The Night My Friend (1992) by Edward D. Hoch (edited by Francis M. Nevins)

It’s been a while since I last looked at a non-series Hoch collection. That book, The Future is Ours, didn’t impress me and I’ve stuck to his series fiction since. But recently I’ve decided to really sit down and read all those various Hoch collections out there. Hence today’s book, The Night My Friend. According to editor Nevins, this “celebrates the unfamiliar side of his output,” with more of a focus on stories of crime and suspense than mystery. Though there’s plenty of that too. 

The darker tone is clear from the first story, “Twilight Thunder.” During WWII, Dale Fielding and some of his fellow soldiers fragged an unpopular commanding officer. Well, to be exact, the other two fragged him, Dale didn’t do anything. Now one of his old war buddies is in town and talking blackmail. Dale hems and haws but decides there’s nothing to it but to arrange a “hunting accident”… Good story, and the ending is thematically appropriate, but I don’t know if the other man would be so willing to just walk away.

The title story introduces us to Johnny Noctune, a songwriter who sometimes rides with the cops at night, looking for inspiration. This means he’s on the scene when a young woman wearing only a coat runs up, collapses, and utters the name of Cotton Cravess, a newspaperman turned politician, before dying. Johnny is later summoned (read: kidnapped) to Cotton’s office where he gives an explanation of the girl’s death that puts him legally in the clear but would spell the doom of his campaign. So when one of the cops present when the girl died is shot to death, Johnny steps in. That being said, the mystery part is weak. Johnny’s logic boils down to “vibes.” But speaking of vibes, this has some good ones. I read this—and a lot of the other stories—late at night while in a slightly melancholic mood, and Hoch really captures the appeal of the night.

The next two stories are short ones. “The Suitcase” is a bitter-bit story about a farmer who takes a suitcase from the wreckage of a plane crash. His wife convinces him to bury it behind their barn, but he just can’t stop thinking about what could be in there…well-written, if conventional. The narrator of “The Picnic People” crashes a picnic to meet with some old friends. At first, things just seem a little off and passive-aggressive, but it soon becomes clear that our narrator hasn’t met up with these people because he’s been in an institution after killing a girl…I was worried Hoch was going to take this a dark direction. But it feels like just a vignette, part of a longer narrative that just ends. Reminds me of the stories I didn’t like from Future.

Speaking of picnics, “Day for a Picnic” is one of the few genuine mystery stories here. The narrator reminiscences about a wonderful month with his grandfather in the country, the highlight of which was the annual picnic. Well, it was a highlight for different reasons than you might expect, as a rising politician in that little town died after drinking from a poisoned mug of beer. No one could have poisoned his glass after it was poured, and others drank from the pitcher without a problem. I suspect most readers will quickly leap to both the solution and murderer, but I still liked how carefully Hoch clued it.

Speaking of clues, I was impressed with “Shattered Rainbow.” O’Bannion quits his job in a fit of anger and is stuck trolling for a new one. Meanwhile, a man named Green steals a necklace and kills a man. Obviously, destiny will bring them into each other’s paths. Green needs someone to take some “candy” over the Canadian border, and O’Bannion is feeling quite desperate. I shouldn’t have been surprised at how it all unfolded, and I was kicking myself for missing some of the hints. A good story.

Carley is “The Patient Waiter,” a man who is always waiting, waiting, waiting. He waits on customers for his job, he waits for the right chances to come along. He also waits for his clients, business owners whose businesses are failing and who need insurance money fast. This is another Hoch tale about an isolated loner wandering unknown through life, and while the ending is a bit silly, the story as a whole touched me.

“Too Long at the Fair” sees tax attorney Sam Clinton trekking up to the titular fair, which is currently in the off-season. He’s looking for a General Spindler, the head of the Noahites, an eccentric group who believe that Noah and his ark came from space. Clinton is here because the Noahites’ meeting place was written on a piece of paper in the pocket of one of his clients…who was shot and burned. Once again, I missed an obvious clue and was kicking myself for it; it elevated the story for me.

