september 2024
it’s me! your pal door. let’s get to it!
game: Nancy Drew: The Haunting of Castle Malloy (2008). i’ve resumed my nancyposting! i’ve actually already played the next one in the series but haven’t reviewed it yet. oops! anyway, this was fun to revisit and the twist remains the greatest in the history of narratives, i think.
read: A Lady of Conscience by Mimi Matthews (2024). i don’t keep up with historical romance much anymore (unless it’s queer), but Mimi Matthews is a perennial favourite. if you like reading about people who are less than willing to fall in love, and enjoy a character who is just a boring guy (on purpose), this just might be for you. and as usual, matthews’ historical research (this time about the early days of the animal rights movement in england) is top-notch.
read: Drunk on All Your Strange New Worlds by Eddie Robson (2022). i’m a magpie when it comes to picking up mysteries—old and new—when i come across them, so this sat on my shelf for months before i finally read it. worth the wait! a very good near-future sci-fi locked-room mystery with aliens. more here.
film: Thirteen at Dinner (1985). this was my final unwatched Peter Ustinov Poirot, which i put off watching because it adapts Lord Edgware Dies, which i watched a different version of last year. but these films (made and set in the 80s with american collaboration) are so wildly different from christie’s originals that i really needn’t have bothered. as always, ustinov was a treat, but the real surprise was david suchet as inspector japp. the two hercules, sharing a screen!
read: The Last Picks by Gregory Ashe (2024). this is a series of queer cozy mysteries set in a fictional town on the oregon coast and following dashiell dane, the child of successful mystery novelists and himself a less-than-successful mystery writer. four books are out, with the next two due by the end of the year. i have had a wonderful time with these, which nail the lighthearted tone of a cozy without foregoing actual good writing (and some REALLY good emotional stuff). as a fellow compulsive mystery-reader, i find dash to be a really enjoyable protagonist.
film: It Happened One Night (1934). still bopping my way through 1930s screwball comedies and this one is UP THERE. i’d seen the hitchhiking clip many times but the full film is so much better. claudette colbert plays an heiress who, newly married to a man her father dislikes, goes on the run back to her husband. clark gable is a journalist who ends up next to her on the overnight bus. the magic element in this film is that these two people, in spite of their differences in class and immediate irritation with each other, are SO willing to be in cahoots with one another. and from there, as you know, romance grows.
dog:
cat:
