The Naming of the Beasts is where all of Felix ‘Fix’ Castor’s past mistakes come back to bite him in the ass. Since book 1, Rafi Ditko has been a prisoner in his own body with a nasty demon named Asmodeus stuck inside him. Fix tried to exorcise the demon, but things went awry and Asmodeus and Rafi became permanently interwined in his body. Felix has been trying for years to find the proper tune to whistle away the demon without killing Rafi. In the interim, Rafi/Asmodeus […]
Poirot doesn’t impress in his first story
Fortieth book reviewed as part of the 130 Challenge. I like mysteries and thrillers, but this one didn’t impress me much. It might be because Agatha was such a pioneer in this genre that a lot of other writers must have borrowed from her and so, this particular story (the first perhaps, in her famous Hercule Poirot series) appears to be far too familiar.The plot was quite simple. I was even able to guess the most likely culprits. However, as soon as Hercule starts to […]
Sire, the night is darker now / And the wind blows stronger
Mystery in White: A Christmas Crime Story (1937) exploits seasonal chill to the max on every possible level. It’s cold, neck-deep in snow–and there might be ghosts or other unearthly things hiding in the shadowy whiteness. The story begins conventionally enough, with a group of strangers stuck on a train that’s stuck in a snowdrift. One of them, an elderly man who seems to know a lot about the paranormal, and the traces left on the present by violent or highly emotionally-charged events of the […]
The sum of our experiences influences all
(This post original appear on Glorified Love Letters.) The holes in our lives require energy. Everything after must be arranged around that absence, and that effort often continues the devastation. In After I’m Gone, Laura Lippman takes the disappearance of one shady businessman, Felix Brewer, and follows the repercussions on his wife, daughters, and mistress. Facing a decade of jail time, Felix had his mistress, Julie Saxony, sneak him out of town on July 4, 1976. Ten years later, almost to the day, Julie disappears […]