I’d first heard of “Winter Run” in a review from Mystery*File, where a comment mentioned how this story, which was first published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, it was darker than the kinds of stories Hoch tended to write for EQMM. And that was right. The protagonist, a cop, shoots a man and quits the force. He and his girlfriend go up north, where he gets a job as a security guard for a sleepy resort. It’s easy work and easy money, but he soon runs into his predecessor on the job, who was fired for sleeping with some of the ladies at the resort. And his own girlfriend is growing distant…A well-written story with a slight shock at the ending.

“The Long Way Down” is the highlight of his collection for mystery fans. Billy Calm is the mighty head of Jupiter Steel, which is heading into an advantageous merger. But something seems to be wrong with Calm. He’s late for a meeting one foggy morning, and when he does show up, he enters the directors’ meeting room and jumps out the window. His security chief, McLove, rushes to the street to find…nothing. No glass. No body. Calm has vanished into the fog. The rest of the board run around to try and resolve the financial side while McLove tries to figure out what happened to the body. Like the best of Hoch’s mystery fiction, the cluing is very well done, and the possible fake solutions are all shot down by details you see in the story. The solution is pretty good too. I have to wonder if the culprit would really come up with this plan on short notice, but it’s a clever explanation. I wasn’t super impressed with this when I read it for the New Locked Room Library, but I enjoyed it much more this time.

“Dreaming is a Lonely Thing” introduces us to Dave Krown and his girlfriend, Helen Reston. Helen isn’t brilliant or pretty (c’mon Hoch), but she does have a unique gift: She dreams, dreams of clever criminal plots and almost seems to have precognition. Dave finds this a useful gift in his line of work, but Helen is getting antsy about walking away from crime, and Dave is too much of a gambler to ever really stop. Then, during one robbery, he meets Susan Brogare, who figures out who he is and wants to meet up. She becomes fascinated by him, and soon she and Dave are meeting much more often. But Helen and her dreams, literal and figurative, are in the way. Most will see the ending coming, but it’s still a solid and dreamy (hah!) story.

“In Some Secret Place” is similar in set-up to “Day for a Picnic,” also being narrated by a young boy recounting an incident in his youth. Here, it’s the funeral for his Uncle Ben (no relation to Peter Parker), who toppled off a tractor one night and hit his head on a rock, probably while drunk. Or so it seems. The sheriff has his own ideas about what happened out there in that field. And the narrator’s Uncle Charlie has some ideas of his own. The mystery isn’t really that strong. There are some good clues but some parts of the explanation feel like the detective is just saying stuff. Still, I liked it.

“To Slay an Eagle” is a good example of Hoch’s surprisingly cynical espionage fiction. The eagle in question is the oddly named Colonel China, who’s been looting German art in the ruins of (fictional) Augshiem to fund a neo-Nazi movement. Our protagonist, Visor, has been tasked with killing him. Visor is something of an eagle himself. During the war, he led a bombing raid on Augshiem, and he exploits that experience to get close to the Colonel. The colonel’s death is a bit of an anti-climax, and you could argue that the ending is too suddenly dark.

“They Never Come Back” has a premise straight out of a Harlan Coben novel. Harry Gordon is in a violent car crash that bangs him up and leaves his wife a charred corpse. Horrible enough, but then the wife of one of his friends says that she’s alive. And then Harry thinks he sees someone like her in the city, although he’s disabused of that. And then the note arrives:“Please help me. I didn’t die in the accident.” It’s a great premise, but the final explanation is a letdown, especially since one of the clues is too obvious. (ROT13: Abeznyyl V jbhyq svaq vg naablvat, ohg urer V jbhyqa’g unir zvaqrq n fyvtug fhcreangheny nfcrpg jvgu gur sevraq’f jvsr whfg cynva frrvat n tubfg.)

“The Only Girl in His Life” sees George Granger meeting up with old friend Harold Beach. Beach has a request for George: To track down Harold’s runaway wife Linda and deliver some jewelry and clothing. George is reluctant at first but eventually decides to track this hard-to-find woman down. Good story, and the ending caught me off guard this time.

