Tag Archives: mystery

Ôdishon

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What’s that, you say? You want to see a really, really weird movie? Let me recommend Audition, in which an aging Japanese widower mocks up a TV show in order to get girls in to audition for one of the parts, when in reality they are auditioning to be his new girlfriend. And… well, the thing is, anything beyond the premise is a spoiler, including honestly the ways in which I have categorized the type of movie. But on the other hand, I’m pretty sure we both know you aren’t gonna go see this, so I am obligated to make this a conversation by elaborating. If you are in fact planning to see it, therefore, please disregard anything below this paragraph. (Oh, and my short answer is that it is worth seeing, I’m not trying to trick you over here.)

So, there are a number of open debate topics around the way the movie played out. First, there’s the widower guy. His whole plan sounds really damn creepy in a one-line sentence, no denying. And he is clearly entrenched in what is apparently Japan’s paternalistic relationship culture. But I couldn’t bring myself to look too unfavorably upon him, because despite his wealthy-version-of-a-stalker means, his heart really did seem to be in the right place. So I wonder if I’m taking that all wrong[1], and one of the points of the movie is that he did in fact deserve… well, okay, that’s too much spoiler even for me.

And then there’s our star auditioner, about whom… well, she is in fact my biggest open question. The only solid hints of her history we get seem to be from the perspective of someone else’s hallucination, so she is by and large a complete cipher to me. Does she believe herself wronged by, well, various people? Has she been extensively wronged in the recent and/or distant past? Is she simply insane? Is it a hefty combination of all of the above? Perhaps it’s okay that I don’t know, and perhaps, as per my footnote below, she plays a role instead of a character. I hope not, as it’s the same trap that her role is being used to punish, if so; just a different angle on it.

Anyway… by and large, the thought exercise presented here was better than the movie itself. Probably this is because it bucked my expectations via its near glacial pacing, and for no other reason directly related to the plotting or acting. But even if I’m objectively right, I will never call a movie that put this much contemplation into my brain anything less than good.

[1] For one thing, I started to say that there’s no counter-example in the film of someone interacting with the opposite sex on more equal footing[2], but then I remembered that his son seems to do fine. And while I will be the first to take notice of how meeting people only gets harder as time passes, there are still reasons to believe his counter-example is central to the themes of the film.
[2] Heh.

The Alienist

On recommendation of one of my graphic-novel-sharing friends, I picked up a turn of the 20th Century mystery book, The Alienist. (And, seriously, it was recommended several times, and has been mentioned several times more while I’ve owned it unread. Which is not a complaint about my pushy, pushy friend, it’s a wry nod to my massively overflowing bookshelf.) But the point is, I got to it, only to find (unsurprisingly) that everything I heard was true! It is in fact a pretty darn good fiction about the genesis of modern police procedure set against the trashy, immigrant-filled slums of New York City’s 1896. It occasionally bordered on feeling too modern, but never quite got there, all while managing to have a shockingly strong female protagonist in the cast, an occasionally Holmesian feel, and special guest appearances by Theodore Roosevelt and Charles Ranhofer. Oh, and “the first” serial killer. That may not actually be something for everyone, but it’s something for just about everyone I want to know.

Powers: Supergroup

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Superficially, the fourth volume of the Powers series appears to have borrowed heavily from the Fantastic Four mythos. Sure, the government-backed group is named FG-3 and has only the three members such a name would imply, but the long history between its members, their popularity, the wealth and merchandising, the times when the team is in some kind of interpersonal crisis? All quite familiar. The good news is that the similarities really do fall apart once the plot of Supergroup has proceeded beyond the surface. Down there in the muck, the story is chock full of dark conspiracy, several stripes of bravery, and some pretty big changes to the series’ dynamics, all while inching closer to the as-yet unrevealed underlying truths of the Powers world.

Which is a good thing: only four books in, and already most of the recognizable secondary characters have bitten it. Either Bendis intended to show a world in crisis all along, and this is a good way to make his character realize it and start working towards the solution, or else this kind of change is the only way to slow down the grinding wheel of destruction and give us a chance for alternative storylines. I think I prefer the former but expect the latter, since there are quite a few of these books left. But at least my interest in them is renewed by this solid entry, so, we’ll see!

