Category Archives: Crime

Stories in the Shadows

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Two excellent crime stories, separated by a continent, couldn’t be more different, despite their similar titles. We have the East Coast version, The Psychologist’s Shadow, in which a psychologist (whose office is a mile from where I live IRL) is being stalked, and the danger is rising. Far away, on the West Coast, an AWOL Afghanistan vet ends up working as security in a Southern California strip club in Shadow Dance. Trouble ensues. Both authors are poets too. That helps the quality of the writing, and the reading is top-drawer too.

The Psychologist’s Shadow by Laury A. Egan
Fittingly, most of this story unwinds inside the head of psychologist Ellen Haskell, 36. Ellen has closed her Manhattan clinical practice and opened a new office in Princton, New Jersey, the college town where I live. Naturally, the mentions of familiar restaurants, stores, and roads is fun for me, but if you can conjure up a college town with its collection of characters and pressures, you’ll recognize it too.

What’s different about this novel is how well you get to know Ellen’s patients, as you journey through her week. As each patient’s problems are unmasked, you realize that any one of them could be the stalker plaguing her. She lives in a rural area some miles from town in a modern house with much glass. At night, everything inside is easily visible if someone were spying on her. Bit by bit, Ellen becomes convinced someone is.

As so often happens, a person who can offer sound advice or insights about other people seems not to carry that skill over to her own life. Slow to recognize danger. Reluctant to act.

You can almost believe Egan is herself a psychotherapist, so much of the patients’ stories is described with clinical sensitivity. But she is not. She is the author of a dozen previous novels, and has also published short stories and poetry, which may be why her language, even when talking about such elusive matters as feelings, is so clear.

Shadow Dance by Martin Ott
Buddy Rivet has ended his several tours in Afghanistan, somewhat—no, a great deal—worse for wear. He travels cross-country toward the disillusioning promise of California where his best friend Solomon St. James is working as a DJ in a strip club called, with deliberate irony, Club Paradise.

Solomon’s employer is Big Z Pourali, head of an extended Iranian family that believes it can write its own rules. The men are bullies, violent and abusive. The scheming, manipulative women—though attractive, unfortunately, to Solomon and Buddy—have their own agendas.

Rivet’s friend Solomon is gliding down a path to almost certain destruction, dealing drugs and consorting with would-be gangsters. Drugs, guns, alcohol, and sex—what can go wrong? Pretty much everything.

While all this may sound fairly bleak (and is), there’s humor too, and the quality of Ott’s writing lifts the story above its back-alley surroundings. He makes Rivet a perceptive observer, and what he sees are people who will always be on the outside looking in.

I liked Rivet, and I came to believe Club Paradise is only a temporary waystation on his journey to full adulthood, with new adventures to relate. You just have to hope he does find himself, somewhere, soon.

Ben Franklin vs. the Counterfeiters

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Wartime is always an opportunity for foes to flood rival economies with fake currency. Destabilizing a country’s finances can bring it to its knees pretty quickly—a contributor to the social disorder described in Michael C. Grumley’s new dystopian thriller set in the near future, Deep Freeze. The value of real money drops and inflation soars. The historical aspects of counterfeiting offer equal inspiration to authors.

In colonial times, when the country wasn’t even formed yet and faith in its future may have been a bit shaky, counterfeit money was a particular risk. Colonials preferred to rely on coinage—they could always give it the “bite test”—but when coins were in short supply, they would accept paper money more as an IOU, rather than final payment. Eventually, of course, paper money grew to be trusted and had intrinsic value. Demonstrating how seriously the legitimate currency producers took this issue, Franklin and other authorized producers often printed “to counterfeit is death” on the notes they produced. And, indeed, several Tories most responsible for distributing counterfeit bills were hanged.

This was before holograms, imbedded security strips, 3D security ribbons, microprinting, color-shifting inks, and before at least 18 countries adopted polymer plastic banknotes developed and printed in Australia. Nevertheless, printers such as Franklin (he was an inventor, after all) deployed a succession of new printing methods and materials to foil the criminals.

Earlier this week—on Franklin’s 318th birthday—the American Philosophical Society (founded by Franklin in Philadelphia) presented a talk by Khachatur Manukyan from the University of Notre Dame on Franklin’s innovations. He and his team in the Nuclear Science Laboratory have done detailed analyses of some 600 paper money notes, printed from 1709 to 1790 to identify Franklin’s methods. Of course, he didn’t have these scientific tools, but he certainly was aware of how to differentiate his currency from that of a common counterfeiter.