Like “Too Long at the Fair,” “It Happens, Sometimes” is set at one. This one is more active though, and protagonist Craidy—another loner—is in charge of fixing the machines at the arcade. Craidy has lived a quiet life, but this time lets himself be pulled away by the fair’s “psychic,” Rita, to watch a boxing match. But the champion throws the fight, and the newcomer is found beaten to death in an alley. In spite of the summary, this isn’t a mystery at all. There’s no doubt about what happened, it’s just the various characters deciding what to do about it. It’s not bad, but this time the bleak ending comes out of nowhere.

The narrator of “A Girl Like Cathy” runs into, well, a girl like Cathy, his ex-girlfriend, in a Greenwich Village shop. The two strike up a friendship, and before long, Laura has talked him into helping her with a job. Specifically, stealing a jeweled chalice from a rebuilt chapel. The central idea is good, but alas! Hoch used this plan as an anecdote in a Nick Velvet story, so I knew what was coming. But I don’t blame him. It’s a good idea.

“What’s It All About?” is the shortest story of the collection, about a serial hit-and-run driver. It’s a chilling picture of a psychopath that doesn’t outstay it’s welcome.

Next up is “First Offense.” This time, our hero is an angsty seventeen-year-old who spends his time at the drug store, chasing girls, and wishing he had a car so he can get out of his small town. That’s how he gets sucked into an older boy’s plan to rob some bank clerks while they’re transporting money. It’s not a bad plan, really... Hoch captures teenage ennui and naivety quite well, and the ending is good.

“Hawk in the Valley” is about another loner, this one a traveling harmonica boy who makes his way into a small town in the valley, looking for a job playing. He finds one but clashes with another player and kills him in his home, before being brought down by a single mistake.

I wasn’t sure if I’d like “The Ring with the Velvet Ropes,” but it was actually one of my favorites from the collection. Jim Figg is a boxer on the verge of becoming the heavyweight champion of the world. He sallies forth, uncaring about the rumors of the real champion, Roderik Blanco. Turns out that Blanco is very real. His men kidnap Jim and bring him to Blanco’s mansion. Blanco is a rich man obsessed with boxing, but he’ll lose his trust fund if he’s ever caught fighting. So he has a boxing ring in his home and makes a habit of duking it out with the latest champion. He’s never lost yet, but Jim can take him. Of course, Blanco might not take defeat well…While I think the way Jim gets out of this mess is weak—there’s no way Blanco would go for it or accept defeat like that—I really enjoyed this story. It’s just so weird that I can’t help but like this very unusual thriller.

The collection ends with “Homecoming,” where the old boys—those that survived the war, anyway—come back to their old high school. Most of them haven’t done great things in their lives, but Mark Wedmer has. The perpetual victim of bullying, he’s become a big-name Wall Street man now, and he wants to make sure everyone knows it. His bullies certainly take notice. A downer ending for a downer collection.

While the mystery content is pretty minimal, I actually enjoyed The Night My Friend. Part of it was my mindset while reading. Like I said, Hoch was fascinated by loners—good and bad—who thrive best in the night. As a loner who enjoys the night myself, I was often drawn into these stories and their melancholia. While I wouldn’t recommend this for those who care about the mystery and nothing but the mystery, for anyone who wants to walk in the sometimes gentle, sometimes bleak night, this is well worth your time. Recommended.

The Puzzle of the Pepper Tree (1933) by Stuart Palmer

Stuart Palmer’s fourth Hildegarde Withers book, The Puzzle of the Pepper Tree, is set on the island of Catalina, a vacation destination for Depression-afflicted America. Our story doesn’t begin on the island, however, but on the mainland. A man misses the boat to the island and reluctantly gets aboard the “flying boat” the Dragonfly. It’s quicker, but the turbulence is a killer. Possibly literally. For barely five minutes into the flight, the man begins to panic, screaming “I’m dying—I don’t want to die!” By the time the plane lands, he’s dead. The local doctor and police chief, who’ve barely seen any crime, much less murder, for years are willing to write the death off as natural causes, a heart attack from the stress. Unfortunately for the killer, one of the tourists on Catalina is schoolteacher Hildegarde Withers, who insists that the death is a murder. Her claims gain some force when the dead man’s identity is discovered: Roswell T. Forrest, a secretary who’s wanted back in New York by the police for testimony against his corrupt union bosses. Said bosses want him quiet, and they’re willing to pay $15,000 to make it happen.