Powers: Little Deaths

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I am still trying to work my way through my reactions to the third volume in the Powers series. We’ve previously been introduced to the world and its concepts quite well, so by now the interactions between the main cop, his new partner[1], and the superhero-related crimes they investigate are comfortably old hat. And the stories in the book (big hero dies in a way that reveals salacious sexual peccadilloes; smalltime hero and villain conspire to make their comebacks) are quite good. Yet, I found myself really disappointed with it.

And the why? I feel like I’m being unfair, with the massive amount of monthly comics from the early ’70s I’m reading right now that are frequently guilty of this and yet I never give a second thought about it there. But, my problem with Little Deaths is that nothing new happens. Did I learn anything new about the world? Not that I can tell. Was an important new character introduced that I need to keep an eye on? It’s always possible, but I don’t believe it. Detectives Walker and Pilgrim entertained me as always, but no new facet of their characters or relationship was revealed. It seems ridiculous to complain about a comic book being more like cotton candy than steak, but it turns out that I’ve come to expect substantive new material from any given book, and today I simply didn’t get that. Oh well. At least I learned Olympia (who I hadn’t heard of until he died) has a thing for redheads? Useful!

[1] Although I say it that way, I kind of think that Deena Pilgrim is the character best suited as stand-in for the audience and therefore the actual main character of the series. The probably-cancelled The Good Guys on Fox does the same thing, though without superheroes. Still, I’m not sure how to refer to a rookie cop and his experienced partner, since the X and new Y flows so much better.

Powers: Roleplay

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The upside of the second Powers book is that I’m continuing to enjoy the slow reveal of Bendis’ created superhero world, which is chock full of history, dark secrets from the past, and ongoing plots that are heating up in the background toward what I trust will be a violent boil. The downside of Roleplay is that its plot, in which a number of college students in illegal superhero costumes run afoul of the law and a powerful supervillain, was slightly easier to wrap up than any given episode of Law and Order, and mildly disinteresting besides.

Which is not to say the book was bad: all the bits that aren’t essential to this particular current plot were, as I said, fascinating. It just concerns me that if the story arc and history mines are ever played out, what is left will be a disappointment, and it concerns me more that an overly slow reveal of those elements might make equally iffy immediate plots become intolerable before I reach that other point.

All that said, I’m glad I read the first of these books before I read Astro City. Because Bendis’ created superhero world is good, but it wouldn’t stand up very well if I’d had to compare it from the start, and then I’d be depriving myself of what I still assume will be a good story.

Powers: Who Killed Retro Girl?

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Here’s the thing. Either I (via listening to my friends and Amazon recommendations, it’s true, but in this case also on my own merits, since I bought it used and un-recommended) am really good at picking graphic novel series that I will like, or else I am a sucker for the format and just like any of them that I read. I don’t wish to test the theory by picking up something I expect to dislike and seeing how it goes; apparently because my happiness trumps science.[1] I’m not exactly sure how to tell you to calibrate your expectations when I don’t know which of the options is the truth, but at least now you know the pain I go through on a daily basis in trying to bring you as objective of a report as possible.

Thanks to having completed and / or caught up on so many of my ongoing series, I have as implied started a new one: Powers, by Brian Michael Bendis. (Oh, so right, technically that made it kind of a known quantity? I still say my selection algorithm is probably superior!) The simple but fairly cool concept is one I’ve seen a lot of during my years of Marvel comics, only from the other side. In a world full of superheroes and supervillains, the cops still have to solve crimes, keep people safe, generally do their jobs. Who Killed Retro Girl? is a story about that, with the added twist that the big crime that defines the new partnership between police detectives Christian Walker and Deena Pilgrim is the murder of one of these superheroes. Aside from the mystery, it’s pretty much an introductory book in every way: to the world, to the characters, to their relationships, to their antagonists. So mostly, what your interest level will be come downs to whether you like them and their world or not.

I did.

[1] Science!

Dexter in the Dark

51VvbZNbVsLIn a sense, one of the reasons I have been trying to read so many short, breezy, comfortingly familiar and above all known-quality books is that I’m girding my loins for literary battle; in other words, it’s about time for me to read another Anita Blake novel, and I’m by turns looking forward to the review and dreading the book itself. But also there are a stack of giant books I’ve been peering at, and then I think, nah, I’d rather read a lot of short books instead of that. I suppose once I finally catch up with the Ultimate Comics line from Marvel, I’ll feel better about long gaps in my books-reading too. None of which exactly explains how I pick what my next novel will be; I kind of just do it by feel, as opposed to the very structured method I have of graphic novel selection. All I really know is that my to-read pile is at least a hundred books deep right now, and that’s kind of unsustainable since it has consistently grown rather than shrunk, and so lots of authors but especially lots of series suffer delays as a result.