For a time, Franklin printed the skeleton of an actual leaf on the back side of his bills (sage, maple, parsley, for example). A leaf’s complex structure is hard to duplicate. He used deliberate misspellings and deployed natural graphite pigments and colored inks that differed from the darkness and composition of inks counterfeiters usually had available, and his inks may have been more stable in color over time. He developed the threads of color in the paper, watermarks, and grainy, translucent fillers, like powdered mica to establish a gloss. Some of his efforts also made the paper more durable. One of his bills just “felt” right. As his methods changed over time, counterfeiters were forced to keep innovating too.

Counterfeit “detectors” and a good eye helped colonists steer clear of bogus bills. Cashiers who run your $20 under a UV light are following a long, venerable tradition!

Skeletal leaf photo by Mark Longair and Ben Franklin photo by Ervins Strauhmanis; both with Creative Commons license 2.0 Generic licenses.

Past Lying by Val McDermid

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Publication of a new police procedural featuring Val McDermid’s intrepid Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie is something to get excited about. In Past Lying, the streets of Edinburgh have never been so ominous—and empty—as when this story takes place in April 2020, at the height of the covid epidemic. Authors were of mixed minds about whether to write about covid, thinking “too much already!” but McDermid makes the lockdown an effective handicap to Pirie, whose investigation of a not-quite-stone-cold case must (at least in theory) accommodate the public health restrictions.

Pirie and Detective Sergeant Daisy Mortimer are camped out in Pirie’s boyfriend Hamish’s fancy flat while he has relocated up north to tend his sheep farm in the Highlands. He’s bought a former gin still up there and is manufacturing hand sanitizer.

As ever, Pirie has a couple of pots bubbling away. One complication in her life is a subplot involving a Syrian refugee being hunted by assassins from his home country. I’ve always admired how McDermid keeps two powerful story strands going, such that when she switches from one to the other, I’m instantly engrossed again. In this instance, the secondary plot isn’t as compelling as it might be, and the exigencies of covid mean there is less interaction with some of Pirie’s colleagues in various crime labs who serve such a satisfying role in other works.

The main plot is more squarely in the domain of Pirie’s Historic Cases Unit. In touch with her by telephone, Detective Constable Jason ‘The Mint’ Murray reports that a librarian, reviewing papers submitted by the estate of a deceased Tartan Noir crime writer, Jake Stein, has run across the opening chapters of an unpublished manuscript. They describe a murder that sounds eerily similar to an unsolved disappearance from the previous year, in which an Edinburgh University student named Lara Hardie vanished.

What Jake Stein has written compel Pirie and Mortimer to dig into his past. Stein was apparently not a very nice guy; he was in the middle of a marital calamity; and his formerly successful career was on the skids. His only remaining friend is another author who’d come and play chess with him and where Stein would talk about “the perfect murder.” The parallels between Stein’s real life and his fictional book are striking, so that the narrative takes on the characteristics of nested dolls. I found myself having to stop and think, am I reading Stein’s book? Or about him?

If you have read other McDermid books featuring Pirie (this is the seventh), you may have run across DC Jason Murray previously. You may recall he’s sometimes considered not the brightest bulb, but in this book, he finally comes into his own. I don’t know why, maybe it’s the stresses of lockdown, but I found Pirie a less sympathetic character than usual. At times, she’s almost mean. She pays lip service to the lockdown rules, but ignores them whenever she wants to. The justification that every day is important to the family of a disappeared person wore a little thin.

A crime novelist is an ideal character to obsess about the perfect crime, and Stein’s draft-cum-confession, as you read it, raises a multitude of good questions—not necessarily relevant to his plot, nor his personal life, but about Pirie’s investigation. Nesting dolls again.

While McDermid has certainly earned the sobriquet of Britain’s ‘Queen of Crime,’ I confess to a slight disappointment with this latest book. Of course, it’s still head and shoulders above many crime novels, and if you like the Pirie character, you won’t want to miss it.

Keep it Short!

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Falling behind in reading my Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazines, I dashed ahead with the EQMM November/December issue when it arrived. Both magazines always have a smorgasbord of mystery subgenres and crime stories, in such diversity it’s hard to compare one story to another. My two personal favorites from this current issue were “A Small Mercy” by Alice Hatcher and “Kit’s Pad” by David Krugler.

Hatcher’s clever story successfully lulled me along with domestic difficulties and relationship challenges to the point where I didn’t see the big surprise coming. It takes a confident writer to trust that readers will buy into the misdirection so solidly that the tables can be turned on them!