Miss Withers will have to sort the killer out from the melting pot of people on board the Dragonfly. There’s a newly-wed couple, a director and his two assistants, a ship captain, a pottery seller, the pilots, and a young woman with dreams of stardom who becomes Miss Withers’s pseudo-Watson. Most of them are strangers to each other, much less the dead man, but $15,000 in 1930s money is motive enough. But there are other problems: How could anyone have poisoned Forrest on a crowded flight that he didn’t even plan to be on? Complicating matters further is that someone makes off with his body in the night. There’s no trace of it on the island even though there’s seemingly no place to bury it. And no, it wasn’t dumped in the ocean. Separated from dependable Oscar Piper of NYPD, Miss Withers will have to go this alone.

And it’s that aspect of going it alone that’s the main draw of the book. The previous book in this series, Murder on the Blackboard, toyed with having Miss Withers cut off from her normal support group, but this takes it further. Not only does Miss Withers not have any real allies, but it’s an uphill battle convincing the authorities that there’s even been a murder at all. Miss Withers gets pretty hardboiled here, even holding a gun on one of the suspects! But at the same time, Palmer subverts expectations a little bit here. Miss Withers’s stunt with a gun doesn’t really gain her anything and the whole chapter has her off-guard and flummoxed. When she does find herself face to face with an actual hardened criminal, she’s easily overpowered and almost killed. There’s this sense that the case might be a bit too much for her, at least on her own. I don’t think Palmer is using this as commentary on women being too weak for detective work or anything, but it feels like he’s trying to put Miss Withers in different circumstances and see how she reacts. It gives the book some interest for long-time readers.

Sadly, that’s probably the best part of the book. The actual mystery didn’t satisfy me. The explanation for the poisoning is fine. Similar to Murder on Wheels, Palmer is smart enough to know that the reader will likely figure out how it was done and reveals it early on. The location of the missing body is obvious but also clever. But the rest falls short. Near the end of the book there’s another death, a shooting. All of the suspects are tested for gunpowder residue, but no trace is found. Sadly, the explanation for how the killer managed to do this is just a trivia fact. And even when Miss Withers does point at the killer, there’s like, one clue pointing to them. It’s a good clue, yes, but it’s one clue! I agree with Dead Yesterday’s review that the killer really could have been any of the suspects.

All in all, while this was a good read, I found it to be a very weak mystery. I liked the island setting and seeing Palmer putting Miss Withers outside of her comfort zone. But the actual mystery wasn’t to my taste. I’m giving this a Not Recommended, With Caveats. If you like Miss Withers or Palmer’s writing, then this is worth a look because of how he plays with the formula. But if you’ve never read one of his books, or if you’re reading solely for the mystery aspect, you’d be better off picking another book from this series.

Other Reviews: Dead Yesterday, Bitter Tea and Mystery, The Grandest Game in the World.

A Fête Worse Than Death (2007) by Dolores Gordon-Smith

As has become clear by now, I really enjoy the works of Dolores Gordon-Smith. Her books make a genuine effort to emulate the Golden Age novels of yore, and even when she falls short, she still gives a charmingly written and dense mystery to chew on. I decided to go back to the beginning of her Jack Haldean series to enjoy it in full.

A Fête Worse Than Death opens at the village fête, run by Jack’s aunt, Alice. He’s enjoying the festivities, aside from the heat, but runs into a fly in the ointment: Jeremy Boscome, a former fellow officer. Boscome was only in the Royal Air Force to escape the front lines of World War I and was a notorious nuisance. A reputation he lives up to here, getting drunk, making insinuations, and being a pest, before crashing in the fortune teller’s tent to sleep it off. He’s seemingly left alone in there, but when someone peeks in, they find that he’s been shot in the head.

