📘🎥Friday's Film Adaptation🎥📘: Glory Road by Don Haskins

Summary:

Timed to the release of Jerry Bruckheimer's movie, the moving autobiography of Hall of Fame basketball coach Don Haskins and his storied team of players, the Texas Western Miners

In 1966, college basketball was almost completely segregated. In the championship game for the NCAA title that year, Don Haskins, coach of the then little-known Texas Western College, did something that had never been done before in the history of college basketball. He started five black players, and in the now legendary game, unseated the nationally top-ranked University of Kentucky. Broadcast on television throughout the country, the Miners victory became the impetus for the desegregation of all college teams in the South during the next few years.

Now, for the first time, Hall of Fame coach Don Haskins tell his story. Beginning as a small-town high school basketball coach, Haskins was known for his tough coaching methods and larger-than-life personality. As a child growing up during the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma, he developed a strong set of values and discipline that he would instill in his players throughout his coaching career. With recollections from his former players, including those of the 1966 team, along with Haskins's own Seven Principles for Success, Glory Road is the inspiring story of a living legend and one of the most respected coaches of all time.

With a foreword by basketball legend Bobby Knight, and coinciding with the release of the film Glory Road, the story of Don Haskins and his championship team is sure to become a classic for sports fans and historians.

Chapter One

LEGEND

The wind chill was thirty degrees below zero in Ames, Iowa. One of those brutal, frozen, brittle days in the snow-packed upper Midwest in 1996. The radio kept saying to make sure you kept a candle and a blanket in your car, that way you could survive a couple days if you drove off the road and into a snow bank.

Presumably, by then, someone might find you.

There is cold and there is cold. Which is why when Tim Floyd, the Iowa State coach at the time whom I was in town interviewing for a magazine article, pulled his warm car into the parking lot of the Hilton Coliseum and eyeballed the frigid three-hundred-foot walk to the door, he just shook his head.

Floyd was from Mississippi and had spent a long portion of his career in El Paso, Texas. So he pulled the car back on the road and we drove around Ames, just to stay warm, just to avoid the weather for a few hours until it was time for practice. He began regaling me with stories about his colorful old boss at the University of Texas at El Paso, Don Haskins. We wound up driving around-Tim talking, me listening-for nearly two hours.

I can look back and say I'venever been more thankful to have been stuck in the middle of an arctic blast.

"We go on a recruiting trip to little Zwolle, Louisiana," Floyd said that day. "We are flying out of Shreveport the next morning and are staying in some little hotel. Coach wasn't much for fancy hotels; he liked motel-type places, where you can park in front of your door. Simple. Next to the hotel is a little old run-down bar with a neon cowboy boot kicking.

"Coach sees it though and gets excited. This is his kind of place. 'Let's go in for a beer, Tim,' he says. Damn, I'm thinking, we have an early flight, but what are you going to do? It's pretty empty in there, a couple guys in back playing pool, five dollars a game. We sit down and are talking recruiting when Coach goes over and puts a quarter down on the pool table.

"One of the guys gets a little short with Coach and says, 'Hey, buddy, we're playing for money here, you still wanna play?' Coach is taken aback by the tone, so he says all innocently, 'Oh, I guess that'll be OK.' Coach's turn comes up and the guy says, 'We want to play for ten dollars a game now.' Coach is bothered now, but he just says, 'Oh, I guess that'll be OK.' Coach was in his late fifties at this point, he slowly gets over to the table and they begin playing.

"He beats the first guy by one ball," said Floyd, now coach at the University of Southern California. "Then the next guy gets up and Coach beats him by one ball. And on and on. Back and forth these guys keep trying and Coach keeps beating them by just one ball and then raising the bet-he calls it 'sprinkling corn in the field.' He winds up winning about twenty games in a row.

"Finally, Coach decides it's time to leave. Now, you could tell these two didn't have much; this is a poor bar in a poor town. They bit off more than they could chew. They look depressed. Coach had wiped them out of a week's pay or something. So Coach has all their money, a few hundred dollars, in his hand and he walks back over to the pool table, throws it down, and says, 'You best be careful who you gamble with in the future.' Then without saying another word, he just walks out of the bar."

