Let's try this again...

-

This is a backup of my other blog of the same name, which may turn into the main blog if I like the format better. Updates Mondays, but for now I'm porting over all my previous posts.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Locked Rooms and Huge Kabooms in BLACK RUN (2021)

-
Image
"No point living if you've nowt to die for." The first book in D.L. Marshall's John Tyler series, Anthrax Island , was a surprise COVID-era gem. It got several rave reviews from the mystery blogosphere, and personally I found both the setting and the clever locked room mystery to be highly original. The version I read had this rather dour cover , so I was pleasantly surprised on picking up Marshall's second book Black Run to see these new editions pictured to the left. They really nail the tone of the series, that tone being "cheese popcorn". If you're not familiar with unconventional detective John Tyler, let me paint a picture: he's a grizzled super-spy from Yorkshire whose body is decorated with scars and "tattoos from everywhere he's done jobs". Some days he's stabbing a man in the throat with a screwdriver, and other days he's sat in a cafe with a Maigret novel drinking hot chocolate with mini marshmallows. He d...
Read more

INSPECTOR FURUHATA NINZABURŌ (1994) Answers the Question: "What if Columbo Was Evil?"

-
Image
I've been a fan of Columbo since childhood, so hearing that there was a series that was "like if Columbo was an ambush predator instead of a persistence hunter" instantly caught my attention. That series is Inspector Furuhata Ninzaburō , a Japanese crime drama from the 90s. The format is similar to Columbo—a "howcatchem" with special guest stars—but with a "Challenge to the Reader"-esque break before the climax where you're encouraged to try and figure out what trick Furuhata will use to corner the culprit. Furuhata also addresses the audience at the start of each episode with spectacularly unhelpful "advice" that hints at the key point of the mystery. "If you wear a blue shirt, black pants, and a purple jacket, please don't wear a red scarf," he informs us, "because you will lose some friends." Furuhata himself, played by Masakazu Tamura, is memorably and charismatically awful. While Columbo can irritate peo...
Read more

It's Quicker and Easier to Eat Your Young in THE MIDNIGHT FEAST (2024)

-
Image
"Keeping people away from the land—from their land—like this, it's evil. It's a kind of murder." The distinction between a murder mystery and a psychological thriller is a matter of some debate —certainly there are many psychological thrillers featuring a murder, and many tense mystery novels rooted in the psyche. But I'd like to propose a metric that I'll call the Copacabana Rule, after the melodramatic climax of the Barry Manilow song : "There was blood and a single gun shot— But just who shot who?" That is to say that if, rather than elements like motive, means, or murder weapons, the central mystery is suspense over which character is going to get axed (or indeed, if there was any murder at all), then you are firmly in psychological thriller territory. The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley passes the Copacabana test. There are four-ish corpses, and in my eBook, which displayed as having 492 pages, the first victim is identified on page 368, 75%...
Read more