“But rest assured, my indications will lead you to the truth.” He paused. Then he said: “And perhaps, then, you would wish that they had not led you so far. You would say instead: ‘Ring down the curtain.’” The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was one of the first mystery novels I read, the one that arguably made me Someone Who Is Into Detective Fiction. The other two Poirot novels that my school library had were Murder on the Orient Express and Curtain: Poirot's Last Case . Quite the reading order. What you might call a speedrun. Which meant that this grand summation of Poirot flew way over my head the first time I read it (where is Styles, anyway?). I've now read, I think, just over half of the novels, so more of the references to past events made sense. On a reread, I would still say Curtain 's mystery has its underwhelming elements. But oh, that ending. The Locked Room: A man is found dead in his locked room (which the narrator saw him enter), holding a gun and with a bullet h...

  Recently my wife and I were discussing the best and worst video games we played in 2024, and she was surprised that I ranked immersive murder mystery sim The Painscreek Killings so low. I was surprised that she was surprised, since I remembered excoriating it, while she remembered me giving a glowing opinion. It turns out I had done both, at different times, so here is my second-chance attempt at synthesizing my evidently mixed opinion into a holistic review. The Painscreek Killings is a first-person mystery game that "mimics real world investigation". You play as journalist Janet Kelly, who has come to Painscreek to investigate the cold case murder of philanthropist businesswoman Vivian Roberts and the subsequent abandonment of the town. Armed with only a camera and whatever real-life notes you choose to take, your goal is to solve Vivian's murder and get a front page snapshot for your story. Of course, the game is called The Painscreek Killing s , and as you in...

When Nintendo remastered the Famicom Detective Club games a couple years back, it was a pleasant surprise, but I didn't have "the series gets a third game after 35 years" on my 2024 bingo card. Famicom Detective Club wasn't the first mystery adventure game (that would be The Portopia Serial Murder Case in 1983), but you can see its DNA in a lot of subsequent Japanese adventure games such as the Ace Attorney series. Despite being fondly regarded, the series only got two entries before designer and writer Yoshio Sakamoto moved on to some obscure game about a space bounty hunter . Despite some occasional 80s clunk, The Missing Heir (1988) is a solid mystery game that takes a lot of inspiration from Seishi Yokomizo's books ( The Village of Eight Graves particularly, IMO). The Girl Who Stands Behind (1989) is a great mystery game, whose oppressive atmosphere of paranoia builds into a memorably creepy finale that lingers long after you beat it. How does th...

Originally posted April 24, 2024. Historical fiction isn’t my typical genre wheelhouse, but my brother-in-law got me a Victorian mystery with a female lead last Christmas, and I was excited to try something new from a debut author. Bridget Walsh’s The Tumbling Girl is a gaslamp mystery set against the backdrop of a Ripper-alike dubbed the Hairpin Killer. Plots that revolve around the gruesome dismemberment of young women risk falling into voyeuristic misogyny themselves. The Tumbling Girl is fully aware of this, and Walsh incorporates the treatment of women and sex workers in Victorian England as a major theme of the plot. Successfully? Somewhat! Minnie Ward is the writer and functional stage manager at a music hall called the Variety Palace (I’m not sure if this is intended to be the real-life Palace Theatre ). Her best friend Rose Watkins is an acrobat who performs at the venue, and when she fails to show up to work, Minnie soon discovers that Rose has died in a h...