This list of tips on writing clever plot twists starts with having authors put themselves in readers’ shoes. It suggests that as a story progresses, authors should develop a list of possible directions a reader might guess the story is headed in. Then “discard every one of them as a potential plot twist”! If the author can readily think where the story is likely to be going, chances are readers can too. That’s why Hatcher’s distraction—making me think the protagonist was solving one problem, when actually he was solving another one—worked so well.

So pleased to learn she’s a fellow University of Michigan alumna! You may know her from the award-nominated novel The Wonder That Was Ours (2018) or her numerous short stories.

In David Krugler’s “Kit’s Pad,” Kit, a homeless man, or the politically correct “unhoused,” which he scoffs at, takes the unhousing dilemma into his own hands. He finds an empty house for sale that’s not properly secured and camps out in luxury. But this pad turns out to be Grand Central Station for late-night visitors sneaking in and looking for . . .  something.

The story has a very satisfying ending that gets him out of the “brutal wind scuffing off Lake Michigan” (there it is again, my home state). It’s what experts call a “resolved ending,” and it’s also a happy one. And it’s happy because Krugler has made his protagonist clever and likeable throughout. If a less appealing character ended up in the position Kit does, I as a reader wouldn’t be satisfied at all!

Krugler is a history professor at the University of Wisconsin, Platteville, and has written two WWII spy thrillers: The Dead Don’t Bleed and Rip the Angels from Heaven. His short story “Every Fire Wants to Kill” was published in the August 2023 issue of Mystery Magazine, in which a different empty house opportunity is seized.

Kill Show by Daniel Swearen-Becker

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Author Daniel Sweren-Becker must have been well tuned in to the zeitgeist when he conceived Kill Show, his newly published mysteryl that delves into important critiques of the true crime genre. Written in the style of a television documentary script, the novel consists almost entirely of short verbatim quotes from 26 of the story’s principals, with no descriptions unless a character happens to provide one. The principals are being re-interviewed a decade after the events they’re called upon to explore. The book is their testimony.

Ten years earlier, in suburban Frederick County, Maryland, 16-year-old Sara Parcell disappeared. Her parents and brother panicked. Her friends were bereft. School officials tried to console. Local police were baffled. Now, as they talk about Sara, her family, the community, the disappearance and its aftermath, they amplify, contextualize, and at times contradict each other. Piece by piece, the story comes into focus.

In the emotional turmoil immediately after Sara’s disappearance, her dad, Dave Parcell, waves his bank statement in front of the cameras camped outside his home. He has $1762. That’s all. But he’ll put it every dollar of it up for a reward. A dramatic moment the news cameras catch, but not as viral as the cell-phone video Sara’s brother Jack makes a few moments later, showing Dave and his wife Jeannette back in their house, embracing, Jeannette in hysterics.

Across the country in Hollywood, Jack’s video sparks a brilliant programming idea in the head of Casey Hawthorne, a reality TV show producer. She convinces her boss to pay for her and a production crew to fly to Maryland, and then convinces the Parcell family that a reality television series—Searching for Sara—will bring massive attention to the disappearance and help get their daughter back.

They are desperate. They agree. To say Casey Hawthorne is full of herself, manipulative, and not to be trusted hardly describes the extent of the void in her character. Once in Maryland, right at the start, she makes a strategic choice that negatively influences everything that comes afterward. She meets Detective Felix Calderon in a bar, and, rather than revealing who she is and why she’s really in town, she lies. And sleeps with him. As a result, when aspects of the case start to deteriorate, the lead detective on the case has no credibility with the public, his superiors in the police department, or the prosecutor.

Of course, many more people involved in this debacle are lying. And, if not lying outright, they’re not telling the whole truth, or they’re shading it to justify their actions. Many characters undergo a shift in perspective over the course of the weeks the search drags on and shocking revelations emerge; others seem incapable of taking new information on board. In the end, quite a few Frederick County residents have reason to take a hard look at the role they played in the outcome.