One such delayed bit of work that I chose out as randomly as you’d expect from my previous paragraph is Dexter in the Dark, a book that I had been looking forward to eagerly for months, after certain revelations about Rita’s children from the previous book. (Rita, of course, is Dexter’s girlfriend, and Dexter is the perpetually eponymous, ethical serial killer who stalks far less ethical murderers with a quip in every narrative hook and disdain for human emotions in every interpersonal encounter.)  And although those revelations played out very much to my satisfaction, the rest of the book was… it was not bad; Dexter’s voice has grown on me a little more with each book, straddling the line between sincerity and parody without ever straying into ridiculousness or a breaking of the fourth wall. Dexter is very fond of himself, and of pointing out the many differences between himself and the rest of the teeming humanity through which he strides, and even though he misreads himself unwittingly as often as he very knowingly misreads others, it does always straddle that line of sincerity in such a way that he’s obviously not having the audience on. He’s the least reliable Reliable Narrator I’ve ever read, and I enjoy that about him. So, like I say, the stuff for which I read these books has not gone away at all, and by no means would I like to say it was bad.

But it was entirely inexplicable, plotwise. I don’t want to say it’s gone off the rails, though the common Amazon reviewer seems very convinced to the contrary on this point. Anyway, here’s what happened. Dexter has this Dark Passenger that he refers to on a regular basis, the voice inside him that requires his violence. He has channeled it down useful pathways thanks to the help of his foster-father Harry, but it’s the Passenger that keeps him alert, drives him in his purpose, helps him to never get caught in the moment, even as Harry helps him to never get caught after the moment has passed. And okay, it’s not exactly the same as an annoyed dog telling him to go kill people, but it’s not all that dissimilar; basically, it works as a seed to explain why he would have been a serial killer, no matter what. Except… this book starts off by making the Dark Passenger a literal separate entity, that can be terrified and abandon Dexter to his fate and that has, in one form or other, apparently been stalking the world looking for hosts since before the world had any life to be a host. And I can honestly maintain, as I’ve already stated once, that it didn’t conspire to make the character in any way less entertaining. But all the same, what a bizarre plot turn! I didn’t hate it, but I can understand why people would. And I really hope it fades to the background with little or no future relevance, as I’ll be more than happy to pretend it never happened, even if references to Moloch in modern literature are few and far between.

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

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I should admit off the bat that, although I have read two out of the three of my volumes of the complete Sherlock Holmes as written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, I am not an obsessive fan of the type that I know exists. People who argue these books up and down the way people I know (and, okay, also people I am) used to discuss the minutiae of Robert Jordan’s books, only since there’s no new Doyle forthcoming, I think the Holmes fans are a bit more hardcore. My point is, I like the guy, and I want to reread the books I’ve read, plus certainly read the final volume that I haven’t ever done. And I know, from my perspective of entertained reader rather than fan, there’s all kind of reasons that I perhaps should have to hate the new Sherlock Holmes movie which have managed to elude me.

Luckily, those reasons did elude me. Because this was a fun, intelligent romp through Victorian England, full of action sequences that were not nearly as out-of-place as the previews hinted, deductions galore, and, surprisingly, apt sexual tension to boot. The plot is pretty good, but I’ll leave it to be discovered on its own. What I loved were the characters. Holmes is exactly the kind of broken man I’ve come to expect from between the lines, a genius in his element but completely lost outside of it, always waiting with barely (if that) concealed desperation for the next case, the next chance to come back to life. And his relationship with Watson… I can imagine thinking it’s just a little too boisterous and funny for the period, but really, I think this is a matter of between-the-lines too. People are people, and I doubt that Victorian propriety as conveyed in the fiction of the time was really as accurately staid as they wanted to believe of themselves. Whatever the case, this interpretation worked for me.[1]

I just hope that it’s accessible enough for the sequel that they all but promised; there was almost never a moment when the script slowed down enough to hold anyone’s hand. As it should be, I think; but like I said, people watching it enough to give me that sequel would be pretty alright too. Anyway, I already said it was fun and smart, right? So go see it already![2]

[1] I feel less qualified to comment on the portrayal of Irene Adler; although I know who she is, I think I’d have to be one of the hardcore fans to really concur with or dispute her place in this movie. But I did appreciate Rachel McAdams nonetheless.
[2] It’s not that I’m above misleading my audience about the objective quality of a piece, if it will get me something (in this case, that sequel) out of it. Because I’m almost certainly not above that. It’s more that in this particular case, I don’t need to mislead anyone, as I’m right about the quality. So why are you still here?, is my point.

