience knows this because “rockets hovered like darning needles in the blue sky” and “arm in arm, men all over earth were a united front” (Bradbury, 1951, p. 170)— where children are the entry point for an invasion from another world. The story is told from the perspective of the Morris family, whose youngest member, Mink, and her neighborhood playmates borrow innocuous tools from kitchens and garages at the behest of a mysterious invisible friend. This friend, Drill, whispers plans from beneath rose bushes because no adult would think to look for him there.

As the story progresses, Mrs. Morris realizes that similar scenarios are playing out across the country, with multiple children listening to their own versions of Drill, all of them playing a game called “Invasion,” set to culminate at 5 p.m. Then, the seemingly random collection of tools and kitchen implements, along with byzantine math formulae, is used to open a gateway from the fearsome invaders’ dimension into our own. The story ends with Mink’s parents cowering in fear in the attic. It is strongly suggested that Mink and all the other Earth children are willing to sacrifice their parents’ lives for their new friend, Drill.

Bradbury’s story predates the expression “generation gap” by at least twelve years, yet the author was likely aware that “kids these days” were acting in ways that alarmed their parents. At the time of the story’s writing, the very concept of teenagers as society knows them today was a relatively new phenomenon, created by marketers who realized the ’tween-12-and-20 set was an under-exploited consumer demographic. So, for a writer looking for a scary sci-fi premise, why not tap into the primal fear that children could and were being manipulated to dress differently, talk differently, and behave differently from their parents?

Bradbury’s story also anticipates modern social media, which makes the fears in the story more acute for today’s readers than for those in the author’s own time. The mechanism by which Drill and his invading buddies pierce the sanctity and security of the home reads a lot like today’s internet. When Mrs. Morris talks to her friend, Helen, via “audio visor,” they realize their kids are playing the same Invasion game, despite one family living in New York and the other in New Jersey. They speculate that Drill “must be a new password” and talk about how the game is “sweeping the country” (Bradbury, 1951, p. 174). Still, they laugh off any serious implications.

Viewing “Zero Hour” through a twenty-first-century lens, it’s easy to see Drill as a social media influencer akin to Mr. Beast or Logan Paul, grooming children with messages that run afoul of their parents’ teaching. Like Mrs. Morris, today’s parents may sometimes shrug their shoulders over the ubiquity of TikTok and Snapchat in their children’s lives, believing they can’t keep their children away from these platforms even if they tried. Drill is an invisible force in the lives of Mink and her friends, just as parents often can’t see the scrolling TikTok screens or hear the messages their children are ingesting, over and over, as algorithms lead them down rabbit holes to new, exciting, and often spurious information.

And, like Drill, TikTok influencers—and the teen’s own peers—can lead them to actions that are antisocial, dangerous, or even criminal. Readers may remember the various TikTok challenges of the past school year, where teens were enticed to vandalize restrooms and punch teachers, all while filming their antics for later uploading. In “Zero Hour,” Drill cajoled kids to essentially become Fifth Columnists, traitors to their own people. TikTok hasn’t gone that far—yet.

Noted fantasy writer Neil Gaiman once observed, “Nothing dates harder and faster and more strangely than the future” (Gaiman, 1996, p. vii). This is evidenced by some of Bradbury’s naming conventions in “Zero Hour,” comical by today’s standards: the aforementioned “audio visor,” “electro-duster” magnets, and “beetle cars,” which appear to be self-driving electric vehicles. But while Bradbury’s names may be less than gripping, he was eerily accurate when we compare those concepts to today’s Zoom and Facetime, Roombas that clean while homeowners are away, and all-electric and hybrid cars.

More telling, however, are the interpersonal dynamics and societal fears that Bradbury cloaks in the garb of an alien invasion, that hoariest of science fiction plots. Mr. and Mrs. Miller represent all parents who fear their children are growing up to be far different than they were at the same age, Mink and her friends are all kids who resent adult authority and await the day when they can rule the world, and Drill is every new technology that threatens to upend the social order.

Unrelatable? Science fiction is just the opposite. It spices up the truth to make it more palatable, and creates a mirror to reflect the audience’s and author’s own loves and hates and prejudices. It’s about the future, yes, but it’s also about the present. And sometimes, if it was written long enough ago, it’s about today in ways even the authors themselves, with all their imaginative faculties, could never have dreamed.

References

Bradbury, R. (1951). Zero hour. In The illustrated man (pp. 169-177). 

Bantam.

 Gaiman, N. (1996). Of time, and Gully Foyle. In Bester, A. The stars

 my destination. Vintage.

I wrote the above essay earlier this fall as an example of an analysis paper for a composition class I teach. Citations are in APA format, which specifies sentence case instead of title case for book and article titles on the References page. 

 

Sixty-Second Solutions 11

Sgt. Frank McDaniel’s turkey was AWOL.