When Sweren-Becker wants to delve into ethical grey areas, he provides comments from a pop culture critic or a sociology professor. In that way too, the novel reads very much like a real-life television documentary. This device never becomes tedious or heavy-handed. Meanwhile, in real life, true-crime dramas have come in for criticism, even though they’re still immensely popular. (A 2014 13-episode podcast, Serial, also about the murder of a Maryland teenager was downloaded more than 340 million times in the first four years of its availability.) Sweren-Becker’s story effectively demonstrates the main critiques of the genre: exploiting real people for entertainment, looking for sensation rather than examining systemic problems, and objectifying victims. Casey Hawthorne’s Searching for Sara is definitely guilty on the first two counts. If you have your own reservations about the public obsession with true-crime shows, this book will confirm them. Partly due to the format and partly to the compelling situation, this is a quick read, yet a profound one. Highly recommended.

More critique of the true-crime phenomenon are in my recent blog post: “Is peak true crime in the rearview?”

Killers of the Flower Moon

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You think three hours and 26 minutes makes for an awfully long movie? You’re right. Yet, Martin Scorsese’s true-crime epic, Killers of the Flower Moon, completely held my attention throughout (trailer). Even though I knew the story, because I’d read the fascinating book by David Grann that the movie is based on, still there were no saggy lulls. It is time well spent.

The New York Times calls it “An Unsettling Masterpiece,” which recounts the terrible outcomes of white men’s unrelenting, murderous greed when oil is quite unexpectedly discovered on the Oklahoma lands that had been considered so worthless they might as well be given to the Osage tribe.

If I had a complaint, it would be that there was too much attention to Robert DeNiro as the “King of the Osage Hills,” cattleman William Hale. (Hale even asks people to call him “King.”) He gives an excellent performance, but, unlike the other characters, he doesn’t change; he’s the same throughout—a malicious, manipulative, avaricious local operator—and you understand him from the beginning.

Leonardo DiCaprio sets aside any vanity and is neither handsome nor savvy in playing Ernest Burkhart, Hale’s nephew. Because the tribe members are deemed incompetent to manage their assets, they are required to have white guardians. A quick way for a white man to become a guardian is to marry an Osage woman, just as Burkhart marries Mollie Kyle, memorably played by Lily Gladstone. Then if the wife dies . . . you can guess the rest.

Thanks to the oil, in the early 1920s, Osage members were the per capita richest people in the world. Much too tempting a target for undereducated, unprincipled roughnecks. Believe me, you’re grateful when Jesse Pelmons as Tom White, an agent of J.Edgar Hoover’s nascent FBI, appears on the scene.

The movie was filmed on a grand scale in Oklahoma, though there are plenty of intimate, emotion-packed moments in which Mollie and Ernest demonstrate real love for each other. Her penetrating gaze recognizes Hale and Burkhart’s schemes, but loves her husband anyway.

The film is dedicated to Robbie Robertson, whose last project was composing its music.

At the beginning, there is what seems an unnecessary statement by Scorsese about why he made this movie. That opening fits when he gives its closing words as well, bookending the film during a creative approach to telling “what happened next.”

The ill-treatment of indigenous people was one of America’s two greatest original sins and, in the arc of history, this sorry episode was not so very long ago.

Rotten Tomatoes critics’ rating: 93%; audiences: 85%.

Valley of Refuge

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Valley of Refuge, the new thriller by John Teschner, starts off like a mystery. At least it was a mystery to me, with three intriguing stories evolving at once. Social media magnate Frank Dalton is doing something Big on the Big Island of Hawai`i, a woman passenger on a Hawai`i-bound airplane has completely lost her memory and doesn’t recognize the person her passport says she is, and a young Hawaiian woman, Nalani, is at risk of losing her ancestral lands, which the magnate wants.

As the stories move forward—and especially as the memory of the woman called Janice Diaz gradually returns, these strands weave into a tightly constructed, complex plot. Because the action—and Teschner packs plenty of it into the novel’s seven-day timeline—takes place almost exclusively in Hawai`i, you’re treated to elegant descriptions of the topography and plant life, the fishing and surfing, the sunsets and weather—including a cataclysmic rainstorm at the climax that will leave you feeling drenched.

Frank Dalton heads a company called Sokoni that dominates the social media world. Make that “the world.” But for someone who amassed his fortune enabling people to make connections with each other, his project in Hawai`i is the antithesis of that. He’s building a no-expense-spared refuge with the impossible goal of keeping people out.

Janice Diaz is whisked from the plane to a hospital then turned out on the street. No luggage. No reservations that she knows of. No friends or family. She has a phone, but doesn’t remember its security code. And, someone is trying to kill her.

The scenes with Nalani, her mother, and her Uncle Solomon, expert in the ways of nature, contrast starkly with Dalton’s artificial world. The Hawaiians are happy with their meager parcel, while Dalton’s multimillion dollar estate fills him with anxiety.