I'd spent eight years as a national college basketball writer for a variety of magazines and Web sites. During this time I'd gotten to know just about every coach in the country. It has become an increasingly glitzy business, where Armani suits have overtaken American substance, where coaches, without even realizing the absurdity of it, began referring to themselves as "CEOs," where some spoke glowingly that "perception equals reality." This was a business where image had, indeed, become everything and ego was everywhere.

Except, apparently, out in west Texas, where Haskins was quietly winding down his Hall of Fame career. I knew the name and knew the story of 1966, but I didn't know much else. His teams by then were good, fundamentally sound, overachieving clubs, but with over three hundred Division I programs to cover, UTEP just wasn't as high of a priority as Kentucky, Duke, or Arizona. Like most in the national media, I was finding it easy to overlook UTEP.

But here was the John Wayne of basketball, a hustler, a hard guy, a legend who didn't want anyone, anywhere to know it. How tough was the man they called the Bear? In 1996 he started to have chest pains during halftime of a game, and when the paramedics came he refused to be wheeled out of the arena. Instead, he got up and walked to the ambulance. The next day he had quintuple bypass surgery.

He was in El Paso because the people and the media left him alone. He could have gone to bigger schools, where he would have had the resources to reach the Final Four every year, but he was content where he was, coaching and teaching without the fanfare. In a cutthroat business, this contentment was rare.

He was comfortable in El Paso because EL Paso was comfortable with him. He wore a clip-on tie for games. His truck had guns in it and, occasionally, coyote carcasses in the bed ("They're payin' seventy-five dollars for a skin," he'd explain). Hustle a game of pool at some big, self-important university and you might get fired. But do it at UTEP and you are beloved. Even after the school named its 12,000-seat arena after him-the Don Haskins Center-he refuses to call it by anything but its original name, the Special Events Center.

I suspected that the coaches who kept justifying their $1.1 million salaries by explaining to me that their basketball program was "the front porch of the university" probably wouldn't be so humble. This was a guy I didn't just want to meet, but someone I needed to meet.

"You've got to go down there," said Floyd. "But you better find a way to get into his truck. That's where the stories are told. You aren't getting much of an interview if you can't get into the truck."

So I went; first as a journalist and later, after Haskins retired in 1999, I returned as a friend. And I got into that GMC truck, which I usually shared with a couple bottles of whiskey on the floor. I wound up going back there over and over to the point where my official favorite vacation destination in America was the unlikely location of old El Paso.

Needless to say, we made for an unusual friendship. He grew up in Oklahoma, I'm from Boston. We are separated in age by forty-two years. He enjoys mimicking (or butchering) my accent. I laugh when he calls a heavy rain "a frog strangler." He almost keeled over when he heard I had never shot a rifle in my life-this was after he, at the age of seventy-one, had just coolly killed a rattlesnake we had happened upon while walking around the desert. Of course, I think he was proud when on my first shot I absolutely blew the hell out of an empty Budweiser can.

"Yeah, you're a damn natural," he said.

What I found in El Paso was not just a friend but an American original, a man of principle and profundity, someone you could learn from by just sitting around with him at a little dive at two in the afternoon. On one of my first trips to El Paso we walked in through the back door of a rickety bar, the kind of place you can drive by a hundred times without even noticing, let alone think of patronizing. Ten or twelve Mexican day workers lined the wooden front bar, heads sort of sagging.

The most famous El Pasoan of all time called the lady behind the bar by her first name, bought a round of Buds for the house (total bill: twelve dollars, he left eight dollars as a tip), and then led me over to a small booth. Everyone in the place tipped their hat at Haskins, mumbled "Coach," and then stayed to themselves.

"See," he said, surveying the scene like it was heaven on earth, like he had just scored a prime table at Spago in Beverly Hills. "No one bothers you in this place."

We've never been to the elite spots in town, such as the grill room at the El Paso Country Club. Haskins referred to the Mesa Avenue restaurant Jaxon's-an Applebee's-like place-as "too fancy." Most of his friends, many of whom have become my friends, were simple blue-collar workers, often Mexican immigrants.

Unless you've been to El Paso, you can't fathom how big Don Haskins is, his presence looming larger than the Franklin Mountains that cut through the city. In west Texas Haskins is king in a region with few celebrities. He could have sipped the fine wine, could have dined on steak so succulent that you can cut it with a fork, could have had every rich oil baron in the area kissing his ass and inviting him to dinner parties.