This murder is soon followed up by one of Boscome’s compatriots catching a bullet to the head in his hotel room. Luckly for Jack, the investigator in charge, Superintendent Edward Ashley, has heard about his previous work in crime solving and is willing to let him assist. Boscome was a vulture who had a nasty habit of prodding people’s emotional weaknesses, and Jack suspects he was making money off of blackmail. But against who? The truth lies in Boscome’s memoirs, where he recounts how a traitorous officer led good men into a German ambush in the tunnels under the battlefield…

Gordon-Smith does a good job here. There’s plenty of mystery and intrigue. There’s a love triangle of sorts. Marguerite Vayle has fallen for a war hero with movie star looks, Colonel Whitfield, but one of her trustees, Hugh Larwrence, opposes the marriage on the grounds that the colonel comes off as a gold-digger. There’s also shady parentage, more murders, the works. She evens hints at an impossible crime with Boscome’s death. It seems, if not impossible, certainly very unlikely that anyone could have slipped into the tent and shot him without being seen or heard. She doesn’t make much of this (although the clue that explains it is what breaks the case for Haldean), but I wanted to make a note of it. I predicted some of the plot twists in advance, but I can see someone less familiar with her work not reaching the same conclusions I did. The mystery isn’t as complex as her later ones, but there’s still plenty of theorizing for characters and reader alike to chew on.

If I have any complaints, it’s that the cluing is, again, a little weak. Haldean points out multiple little indications during his explanation at the end, and fair enough. While reading the explanation, I was impressed at how easily Gordon-Smith slotted the killer’s actions into earlier parts of the book. But those elements really only point to the killer after you know who they are. You can’t look at them and deduce who the killer is from them. I also think that there needed to be one or two more suspects for the reader to, er, suspect. Now, part of this is just the fact that I’ve read enough of Gordon-Smith to get a feel for how she constructs her stories, but the killer stood out to me here. She does a good job of spreading suspicion around, but I think another potential killer would have served her well.

All in all, while this isn’t my favorite of Gordon-Smith’s novels, it is still a good read. Remember that this was her first book and that she would get much better. You could certainly do worse than starting here if you’re prowling around looking for a new author. Recommended for anyone looking for good historical mysteries. 

Other Reviews: In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, The Invisible Event, My Reader's Block.

Turnabout Retribution (2023) by The Fury Wraith

I almost didn’t review this.

This has nothing to do with the quality of the fancase, which is quite good, and more with the premise. One of the reasons I haven’t reviewed more AA fancases before now is because I knew there would be a hurdle for those who hadn’t played AA before. I did A Game of Turnabouts because it’s pretty simple and doesn’t depend on knowing the plot of the AA games. But Turnabout Retribution, a fancase by The Fury Wraith, is different. The very premise of the case is a massive spoiler.

The plot revolves around the antagonist of the fourth game, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. The game opens with our hero about to face justice, when they’re suddenly transported to Hell. By the Devil. Who has an offer for our protagonist, because they’re just that much of a scumbag (“…Plus I think someone might have seen me appear on your hand in that one court case…”) The Devil will send our hero 24 hours before the court case that spelled their downfall. If they can avert their fate, they can live a full life. Fail, and the Devil gets their soul now instead of later. But that task is harder than it looks. In short, even if our hero finds a simple solution, there’s a ticking time bomb in the background that will ruin them anyway. The Devil happily leads them to the only real solution: Kill Phoenix Wright.

Unfortunately, it turns out that Phoenix is very safe for the full 24 hours. He was attending a poker tournament at a run-down casino, only for the dealer, one Roy Elflash (ugh) to wind up dead in his safe with a knife in his back. Luckily, the police already have a suspect in custody: one of the players, Bethany Ittal (ahhhhhh). She was caught in the locked safe with a bagful of money, and seeing as the dead man had the only key in his hand, there’s no way it could be anyone other than her (“It’s like one of those locked-room mysteries in novels. Only with an obvious culprit!”) However, our hero can’t let that stand. If they can’t lure Phoenix Wright into a blind alley to smash a bottle over his head, they’ll do the next best thing: Take Bethany’s case, and frame Phoenix for the murder.