It takes a while for the characters’ roles in the story to shape up, and Teschner uses short chapters to bounce you from one intriguing plot point to another. The pace gradually picks up steam, acquiring such strong narrative power that the last day’s events rush forward like the storm itself.

All these characters are well realized, and I especially liked Janice Diaz, the homeless woman who helps her, Nalani, and the realtor struggling to finalize the transfer of Nalani’s family’s property. Naturally, it’s harder to warm to Dalton, with his narcissism and conviction he can control the universe, but that portrayal is effectively drawn too. Teschner uses a fair amount of the Hawaiian language—both by the Hawaiians and the whites who want to show how with-it they are—but it isn’t hard to follow. Context usually takes care of it, and he provides a handy glossary, just in case. It’s an exciting and atmospheric read. Loved it!

Dead Drop

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James L’Etoile’s award-winning crime thriller Dead Drop takes a 360-degree look at the intertwined issues of illegal immigration, drug and arms smuggling, and unfettered violence plaguing the southwest United States and the challenges they present law enforcement. After a career spent in the California penal system, L’Etoile has seen these problems play out first-hand. In this action-packed story, you do too.

When it comes to the illegal border crossers, Phoenix, Arizona, detective Nathan Parker tries vainly to hold on to the principle, “Yes, they’re desperate, but what they’re doing is against the law.” But when he’s faced with some of the realities the immigrants confront—and, ultimately, when he becomes an illegal border crosser himself—he starts not just to see, but to appreciate the other side of the story.

In this novel, the immigration issue has many troubling dimensions—fentanyl trafficking, rapacious coyotes, weapons galore, disregard for human life, and the spotty coordination of federal, state, and local efforts to combat any of these. The quest for personal and organizational glory makes inter-agency cooperation more difficult, as always.

While the U.S. Attorney is working to create an airtight case against the drug smugglers—a process that’s taking literally years—people are dying in real time. One of them was Parker’s long-time partner, a death for which Parker blames himself. A new lead appears when a cell phone number is found on a dead man. He’s one of four found in the desert, sealed up in 55 gallon oil drums. Parker’s encounter with the owner of that cell phone leads to his suspension from the force.

The barrels were discovered by Billie Carson, a woman living on the raggedy margins of society, scavenging whatever she can find abandoned in the desolate landscape. Billie has learned how to navigate a dysfunctional support system and, contrary to his expectations, Parker learns a lot from her. Suspended, he isn’t supposed to keep investigating any link to his partner’s shooting, but (of course) he does, and Billie and he may be at risk because of their connection with the bodies in the barrels.

Given all the players—criminals, law enforcement, bystanders, innocent or not—it’s a complicated plot with a lot of characters and a lot of agendas, much like real life, probably. L’Etoile writes convincingly about his law enforcement characters, and some have managed to maintain a sense of humor. Billie’s a solid female character, but several of the other women are less believable.

The way L’Etoile describes the unforgiving desert environment of northern Mexico and south Arizona, for many people and even for a time for Parker, it’s almost as much an enemy as the gun-toting coyotes smuggling people through the tunnels under the “impenetrable” U.S. border wall.

It’s a memorable story, and if you want to read more about this troubled area, I recommend Don Winslow’s The Cartel and Down by the River, riveting nonfiction by the late investigative reporter Charles Bowden.

Order here from Amazon (if you use these affiliate links, Amazon sends me a small payment):
Dead Drop
The Cartel
Down by the River

drugs, El Paso, Rio Grande, narcotraficantes, DEA, Border Patrol, Mexico, Texas
U.S. Border Patrol agents on the Rio Grande (photo: c1.staticflickr)

The Plinko Bounce

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Fans of television’s classic quiz show, The Price is Right, will recognize the Plinko in the title of Martin Clark’s new legal thriller. It’s a juiced-up game not dissimilar to Pachinko, the Japanese gambling game that similarly titled an award-winning 2017 novel. The connection both these books have to their eponymous games is the notion that seemingly random developments steer someone’s fate.

Patrick County, Virginia, public defender Andy Hughes finds himself saddled once again with the thankless job of representing serial offender Damian Bullins. And these are Bullins’s most serious charges yet. This time he’s accused of murdering the African American wife of Mormon pastor Cole Benson. He’s even confessed. But . . .The book follows the incredible twists and turns (the Plinko bounces) that propel this case from disaster to potential success.