Instead he likes drinking in dark, dank holes-in-the-wall. As much as he felt being enshrined in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame an honor, he's still a bit ornery that he had to wear a tuxedo to the ceremony. A good lunch is an oversized burrito in some local bakery that has no name and where no one speaks English. He knows what it's like to have significant action on a downhill eight-foot putt. A nice afternoon is a drive around the desert, stopping only to call coyotes. He can be approached by any old soul and he'll engage that person in conversation like he was the president of the United States.

He freely passes out extra money to honest people who have fallen a bit behind. He never tips less than thirty percent. He uses whatever connections he has with the wealthy to organize major relief efforts to poor villages on the other side of the Rio Grande, a humanitarian project he keeps a secret and never shares with the media. He can teach you the most simple of life's lessons in the most simple of ways.

It is one thing to be blue collar, to be salt of the earth. It is entirely another thing to choose to stay that way when fame and fortune and the so-called fabulous life present themselves to you. Don Haskins is the real McCoy, a once-in-a-lifetime slice of Americana.

Oh, and could he ever coach basketball.

"The people who understand what coaching is," Bob Knight told me one day, "the people who really know what great coaching is, are all going to talk about Don Haskins."

In thirty-seven years he never coached a single prep All-American, the ultratalented recruits who consistently fuel the nation's best college programs. He had one junior college All American, but he graduated way back in 1964. He won 719 games and made twenty-one appearances in either the NCAA tournament or NIT without those kinds of players. His specialty was taking raw talents and teaching them how to play the game, routinely turning projects into players and players into pros. He was annually getting more out of less. I'm not saying John Wooden or Dean Smith couldn't have won 719 in El Paso, but Haskins certainly could have the record they did in Westwood or Chapel Hill.

But it was his decision to be the first college coach to start five black players that is his claim to fame. It was an historic, courageous decision that can't be minimized; no matter how often Haskins has tried. Not only did it change the course of basketball, but he did it (whether he admits it or not) with repercussions waiting. No small thing for a then thirty-five-year-old with a wife and four kids to feed.

"He risked his career by doing it," said Harry Flournoy, a cocaptain on that 1966 team. "If we hadn't won he might have gotten fired because a lot of people didn't think you could win with five black starters. If he were fired, then where would he have gone? Most colleges wouldn't have taken him."

Back then, there was a simple coaching axiom. You can play two blacks at home, three on the road, and four if you were losing. But never, ever five at once. That would get you fired. That would draw the wrong kind of attention. In the South, teams were all white. So when Haskins won the 1966 NCAA title by starting five blacks and playing seven altogether against all-white University of Kentucky, everything changed. Pat Riley, a player on the opposing UK team, would later call it "the Emancipation Proclamation of 1966." Others referred to it as basketball's Brown v. Board of Education.

"The next year black kids throughout the South got calls from schools saying they were now open," said Nolan Richardson, one of Haskins's former players who, in 1994 as coach of Arkansas, would become just the second African-American coach ever to win an NCAA title. "He literally got thousands and thousands of black kids scholarships."

And Haskins got death threats and hate mail.

"Most of them started the same way," he frowned. "Dear Nigger Lover."

I've spent hundreds and hundreds of hours with the man, and if you don't ask about 1966 then he doesn't mention it. It's ancient history to him.

"I just played my best players," he's told anyone who would listen for decades.

None of us want to believe him, but maybe we should start trying.

Haskins doesn't want the glory. He agreed to be a part of Disney's Glory Road movie only because Hollywood would have made it without his permission anyway. He agreed to write this book because he wants everyone to know the truth-that he wasn't a racial pioneer or a civil rights hero, he was just a simple coach seeking victory.

He is really, truly writing a book, honest to goodness, to make sure he gets less credit. He doesn't want to be "some damn hero."

When we started working on this book together, he lectured me that he didn't want "any braggin' at all." This was after he found out I had written the following, supposedly boastful line: "I was a good free-throw shooter in high school."

"I don't want the word T to appear in the book," he declared.

"It is an autobiography, how the hell do you expect the word T not to appear?"

"Well, damn, it, I thought you were the genius writer."

That's Haskins though. Whether we were driving around in his truck, getting breakfast at the Sunset Inn in El Paso, a drink at the Sheepherder in Dell City, Texas, or talking on the phone, comparing college football picks, he is self-deprecating and hysterical. He is out of some other world. In retirement he cares about hunting, fishing, and family. And about little else.

