Movie Review- Mystery Street

 I watched a good movie the other day on TCM titled "Mystery Street" The story begins when a skeleton is found on a Cape Cod beach. Detective Morales (Ricardo Montalban) uses early crime forensic techniques and good detective work to identify the skeleton and the killer.

I really enjoyed  Mystery Street. The Boston area is rarely presented in movies and it was nice to see Ricardo Montalban in an early performance. There are also some good character actors in the film including Elsa Lanchester as an eccentric and too greedy landlady and Betsy Blair who later appeared in "Marty" with Ernest Borgnine.

Book Review- "Lyddie" by Katherine Paterson

Lydia Worthen is the teenage heroine of the young adult novel "Lyddie"  by Katherine Paterson.

  Sometime in the middle of the 19th century, Lydia's unstable mother sells her and her brother Charlie into servitude in order to pay off her absent husbands debts (a common practice at the time.) At first Lyddie goes to work for an innkeeper, but is discharged after she leaves to visit her family's farm.

Lyddie then travels to Lowell, Massachusetts and finds work in a textile mill. The work is long and hard, but Lyddie becomes adept at it. Most of the mill workers are young women and a few of them attempt to organize and protest the harsh working conditions, but the mill owners allow very little dissent.

During her time at the mill, Lyddie teaches herself to read and grows from a girl into a young woman. The author, Katherine Paterson has a quick and easy style and young readers will keep turning the pages as they learn about the beginnings of the Labor and Women's movements.