Maggie Rome is a reporter for one of those weekly newspapers. You’ve seen the one in your area, where you find the report on the last village council meeting right next to a column titled, “Ways With Tuna”.

Maggie’s Westport County, NY, newspaper, The Sloan’s Ford Reporter, is slightly different, though. The owner, publisher, editor, presiding ogre is C. B. (Charlie) Greenfield, who got the paper up and running as soon as he retired from 25 years as a staff writer for NBC news.

The paper is cranked out in the downstairs rooms of Charlie’s imposing old home. Charlie presides from his sumptuous office on the second floor. The staff is made up of Maggie and a dozen-odd other suburbanites, one of whom, Callie, has a cold:

quote
You have dough idea”, Calli called after me, “what I have to put up with. At hobe I have a leak id by dishwasher, by brother-id-law is cobing to stay for two weeks, Felicia had a report card so bad, wed her father fides out he will burder her, add dow Charlie is driving be crazy with the layout. I told hib this is the last tibe I chadge it - he duzzit like it, tough od hib. Right, Baggie?”

Charlie is an interesting character. Here is Kallen’s opening description:

quote
He swiveled slowly around, to an accompaniment of associated squeals and groans, and regarded me from behind his large horn-rimmed glasses. He was a long, slope-shouldered, mournful-looking man, with wispy gray hair and the face of a dignified basset hound. His movements were supremely deliberate and his pronouncements infinitely calculated; he moved through life like a man who found himself crossing a gorge on a high wire without a net. His expression suggested he was resigned to this unaccountable infamy of fate, but, as I’ve said, the expression of benign and gentle melancholy was totally deceptive. He had been known to cut an ego to ribbons while giving the perfect impersonation of a kindly old country doctor handing out lollipops.
endquote

It’s winter in Westport. Maggie has just handed in her story on the proposed county-wide garbage disposal plan, and the latest edition of the Sloan’s Ford Reporter is about to go to press. One of their little paper boys has just triumphantly visited at the office to show off his brand new bike, which he’s been saving his profits toward. Everyone ooos and aaahs, then everyone cautions him to be careful riding on the slippery streets as he departs, and all’s right with the world.

Then the unthinkable happens. The little paper boy is critically injured by a hit-skip driver. He’s in a comma with a dim prognosis. Everyone wonders, who could have done such a thing? Charlie is beside himself. From then on, his single mission in life is to find the driver of the car that injured the little boy and destroyed his brand new bike. The investigation soon turns up other dark deeds that are being perpetrated in Sloan’s Ford.

This is an enjoyable book. The author, Lucille Kallen, was a writer for “Your Show of Shows”, and only turned to fiction after that show went off the air. Her writing is intelligent and she fills her book with interesting suburban New York characters and lots of humor as they move through the plausible and interesting plot. There are many discussions and references to C.B.’s two passions, fine wine and classical music, which fill the book out and give it richness and texture.

I highly recommend “Introducing C.B. Greenfield”, by Lucille Kallen.



BONUS POINTS Complete this song lyric: "... and then pulling from his pocket an old schedule of trains, he said, "I told you when I came I was a _____."


Current BONUS POINT tally: badbob, -1*; SLOW, 1; bathtimefriend, 1; suess, 1; hirohito99, 1; robert lafonde, 1; mcgina, 1; that_guy, 2; pracowity, 34







Recommended: Yes