He is completely out of touch with pop culture. He hasn't been to an actual theater since Patton in 1970. ("Some kids threw popcorn. Never went back.") He was once reading a front-page newspaper story about the death of a beloved and quite famous children's television star and demanded to know, "Who the hell is Mr. Rogers?"

Coach Don Haskins of tiny Texas Western University, who bucks convention by simply starting the best players he can find: history's first all-African American lineup. In a turbulent time of social and political change, their unlikely success sends shock waves through the sport that follow the underdog Miners all the way to an epic showdown!

Release Date: January 13, 2006

Release Time: 106 minutes

Director: James Gartner

Cast:

Josh Lucas as Don Haskins

Derek Luke as Bobby Joe Hill

Mehcad Brooks as Harry Flournoy

Austin Nichols as Jerry Armstrong

Jon Voight as Adolph Rupp

Evan Jones as Moe Iba

Red West as Ross Moore

Schin A.S. Kerr as David Lattin

Alphonso McAuley as Orsten Artis

Sam Jones III as Willie Worsley

Damaine Radcliff as Willie Cager

Emily Deschanel as Mary Haskins, wife of Don Haskins

Al Shearer as Nevil Shed

Tatyana M. Ali as Waltina "Tina" Malichi

Wilbur Fitzgerald as Wade Richardson

David Dino Wells Jr. as John Anderson

Author Bio:

Don Haskins, Barrier-Breaking Coach, Is Dead at 78 By Richard Goldstein

New York Times, September 8, 2008:

Don Haskins, the Hall of Fame coach who transformed college basketball when he started five black players on a Texas Western team that defeated an all-white University of Kentucky squad for the 1966 N.C.C.A. championship, died Sunday. Haskins, who lived in El Paso, was 78.

His death was announced by Jeff Darby, a spokesman for the University of Texas at El Paso, as Texas Western is now known, The Associated Press reported. The cause was congestive heart failure, Haskins’s physician, Dr. Dwayne Aboud, told The El Paso Times.

“I just played my five best players,” Haskins once said in recalling Texas Western’s stunning 72-65 triumph over Kentucky. “In my mind, kids were kids, and I had some that could play.

“I didn’t really know until after the game and I got bushels full of hate mail how important that game was,” he added.

As the longtime college basketball coach Rick Majerus once put it: “It was one of the most socially meaningful victories in the history of sports. The Schmeling-Louis fight of college basketball.”

The five Texas Western starters  Bobby Joe Hill, David Lattin, Willie Worsley, Harry Flournoy and Orsten Artis did more than triumph over one of college basketball’s most storied programs in the Kentucky Wildcats, coached by the renowned Adolph Rupp and led that season by Pat Riley. The victory drew attention to the racially exclusionary policies in the Southeastern Conference and elsewhere, and it contributed to the collegiate recruitment of black players nationally.

Haskins’s unlikely path to a national championship gained renewed attention in 2006 in the movie “Glory Road,” based on the book of the same title written by Haskins with Dan Wetzel.

Haskins, a native of Enid, Okla., the son of a truck driver, played basketball at Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State) for the Hall of Fame coach Hank Iba. After coaching high school basketball, he became the Texas Western coach in 1961 and remained at the university for 38 seasons. He had a career record of 719-354 and took his teams to the N.C.A.A. tournament 14 times and to the National Invitation Tournament 7 times. His squads won seven Western Athletic Conference championships. He was an assistant coach for the 1972 Olympic basketball team.

Haskins is survived by his wife, Mary; his sons, Brent, David and Steve; and three grandsons, The El Paso Times said.

Known for his grueling practices and his intense man-to-man defenses, Haskins was called the Bear for his robust build and rough-hewn manner. When the Bear faced the Baron, as Rupp was known, Texas Western prevailed.

But Haskins pointed to more than the national implications of that victory. When he was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., in 1997, he said: “Ten of the 12 players on the team got their degrees. And every one of the players have made successes of their lives.”

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Release Blitz: Songs of Red Currant Wine by VL Locey

Title: Songs of Red Currant Wine

Author: VL Locey

Series: Colors of Love #6

Genre: M/M Romance

Release Date: March 21, 2021

Cover Design: Designs by Sloan

Summary:

No matter how far you go, love will always lead you home again.