The sergeant and his wife had opened the refrigerator on Thanksgiving morning, ready to put the pop the plump bird into the oven, but found an empty space on the bottom shelf where the turkey should have been.

After rousing their two children, Tom and Mary, who had no idea what happened to the bird, he called his neighbor, Samantha Spade.

Spade was in seventh grade, two years older than Tom and three years older than Mary, but her reputation as an excellent amateur detective had spread to people and students of all ages in the city of Sallami.

Samantha came right over, her hair still dripping wet from the shower. The McDaniel’s dog, Ginger, met her at the front door. She jumped on Samantha and licked her face while Samantha struggled to remove her coat.

“At ease, Ginger,” Samantha giggled, pushing the dog down. For a recruiting sergeant who prized discipline, Sgt. McDaniel had one of the worst-behaved dogs ever.

Mary grabbed the dog by its collar and pulled it off Samantha. “Get down, you dumb mutt!” she yelled. Mary had dark circles under her eyes, and Samantha had never heard her speak to Ginger so sharply.

“Somebody got up on the wrong side of the bed,” Samantha said.

“Don’t mind her,” said Mrs. McDaniel. “We went out to dinner and to see a movie last night and didn’t get home until late. She usually sacks out in the backseat on the way home, but couldn’t because of all the noise from the muffler.”

Sergeant McDaniel explained that their car’s exhaust system was going bad again, only one month after they had it replaced. The whole family had heard it rumbling last night.

“Dear, I think she’d rather hear about the turkey?” asked Mrs. McDaniel.

The sergeant ran his fingers through his crew cut as he led her to the kitchen.

“It’s like this,” he said. “Yesterday, at seventeen hundred hours…”

“Or five o’clock,” Mrs. McDaniel interjected, translating military time.

“Correct,” McDaniel said. “At five o’clock, I closed the recruiting office, turned off the lights, and exited through the back door to my vehicle. I drove to the Shopper’s Corner and picked out a turkey for today’s dinner, along with other items on a list that my wife had given me.”

Samantha liked the way Sgt. McDaniel talked as if he were testifying at a military tribunal instead of explaining how he had shopped for groceries the night before.

“The list had ten items,” said Mrs. McDaniel. She started to tick them off on one hand: A loaf of bread, a box of stuffing, a pound of flour …

“Actually, it’s all right here,” said Tom, pointing to the kitchen floor.

There, Samantha saw two brown bags filled with groceries. Sheepishly, Frank lifted the two bags to the cupboard, grunting at their weight. He began to put the groceries into the cupboards.

“Frank’s not much for putting things away once he’s bought them,” Mrs. McDaniel confided.

The sergeant told Samantha that while he did forget to put away the groceries, he distinctly remembered opening the refrigerator door and clearing a spot for the turkey.

“After I took the groceries from the trunk and carried them inside, I took the family out for dinner and a movie,” he said.

“Dad’s so absent-minded he even forgot to close the trunk, snickered Tom. “I did it for him when we left.”

“What time did you get home from the movies?” Samantha asked, eyeing Ginger suspiciously. If Sgt. McDaniel had absentmindedly left the bird out of the refrigerator, Ginger may have feasted on turkey while the family went to the movies.

“The movie ended at approximately twenty-two hundred…I mean, about 10 p.m.,” the sergeant said. “We got home soon after, maybe around 10:45.”

“It was 10:39,” said Mary McDaniel. “I saw it on the clock in the car when I should have been sleeping. Dumb muffler.”

“And was the turkey in the refrigerator when you got home?” Samantha asked.

“I don’t honestly know,” said Sgt. McDaniel. “We went straight to bed.”

“And where was Ginger?” Samantha asked.

“She was sleeping upstairs on my bed like she always does when we’re not home,” said Tom.

“Well, that clinches it,” said Samantha, petting Ginger’s head. “I know exactly what happened to your turkey.”

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE TURKEY, AND WHAT CLUES DID SAMANTHA USE TO SOLVE THE CASE? SEE BELOW FOR THE SOLUTION. 




The turkey was still in the trunk.

After Samantha heard Sgt. McDaniel grunt when he picked up the two bags of groceries, she knew he couldn’t have carried them and the turkey into the house at the same time.

Instead, she realized that Sgt. McDaniel had put the two grocery bags on the floor, opened the refrigerator and cleared a space for the turkey. He intended to go back to the car and bring the bird on a second trip. Samantha realized this when Tom said he had closed the trunk of the car, an indicator that his father had something else to carry inside.

But the clinching clue was the rumbling of the car’s exhaust, even though Sgt. McDaniel said that the muffler had been replaced last month. The “rumbling” was actually the turkey, rolling back and forth in the trunk.

Luckily for the McDaniels, the weather was cold enough to preserve the turkey in the trunk overnight. They popped it in the oven and enjoyed a delicious Thanksgiving meal that afternoon, courtesy of Samantha Spade’s sleuthing skills.