Dear TCL Readers:

Somehow, life is hectic and in a holding pattern. The Jewish holidays are well in the rear-view, my redesigned website is nearly ready to go, various pieces are in different stages of progress, I’m not quite ready to start on 2027 reading for the column, and the paperback publication of Without Consent, with a brand-new cover look, is on November 3, which also happens to be Election Day (early voting in NYC starts on the 24th!)

Distraction, in other words, is the order of the day, but I’m finally poking my head up to plug two forthcoming events next month.

On Thursday, November 5 at 7:30 PM, I will be in conversation with Donna Freitas, the novelist and feminist academic, at the 92nd Street Y. It’s a joint launch, as her latest novel Wolves of Summer publishes the same day as the paperback of Without Consent, and as it turns out, she and I have a great many overlapping areas of interest (I also loved Freitas’s previous novel Her One Regret.) More details and registration info here.

On Tuesday, November 10 at 6 PM, I will be moderating Shades of Noir: American Crime Fiction Past & Present at Columbia University’s Butler Library, an event co-sponsored by the university’s American Studies Department and the Library of America. I am so excited to discuss noir in all of its forms (but especially books!) with Megan Abbott and Scott Frank, both of whom know many things about this great genre. The event is free, but registration is required.

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October seems to be the month of moviegoing. I had my mind thoroughly bent by You Can See Everything, which turns out to be a film that a) many, many people wanted to see and b) immediately discuss with everyone around them, and I was no exception. I was not as steeped in Nathan Fielder’s creative universe before watching, but even if YCSE had that one scene where he, Elizabeth Holmes and Billy Evans watch Abbott & Costello’s “Who’s On First” together, it would still be a remarkable film. (Also: sign me up for an A&C revival.)

Fielder’s co-director, Lance Oppenheim, also directed Primetime, which in theme and execution (and look) is the yin to YCSE’s yang. Robert Pattinson gives an incandescent performance as a man — nominally Chris Hansen, but really the filmmaker and actor’s invention and distortion — well on a perilous descent into madness, but don’t sleep on Merritt Wever, whose relationship with the abyss seems deadening, permanent, until perhaps, it isn’t.

And I was so fortunate to see Once Upon a Time in Harlem in the theater. A true treat of a movie, allowing us to time-travel back to 1972 and by extension, the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. These men and women live, laugh, remember, argue and challenge one another with great affection. All of them are gone now, but by bringing them together for a party at Duke Ellington’s house (and where was the man, anyway? The film never says) William Greaves did the world a tremendous favor, and his son, David, and grandchild in turn have done even greater service by finishing this film.

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On the recent reading front:

• The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman by Deesha Philyaw is equal parts romp and devastating, melodrama and indictment of godly hypocrisy.

• The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford by Nafissa Thompson-Spires distills an epic in barely a hundred and sixty pages and I’m still marveling how she did that.

• Rachel Aviv’s You Won’t Get Free of It pieces together several standout New Yorker features into a cohesive whole on the tension and tumult of mother-daughter relationships, which feels extra relevant in light of recent news cycles.

• I cannot stop raving about Brother of the More Famous Jack by Barbara Trapido, another winning reissue from the sharp eyes at NYRB Classics

Finally, I wrote up my thoughts about the off-Broadway musical Slam Frank for Flaming Hydra, and raved about Furious, which will get a second season on Hulu, for Foreign Policy. Truly, in the midst of everything terrible, being able to live and be an omnivorous culturegoer in New York City is the luckiest thing in the world, and I never forget that.

Until next time, I remain,

The Crime Lady