Andy is a smart, caring guy, with a new girlfriend and an eight-year-old son. Early on, one of the county’s persistent drunks and petty criminals—whom staff of the public defender’s office call Regulars—dies in the county jail, and his dog Patches won’t leave the jailhouse property. He’s waiting for Zeb, as always, but this time Zeb isn’t coming for him. Patches ends up part of the Andy Hughes household too.

By contrast, Bullins is a hot mess. Drugs and liquor don’t improve the logic he applies to his situation, but he isn’t stupid. In fact, Hughes and his boss Vikram Kapil believe Bullins may be a little too clever in his ploys to outwit the system. His ability to twist every development in the case to serve his strange logic is simultaneously amusing and horrifying, as he transparently schemes to pervert justice. Apparently, he’s aware this is an era when the more outlandish a claim is, the more likely it is to gain credence. The rascal just might get away with murder.

Clark’s characters are interesting and highly individual, with just the right amount of backstory. The beautiful areas of rural southwest Virginia on the North Carolina state line are woven into the story, as are its small towns and small-town sensibilities.

Author Clark is a retired Virginia circuit court judge who served on the bench for some 27 years. His experience shows in several riveting courtroom scenes. No questioning the legal underpinnings of this tale, either. Clark makes clear the limits and strains on the public defender system when it’s faced with a penniless, manipulative defendant like Damian Bullins. Yet, despite giving every respect to the legal intricacies of the proceedings, Clark never gets bogged down. His writing is clear, and the story moves forward briskly. Watching Andy Hughes try to live up to the ethical tenets of his profession in the face of a thoroughly reprehensible defendant is a struggle worth witnessing.

Order it from Amazon here. (As an Amazon affiliate, I receive a small payment for products ordered through this website.)

Two Movies to Watch For

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A Haunting in Venice
Kenneth Branagh’s third film outing as Belgian detective Hercule Poirot is certainly loaded with stylish touches (trailer). A dark and stormy night, water everywhere. A gloomy palazzo where a Halloween party for orphans is staged. A crashing chandelier. Masked gondoliers. A psychic invited in the hope she can communicate with a former opera star’s dead daughter. Directed by Branagh and written by Michael Green.

Oh, and a houseful of suspects. Branagh has made a third try at getting right the mustache which prompted so many cackles in Murder on the Orient Express. This one is . . . interesting. Layers. No sign of the scar mentioned in Death on the Nile as the reason for growing the thing in the first place. Although the first two movies hewed closer to the original Agatha Christie novel, this story based on her novel Hallowe’en Party, has strayed off into territory of its own.

Super supporting cast—Tina Fey as mystery writer Ariadne Oliver who inveigles Poirot into investigating the medium; Kelly Reilly as the opera singer; Michelle Yeoh as the psychic; and the brilliant Camille Cottin as the housekeeper. (You may remember Cottin as the star theatrical agent in the French comedy series, Call My Agent.) And, you may recognize Jude Hill as the boy who played the lead in Branagh’s Belfast. Here he plays the 12-year-old son of a PTSD-afflicted doctor, played by Jamie Dornan, his father in Belfast too.

All you’ll miss if you wait for Haunting to stream is the scenery. A Gothic pall overlays the story, but the plot itself is a tad weak. Not mysterious enough for a mystery and not scary enough for horror. Christie’s original must have been shocking, though, because it’s the only one of her books in which a child was the murder victim. Not here. Here it’s Poirot who almost becomes the victim of apple-bobbing. Not great, but you don’t leave the theater feeling bludgeoned by sound effects, either.

Rotten Tomatoes critics’ rating: 76%; audiences: 78%.

Theater Camp
While the movies about kids’ summer camps have worn their jokes thin as tissue-paper already, don’t let that discourage you from seeing this fresh take on the genre from directors Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman (trailer). It stars Tony award-winner Ben Platt (Dear Evan Hansen), Molly Gordon as loyal camp counselors and Noah Galvin as tech support, plus an ensemble of hammy, misfit campers.

The long-time owner of a theater camp in the Adirondacks (it’s Camp AdirondACTS) falls ill and is unable to carry on. Her son (Jimmy Tatro), who has no feeling for theater, kids, or camp takes over. He fancies himself a finance genius, which seems in his mind to consist of writing himself many inspiring post-its. Can the counselors save the day?

Fun and refreshing, it’s what you’d call a “small movie,” and since it’s already probably too late to see it on the Big Screen, Hulu is streaming it.

Rotten Tomatoes critics’ rating: 85%; audiences: 80%.