Congress should never pass bills they haven't read, nor should they engage outside think tanks to draw up legislation.

Really, do you have that much trust in government?

On to a more edifying topic--I finished reading <Curtain> last night. Wow! What a book! Interesting that Agatha Christie, fearing she might not survive the war, wrote it during the London Blitz and tucked it away in a safe until 1975. I don't think she ever wrote a stronger or more thought-provoking book. Few people have.

<hms123>, do you have any thoughts on <Curtain>? (We recognize you as a connoisseur, so don't blow it.)

<Esteemed Colleagues> Please visit my blog today, and read my commentary on Michael Auslin's "America Needs a King." (I have a functioning link to the original article in <Politico>, Jan. 2.)

http://leeduigon.com

Murder on the Orient Express.

Now whenever I suspect I'm being fed garbage, I always check to see if "there are too many clues in this room!"

1. Story where everyone did it.
2. Story where no one did it.

Agatha Christie created a great body of work, and she was under no illusions that everything she wrote was a masterpiece. Still, she's a writer whom I take as one of my chief mentors, especially when it comes to plotting and characterization.

Some of her characters are unforgettable. The dangerously absent-minded clergyman in "At Bertram's Hotel"; the incapacitated, slowly dying, but still forceful and dynamic and shrewd Mr. Rafiel in "A Caribbean Mystery" (whose sequel, "Nemesis," is remarkable for its brooding sense of menace); the middle-aged actor in "Three Act Tragedy"... I could go on, but there's no need.

Among the various genres of popular literature, on the whole, I would say mystery is at the top, artistically. How many really awful mysteries have any of us read? (Dame Agatha would nominate her own "The Blue Train," but I don't agree.)

Meanwhile, for the latest in culture-trashing, please see my blog today,

Were we at war? Nope. Much more important than that. Justin Bieber's house had been raided in connection with the <felony egging> of his neighbor's house. I don't know if they found any eggs in the fridge, but they did find cocaine <in plain sight>. This led to the arrest of someone with the unlikely name of <Lil Za>.

http://www.tmz.com/2014/01/14/justi...

But let's see... there's cocaine lying around Justin Bieber's house in plain sight, but it has nothing to do with him? However, he might still wind up in the big house for throwing eggs?

<Esteemed Colleagues> For a scintillating review of <Son of Kong>, please visit my blog today.

http://leeduigon.com

All right, I'm a sucker for monster movies. And I just love this film's treatment of the nasty heap of legal trouble Carl Denham got into for bringing King Kong to New York.

<Jim Bartle>, <et al> (So which one is Al?)

You and a few other EC's didn't much care for Agatha Christie's <The Big Four>, did you?

Of course it doesn't hold a candle to <Curtain> or <And Then There Were None>, but it does have an interesting origin.

In 1926-27, Agatha Christie found herself between books and out of ideas. Needing money, she needed to write another book. Her brother-in-law suggested she string together a dozen short stories she'd recently run in several magazines. She linked them together with the theme of "The Big Four" international crime syndicate and wound up with a book.