Need a break from politics?  From the daily drumbeat of vituperation and lies?  More importantly do your kids need a break from listening to you and your spouse grousing about sub-committee hearings, thugs breaking up talks on college campuses – about immigration?

So what better way than with a classic horror whodunit?

And was there ever a better one than The Hound Of The Baskervilles?  It not only has all the basics, it invented the basics: murder by paranormal means, a vast fortune at stake with its new heir being stalked by an ancient curse, dramatic tension winding tighter and tighter, starting with the enigma of a misplaced boot and a warning composed of words cut from a newspaper, a quirky and interesting country doctor as interlocutor, an escaped convict murderer roaming about, a woman mysteriously sobbing at night, a ghostly stranger silhouetted against the moon, and what a setting: a vast lonely moor, spooky old manor house, ancient prehistoric stone rings on lonely windswept hillsides, the fog reaching out for you in the darkness as the baying of a gigantic hound sounds nearby in the Great Grimpen Mire.  

Don’t read it to your kids, have them read it themselves, maybe out loud.  This well-written book cries out to be read aloud and your children will pride themselves on mastering this classicc one of the most the famous of Arthur Conan Doyle's worlds.  The richness of the simple language and artful turn of phrase.  The cadence.  It’ll change their sense language and what they can do with it themselves.

Then on a dark winter night when a storm is rattling the shutters outside make a mound of popcorn, you and your wife gather the little guys all together on the couch under a blanket, turn the lights off and watch the original black and white 1939 movie with Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Doctor Watson.

Thankfully, the film lacks all the 21st Century Hollywood essentials: the modern special effects, some version of Xena The Warrior Princess eclipsing all the men in hand to hand combat, the lovable "Gay Next Door," an evil Republican CIA or maybe an evil White Man or an evil giant corporation polluting some sacred mountain, sacred beach, sacred tree or sacred river and of course the sub-plot of an ethnic hero in silver wraparound sunglasses or long gray dreadlocks.  No happy little pet dog, no hip hop children, no tattoos, no heroic environmentalist and no airplane crashes or helicopters blowing up.

But Savile Row, that is very well cut suits, on all the men.  Well, not the dog cart driver, but everyone else.

Hound puts that Hollywood tackiness and politically correct froth in the shade.  It's a STORY.  It's only agenda is to entertain – to grab you by the shirtfront, rattle your bones then send you to bed shaking your head.

And smiling.