‘Devil’s Garden’ (Books)

Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was one of Hollywood’s biggest silent screen stars, a Chris Farley look-alike whose antics kept the nation in stitches. But that was before a chippy died during a Prohibition-era booze party he hosted at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco in 1921, before the tabloids portrayed him as a drunken sex fiend who crushed the girl to death with his flab.

It took three trials before Arbuckle was finally acquitted of her murder, but William Randolph Hearst’s national chain of newspapers had already convicted him in the court of public opinion.

Now, 88 years later, one of our finest crime novelists has told the story for a new generation of readers.

Ace Atkins built his novelized version around three towering figures: the childlike Arbuckle; the egomaniacal Hearst; and Sam Hammett, a young Pinkerton detective hired by the defense. Later, the detective would quit the Pinkertons, drop his first name, and, as Dashiell Hammett, create some of the finest crime novels ever written.

Atkins’ book, “Devil’s Garden,” is a worthy successor, a remarkable book that succeeds on every level. As a riveting detective story, it is great entertainment.

‘The Reader’ (DVD)

If one could assemble an Oscar-nominated film using a paint-by-numbers construction kit, the result probably would look a little bit like “The Reader.”

Things begin promisingly and simply enough with the unlikely relationship between a sick teenager (David Kross and young Michael Berg) and the older woman (Kate Winslet) who finds him vomiting in a rain-soaked alley and cleans him up before sending him home. As that relationship grows, the meaning of the film’s title is revealed, and with it comes an unspoken but patently obvious twist-in-waiting that would appear to dictate where things go next.

But then, the other colors and numbers start to pile up, and “The Reader” becomes a period piece, a slice of historical context, a multi-decade epic and perhaps an allegory or two as well.

Nothing about the film stands out in any negative way: Kross, Ralph Fiennes (as Michael’s older self) and especially Winslet’s performances are the stuff of Academy voter dreams, and “The Reader” has that sweeping epic quality to complement a handful of equally favorable sweeping emotional crescendos. But the increasingly, oppressively heavy nature of the film doesn’t necessarily play as favorably on a lazy evening as it does on an awards mantle.

Day26 (Music)

If you’ve been following “Making the Band 4” on MTV this season, it might come as a surprise to you that even with all the squabbling going on between members of Day26, the guys and their producers managed to make a surprisingly good sophomore album.

Any arguments over the musical direction of “Forever in a Day” seem to have gone in the favor of those who wanted to stick with an R&B sound. But even so, the disc is anything but a collection of buttery soft ballads.

It’s all about hard-hitting beats — drum loops, keyboards and the occasional guitar riff — such as Shawty Wats Up,” where the guys join T-Pain on the auto-tune machine.

Even slow jams like “Girlfriend, “So Good” and “Babymaker” have a certain kick, and the lyrics prove more steamy than sweet.

The singing is strong throughout the album, and vocals from Brian, Mike, Qwanell, Robert and Willie blend without a hitch.