Blood Rites

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At some point between the last Dresden Files book and this one, I got accidentally spoiled for a piece of character development between Harry Dresden and Thomas Raith, a vampire of the White Court he’s been palling around with lately. (That is, of course, a drastic simplification and barely accurate at that, but so be it.) As such, it’s going to make it tricky for me to dig into the rich thematic ground here that I would and often have plumbed with great abandon for similar situations in other works. And while I could probably still kill this paragraph and start over in a theme-based review without letting you get spoiled by the character elements, these things are mostly more about me than the actual stuff I consumed, as you will have no doubt noticed by now.

After reading five previous novels, what I find that has been the most glaringly absent from the series, the single thing I could point at and say, “Where’s that?”, is porn. Thankfully, Blood Rites has solved this problem to my satisfaction. It’s like, you can only read so many books in a series and remain interested before someone puts some porn in there, am I right? And at long last, there Harry is, surrounded by women in lingerie, watching the cameramen and the boom operators as the director tries to get the shot just right. Because, porn![1] So, um, anyway, Harry is hired to clean up a little bit of entropy that has gotten all over the porn studio.[2] And as the formula dictates, he finds all too rapidly that he’s in something way over his head. Because, there’s the porn and the thing with Thomas, sure, but there’s also more fallout from the war between the wizards and the less pleasant vampires of the Red and Black courts, and at last a little bit of overt sexual tension between Harry and his long time CPD contact, Karrin Murphy.[3]

Plus, bonus awesome evil-detecting puppy!

[1] Oh, hey. You didn’t think I meant, y’know, a gradual devolution of the ongoing plotlines until all that’s left is a series of orgies “held together” by a pregnancy scare? Jesus, that would be a terrible book.
[2] Ew.
[3] I grew up on Moonlighting. Sue me.

Dearly Devoted Dexter

51UeGHq5w4LMan. I am way too far behind right now. It is not pretty. But, so anyway, I read Dearly Devoted Dexter, the second book in the inspired-a-Showtime-series. I’m continuing to enjoy it all out of proportion to how much I think I should, though I believe this one was helped a lot by the series’ plotline divergences after the first book/season. Plotwise, Dexter and his sister and his nemesis Sergeant Doakes team up to face a killer who physically removes just about everything from his victims, while still keeping them alive and in perfect physical health. It’s… kinda creepy! (Well, technically, all of Miami homicide and CSI and whatnot are in on the team-up, but realistically, I mentioned the important people.)

I don’t know if he was written a little differently in the first book, or if I was so busy following along from plot point to familiar plot point that I missed it, but the Dexter in this book is hilarious. Yeah, he’s pretty good at stalking and killing bad people who probably deserve it.[1] And he’s good at realizing that he doesn’t comprehend people and their emotions, though I can’t make up my mind if that’s a character deficit or a choice, despite his claims. But he also constantly lauds his brilliance and ability to blend in among the normal people around him, even though the constant evidence of his descriptions belies it. He makes good deductive leaps, of course.[2] But he also falls into traps I saw coming miles away, apparently because of his not-acknowledgedly-pompous belief in himself. And for someone who does everything exactly right to keep from being picked out as odd by people around him, there are a lot of people who seem to recognize that something is off key, a fact he also rarely accepts. It is on the whole an entirely amusing confluence of unintentionally unreliable narrator, Scoobies mayhem, and disconcerting serial killer mentality.

That last bit is what I a) anticipate enjoying the most in future books and b) feel the most guilty about. Because, apparently, his girlfriend’s children are poised to turn into Dexter: the Next Generation, and of course he is delighted to teach them what to do and not to do, just as his foster father taught him. Instead of being all squicked out by sociopathic pre-teens, I really want to see where it goes. So, um, oops?

[1] If you don’t buy this central conceit of the book, then you are really guaranteed to hate it, and should not read.
[2] It is a mystery novel, after all!