The world has changed quite a bit since Carl Cimino was a young man in Port Plechard. The small Connecticut coastal town once had everything that he held dear: his family, his friends, his hockey team, his school, and his first love, Mike Rinnert. Back then gay boys didn’t parade along the rocky shores in bright rainbow swim trunks. They hid their shame then moved away or married a nice girl and pretended to be happy. After a dismal marriage attempt and a lackluster playing career that ended with an equally unsatisfying coaching job, Carl is called back to Port Plechard to attend Mike’s funeral and swears that he’s just seen a ghost. 

Either that or he’s had one too many sips of his father’s homemade wine. He soon discovers that the spirit hovering around Mike’s grave isn’t a phantom at all, it’s Tigh, Mike’s much younger brother. Tigh is nearly an exact replica of young Mike right down to his dark sensual eyes, wavy hair, and lips that beg to be kissed. The two men are drawn to each other immediately, but there’s more than one hurdle to overcome: a sizeable age difference, small-town gossip, personal demons, family problems, and a hurricane just to name a few. 

Saturday's Series Spotlight: Colors of Love Part 1

Author Bio:

USA Today Bestselling Author V.L. Locey – Penning LGBT hockey romance that skates into sinful pleasures.

V.L. Locey loves worn jeans, yoga, belly laughs, walking, reading and writing lusty tales, Greek mythology, Torchwood and Dr. Who, the New York Rangers, comic books, and coffee. (Not necessarily in that order.) She shares her life with her husband, her daughter, one dog, two cats, a pair of geese, far too many chickens, and two steers.

When not writing spicy romances, she enjoys spending her day with her menagerie in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania with a cup of fresh java in one hand and a steamy romance novel in the other.

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Songs of Red Currant Wine #6

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Blog Tour: The Harder We Fall by Rebecca Raine

Title: The Harder We Fall

Author: Rebecca Raine

Genre: M/M Romance

Release Date: March 25, 2021

Cover Design: Bec Rivers

Summary:

For years, I’ve been bound by sleeplessness and sorrow. His voice threatens to set me free.

Insomnia. It’s part of the penance I pay for my greatest mistake. But when an ill-timed doze behind the wheel of my car nearly introduces me to a pole, I know something has to change.

Sleep with Me, a locally-made meditation app, promises a cure. I don’t expect it to work. Nor do I expect to become enthralled by the voice of its creator, Sam Stephenson. His ability to coax forth my nightly surrender is unnerving. I have to meet this man and learn the secret behind his techniques, so I can evict him from my head—and still get a good night’s sleep.

In person, the quiet and reclusive Sam is his own kind of complicated. He needs my business skills as much as I need his meditation skills and we forge an unlikely partnership. But the attraction between us soon flares into passion and, as we grow closer, I start to long for more than my guilty conscience will allow.

I have no right to love, not after the damage I’ve done. How can I give Sam all he deserves, when our chance at a happy ending was ruined before we even met?

“We’re running out of time.”

“So, we are,” I say with a false show of surprise. “It’s my fault, of course.” I pause, trying to figure out how to word the next part without making it obvious this was part of my plan all along. “I could always email you the questions. Then you can take as long as you like to answer them. After you send them back, I’ll write up a plan and we can meet again to discuss it.”

He looks aghast at the idea. “That’s a lot of work. I don’t want to take up too much of your time.”

“Actually, Sam, I’m the one asking for more of your time.” I brandish my most charming smile. It’s worked on men in the past, though I’m not usually trying this hard for the win. Desperation may have knocked the polish off.

Sam’s mouth drops open and somehow he manages to look panicked and thrilled at the same time. “You want to see me again?” he asks. “For the quid pro quo, I mean.”

“If you don’t mind.” I try to look calm, but my pulse is roaring like an express train. If he says no, I’m screwed. “I know this is all a bit odd, me coming to you the way I have. I suppose I hoped, once we met, you might be willing to give this whole process some more time.”

He shifts in his chair again, his gaze dropping. There’s no sign of his earlier trepidation, though, only a subtle wariness. “This was never going to be one hour, was it?”

“Not really, no,” I say, surprised at my honesty. “Not if we’re both going to get what we want from this.”

I can feel his attention all over me, even with his gaze glued to the table. “What exactly do you want from me, Tristan?”

