Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat
by Bill Watterson (Warner, 1994)
A delightful Calvin and Hobbes collection. The large format (two dailies or one Sunday colour per page) affords each strip a pride of place commensurate with the imagination, social commentary, and artistic prowess that Watterson poured into Calvin’s inner and outer worlds.
Pinball, 1973
by Haruki Murakami (Kodansha International, 1980); trans. Ted Goossen; audiobook read by Kirby Heyborne (Random House Audio, 2015)
In volume two of the Rat tetralogy, Murakami renews his commitment to dressing up shallow student nihilism as intellectual profundity. The contemplative simplicity of prose, the bleakness of the narrator’s mindset and the banality of subject matter combine alluringly, only to deceive.
Trent’s Last Case
by E. C. Bentley (Nelson, 1913); audiobook read by Steven Crossley (HarperCollins, 2017)
A cultivated, rather loquacious narrative, pleasant enough to read and certainly ingenious, though Trent is cloyingly self-absorbed and everything rests upon a glossed-over mis-assignation of the time of death. (The motivation for removing Manderson’s false teeth also bears up poorly under scrutiny.)
Lion in the Valley
by Elizabeth Peters (Atheneum, 1986); audiobook read by Susan O’Malley (Blackstone, 1999)
The mystery element is slight and isn’t even resolved by book’s end. Even the Egyptian setting takes something of a back seat. Yet Amelia Peabody remains a character worth journeying with, her tones of blithe self-absorption captured admirably in O’Malley’s audiobook reading.
Léon
dir. Luc Besson (1994)
A moving friendship tale that stops just short of Lolita-ism and owes its impact more to the acting talents of Jean Reno, Natalie Portman (on debut) and Gary Oldman than to writer-director Luc Besson’s attempts to bring French sensibilities to American film-making.
Flying too High
by Kerry Greenwood (Penguin, 1990); audiobook read by Stephanie Daniel (Bolinda, 2011)
Two fairly straightforward cases (not investigations as such) brought concurrently to heel by the redoubtable Miss Fisher. In prose and plot, this is a simpler novel than Cocaine Blues. Nonetheless it sails along nicely on the strength of its characters and setting.
Carmilla
by Sheridan Le Fanu (The Dark Blue, 1871-1872)
A very early vampire novella, constrained by attitudes of the time yet nonetheless pursuing a lesbian angle and affording an uncommon measure of female empowerment. Le Fanu for the most part hints subtly at the supernatural, but resorts at last to exposition.
The Lightless Dome
by Douglas Hill (Pan, 1993)
Book one in a high fantasy duology that was to have been a trilogy. Hill constructs a plot much like those of his MG books, only with sex and a heavier writing style. The result is serviceable but relatively awkward and uninspiring.
The Case of the Gilded Fly
by Edmund Crispin (Victor Gollancz, 1944); audiobook read by Paul Panting (HarperCollins, 2017)
Crispin’s quasi-humorous style (satirically intended but sordidly directed) comes across merely as tiresome. The mystery’s ‘ingenious’ solution proves elusive mostly due to being ludicrously improbable and thoroughly reliant on coincidences. Gervase Fen, though a striking protagonist, doesn’t appear for the first quarter.
Death at the Bar
by Ngaio Marsh (Collins, 1940); audiobook read by Nadia May (Blackstone Audio, 1976)
Marsh withholds her protagonist from the early pages in favour of a lengthy set-up, which is reiterated at the inquest and then rehashed a second time when Alleyn, whose personality remains by far the novel’s chief appeal, is finally permitted to investigate.