It’s the voice. Right there in front of me. Coming from his mouth. Holy fuck.

Hearing that voice say my name, after all the ways I’ve used and abused his—in curses and moans and whispered pleas—is a goddamned fantasy come to life. Lust surges through my veins and I want to growl in frustration. This infatuation has to end. “I need to stop sleeping with you.”

His head snaps upright and we both gasp.

My right hand slaps over my mouth. “Fuck, I didn’t mean it like that.”

Looking away again, he releases a shaky breath. “It’s all right.” He runs absent hands along his arms, soothing a severe case of goosebumps. Sam is responding to my voice, my words, the same way I inevitably respond to his.

How would we respond to each other’s touch? Stifling a groan, I shift clenched fists into my lap. That’s not what this is about. I’m obsessed enough without learning the texture of his skin and the taste of his—

Sam starts to laugh, really laugh. “That stupid name,” he manages to say between breaths. “Sleep with Me. It wasn’t even my idea, but it certainly does get a reaction.” There’s another peel of laughter, as if he’s releasing all the tension from his body, and I find myself joining in. Every time we look at each other it gets worse and before I know it my stomach is sore from laughing. It feels good to laugh at myself. Weird, but good.

“Let me rephrase,” I say as we start to regain our composure. “What I mean is, now you’ve succeeded in getting me to sleep, I want to figure out how to do it on my own.”

“Should be easy enough. It’s probably something in the phrasing.”

Reality seeps back in, killing off the last of my amusement. “No, it’s something else.” Sam isn’t the first person to tell me to let go of my guilt. My mother used to say it constantly. It wasn’t your fault, Tristan. You shouldn’t blame yourself.She didn’t believe her words any more than I did, but she tried. “I don’t know what it is about you that’s different. I don’t think it’s necessarily something you can teach me, but whatever it is, I need to figure it out.”

“So, what’s the plan?” he asks with a baffled expression. “Are you going to hang around me until you get your answer through osmosis or something?”

“Maybe? I don’t know.” I drop my head into my hands. “Honestly, I’m making this up as I go along.”

“You and me both,” he says with a snort. “I don’t know if I can give you the answer you’re looking for, Tristan. But I’ll try.”

Slumping back in my chair, I release a sigh. “Thank you, Sam.”

He smiles that tiny smile and I try not to drool when his cheeks turn pink. “It’s my pleasure.”

Who are some of your favorite authors and/or books to read when you need to relax?

There are so many authors I adore, but to name a few: Roan Parrish, Cat Sebastian, Riley Hart, Lucy Lennox, Neve Wilder, Lily Morton, and Anyta Synday.

If you were approached to have your book made into a film, who would you cast?

I always have a dream cast in mind when I’m writing. For The Harder We Fall, Tristan would be played by Zac Efron and Sam would be played by Alex Pettyfer (as he looked in the movie Beastly).

It's often asked what is your favorite part of being a writer but what is the easiest or most natural part of the creative process for you?

I think the easiest part of the process is letting the characters hang out in the back of my head when I’m doing other things like driving or washing dishes. They chatter away, sometimes having conversations with each other, sometimes reliving events from their past. This is often when new ideas will pop up or I’ll learn something new about them and I’ll gasp in surprise. That is an awesome experience – every time.

Is there any one character you've created that is most like you? If yes, who and why?

There are elements of me in many of my characters, but I suppose the one who is most like me is Sam, from The Harder We Fall. Sam suffers from a moderate form of social anxiety. It’s enough to disrupt his life and influence his behaviour, but not severe enough to keep him from functioning. I suffer from anxiety to a similar degree and my own life experiences showed up in a lot of Sam’s quirks and behaviours. He felt very real to me.

If you could go anywhere (finances, time, & obligations not an issue) where would you go and why?

I haven’t done a great deal of travelling in my life so there are a lot of places I would like to see, or see more of. Especially Italy, France and England. The place I’m most likely to go back to first is New Zealand. We went there once in the winter, I would love to see it again in the summer months. Plus, it’s a nice short trip to get there.

Author Bio:
Rebecca is a long-time lover of all things romance. Whether it’s a book, movie, or real life, she will always have more fun if there’s a love interest thrown into the mix. She lives in Queensland, Australia with her very own hero husband, two quirky kids and one big, black dog. Other than reading and writing books, her favourite things include loud music, enjoying a glass of wine on the patio, organising everything in existence, and spending too much time on the Internet.

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March Book of the Month: Lessons in Solving the Wrong Problem by Charlie Cochrane

Summary:

Jonty Stewart and Orlando Coppersmith get asked by Lord Henry Byrd to locate a treasure trove that mysteriously disappeared many years ago. But is that the case Lord Henry actually wants them to solve?

First off, Cambridge Fellows Mysteries just keeps getting better and better.  Normally after 20 or so stories, between full-length novels, novellas, shorts, & free codas on the author's website, ideas would be getting weaker, perhaps even cliche or "copied" but not Jonty and Orlando.  These two fellas from St. Bride's is like a fine wine(better actually because I'm not a wine drinker) they strengthen and become enriched with age.  

Truth be told, the author's talent sharpen with each new entry as well.  Charlie Cochrane's knack for storytelling, for making the reader feel like a participant in the investigations, for having a healthy balance of staying true to the era and not making it a history lesson standout in these later released novellas.  I say that not because the original novels aren't as good or lack the above mentioned elements but because the novellas, well I don't want to say they "jump around" in the timeline but they are set throughout and in doing so the author has to re-visit the characters' strengths and weaknesses that they may have overcome in later timeline(such as how they were post-war compared to new lovers).  Sometimes when an author "goes backward in time" they forget and write them as they were later and when that happens certain things are lost and seem out of place.  Not Charlie Cochrane and her Cambridge investigative duo, she recreates, revisits, and furthers their journey all the while giving them new and intriguing cases to solve.

Now as for particulars in Lessons in Solving the Wrong Problem, I think you know my answer: read it for yourself to find out because with a mystery too many seemingly insignificant elements can actually change the whole course of the investigation.  And I won't spoil that journey.  I will say, as per their norm, sometimes the non-answers to one query can lead to solutions in another.  What's not to like?  You got lost treasure(or possibly lost), possible ghost sightings, possible murder, possible accidents, just so many possibles that it's no wonder the title is Solving the Wrong Problem.  As usual Jonty and Orlando are up to the task.  Sometimes I think the men are living their very own "Choose Your Own Adventure" adventure in this novella.

I should mention that even though we don't see as many of the mens' typical sidekicks in this one, they aren't completely on their own either.  It's still glorious to see Mr. & Mrs. Stewart lending their knowledge into the clue seeking business again.  I think it's one of the things I've always found so brilliant with Cambridge Fellows, not only is the main couple a Holmes & Watson(shhh! don't tell them I said that, especially Orlando😉) but Jonty's parents love it almost as much.  So often parents, especially mothers and especially mothers of that era would be trying to tamp down the not-always-but-sometime dangerous side of the couple's "hobby" but not Mrs. Stewart, she loves the snooping just as much as her son and "son-in-law".

Okay, that's it, if I talk(or type) too much longer I'll start giving away secrets and that's not allowed here.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, no matter how many full-length novels or one page codas, Miss Cochrane chooses to write, or more accurately that the boys decide to fill her in on, I'll be here reading them.  This series, this couple will never get old.

One more thing: if you are new to the series than be sure to check out the author's website to get a chronological order of Cambridge Fellows but once you've read the first 4 or 5, I think you can really read them in any order.  The first ones show the couple's romance explored more and so in order is more important IMO but the mysteries are always new to that entry. Sometimes there are details mentioned of previous cases but nothing that gives any case away or that leaves you wondering  "WTH is going on?"  However you choose to read it, don't let the number of entries scare you off because every single one is worth reading and experiencing.

RATING:

Orlando looked over to where a well-dressed chap in tweeds had entered the marquee. Without Applecross’s words, they’d have been able to guess the newcomer—every inch a peer of the realm—was the landowner. The deference shown by those present would also have sealed the case. His lordship surveyed the company, then made a beeline for Applecross, where the empty seat which had been so puzzling now made sense. Had it been kept free deliberately in case the man himself made an appearance?

Lord Henry paused, hands on the back of his chair, eyeing Jonty, who had turned his head round to get a view of the visitor. “Is that a Stewart I see before me?”

“It is, sir.” Jonty rose, then offered his hand to be shaken. “Jonathan, known as Jonty.”

His lordship pumped the hand up and down. “Very pleased to meet you. You’re the image of your mother, but I suppose you know that.”

“I’ve been told so often, yes.” Jonty beamed. “And I count myself lucky to have inherited her bone structure.”

“Magnificent woman. Like many of my generation, I’d have married her in a trice, but your father was too swift and determined for the rest of us.” He patted Jonty’s shoulder. “I’m far from alone in saying that I might have been your father. Perhaps you get tired of hearing men of my generation express that thought.”

“Not tired, no, although I no longer keep tally. I’ve realised how many heads and hearts Mama must have turned in her pomp.”

It was quite a familiar conversation with anyone of his lordship’s generation. Jonty never appeared to tire of the esteem in which his parents were held so neither, by association, did Orlando. He felt part of the Stewart family and always would. As if the thought gave birth to the act, Jonty words of introduction were, “Lord Henry, this is Dr Coppersmith, my colleague at St Bride’s and an old friend of the Stewarts. Almost an adopted son, in Mama’s eyes.”

“Splendid, splendid.” His lordship shook Orlando’s hand with equal enthusiasm. A plate of food, borne by Kane, appeared on the table. Lord Henry thanked the student, then they all took their seats. “I’m so pleased that you’re both present, gentlemen. I hear you’re a regular Holmes and Watson.”

Orlando forced a smile. How he hated the man from Baker Street: any comparisons with him were odious. “We’ve been fortunate to be consulted on certain mysteries that have evaded previous solution, yes.” He was aware he sounded pompous and those who knew him well would have recognised that meant he was getting worked up. Was it the mention of Holmes that had made his hackles rise or something about Lord Henry that rankled?

“I’ve read about some of your adventures, of course. Your father’s accounts of them always make amusing reading. Better than much else one finds in The Times. Might I enquire as to whether he has employed much artistic licence?”

“You may and the answer is not a single bit.” Jonty didn’t appear to be as insulted by the question as Orlando felt about it. How dare anyone imply that the accounts of their investigations had in any way been embroidered? If anything, they’d been moderated somewhat, real life being so often tinged with events that would be frankly unbelievable if put on paper.  “You’ll be aware that my father has a reputation as being a stickler for the truth in all situations.”

If he didn’t know, he damn well should have, the tone implied. Evidently Jonty had been affronted, despite the charming smile he still wore.

Lord Henry either didn’t notice the indirect rebuke or ignored it. “That reassures me greatly. I have a question and I’ll come straight out with it. Would you be interested in casting an eye over an old mystery that puzzles my family? No hidden codes or gruesome murders, but something I would hope worthy of your cerebral capacity.”

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If the men of St. Bride’s College knew what Jonty Stewart and Orlando Coppersmith got up to behind closed doors, the scandal would rock early-20th-century Cambridge to its core. But the truth is, when they’re not busy teaching literature and mathematics, the most daring thing about them isn’t their love for each other—it’s their hobby of amateur sleuthing.

Because wherever Jonty and Orlando go, trouble seems to find them. Sunny, genial Jonty and prickly, taciturn Orlando may seem like opposites. But their balance serves them well as they sift through clues to crimes, and sort through their own emotions to grow closer. But at the end of the day, they always find the truth . . . and their way home together.

********

Be sure and check the author's website for a complete chronological list of novels, novellas, free short stories in the Cambridge Fellows Mysteries Universe.

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Saturday Series Spotlight

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Part 5  /  Part 6  /  Part 7(Veteran's Day Edition)

March Book of the Month: Lessons in Solving the Wrong Problem

Author Bio:

As Charlie Cochrane couldn't be trusted to do any of her jobs of choice - like managing a rugby team - she writes. Her favourite genre is gay fiction, predominantly historical romances/mysteries, but she's making an increasing number of forays into the modern day. She's even been known to write about gay werewolves - albeit highly respectable ones.

Her Cambridge Fellows series of Edwardian romantic mysteries were instrumental in seeing her named Speak Its Name Author of the Year 2009. She’s a member of both the Romantic Novelists’ Association and International Thriller Writers Inc.

Happily married, with a house full of daughters, Charlie tries to juggle writing with the rest of a busy life. She loves reading, theatre, good food and watching sport. Her ideal day would be a morning walking along a beach, an afternoon spent watching rugby and a church service in the evening.

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Lessons in Solving the Wrong Problem #12.9

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