Turnabout Retribution does a pretty good job at matching the Ace Attorney vibe. It’s not perfect; some of the contradiction logic is wonky, but for the most part this is a reasonable pastiche of an AA case. There’s only one original character, an actress participating in the tournament, but she’s good. Her gimmick is just the right level of annoying and her skill at brushing off contradictions makes her a formidable opponent in court. The mystery is good too. I found the contradictions were usually reasonable but sometimes quite hard, especially at the beginning and about two-thirds of the way through the case. One of the big contradictions in particular is tricky, because I can see players dismissing it as a limitation of the engine, but when taken in context, it’s clever.

The reason I highlighted this case is because the locked room is great. If I were to describe the solution flat-out you’d think it was stupid, but it’s very well done. It’s so silly, but it’s very well-justified. It feels like an Ace Attorney-style solution, with an idea that sounds absurd on paper until you start thinking about it... There are proper clues pointing to it (in fact, when I replayed the case, I wondered how I missed it) and I like how the case leads you to the bizarre but very creative truth.

The main hook for AA fans is the protagonist and their relationship with Phoenix. Let me start by saying that I think they’re a little too easily flustered. This character is usually portrayed as smooth and in-control, and they have a few too many freak-outs for me. Sure, you can argue it’s like Phoenix in Turnabout Revolution where he seems much more confident when you’re not getting his internal monologue, and the case does throw our hero curveball after curveball, but it didn’t sit right with me. I also didn’t 100% buy the face-turn you can have them make at the end. But I liked how the case handled Phoenix. This will mainly be of interest to those who are familiar with the fanon surrounding Apollo Justice-era Phoenix. While I found this less subtle on my second playthrough, I think case does something interesting with that and really plays with how fans view the battle of wits between our hero and Phoenix. It avoids a common cliché in AA fanon.

Of course, the case then does something I don’t like to see in fancases, but that’s more me.

All in all, Turnabout Retribution is really good! The hook is interesting, the mystery is very clever, and the characters are all great. I do think that you’ll get the most out of this if you’ve played Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney first. But if all you’re looking for is a new locked room mystery, you could do a lot worse than this. Recommended. 

You can play the case here. 

A Eulogy for Reason (2019) by DWaM

A delivery girl brings a package to a shady apartment. A woman goes on a date with a man she met online…and plans to rob him. A desperate man tries to make money for his daughter with a pyramid scheme (“T-triangle”). And the police investigate a brutal locked room mystery. And there’s even more going on in the city besides. It all sounds overwhelming. But just relax. The Inspector is coming.

And remember that the date is always April 17th, 2028.

Such is the set-up of DWaM’s A Eulogy for Reason. I admit, I was tentative going into this, unsure if I’d vibe with it, but there was nothing to worry about. Beneath the slightly unusual narrative structure is a very good, if nightmarish, mystery story. There’s a bombing, a cult that wears animal masks, and a book, The Inspector’s Arrival, that seems to predict the future and definitely mirrors the major crime. We get multiple perspectives on this fateful day (and following morning). There’s a fair bit of dark humor here (one of the narrators mocks conspiracy theorists online but proves to be more paranoid than any of them, one viewpoint character is a detective who gives a Lenny Briscoe-style one-liner and keeps apologizing for it for the rest of his chapter). Even if it's not clear how at first, most of the narrators fill in some piece of what happened on that fateful April 17th, 2028.

Oh, and one of the narrators dreams that a giant hand is coming out of the sky. There’s that too.

But what about the locked room? I hear you cry. Fear not, for there are two here. Kinda. One is fictional, contained within The Inspector’s Arrival. Both have a woman set on fire in her bedroom, which is not only locked from the inside, but taped. The solutions are pretty good. I liked the in-universe one a little better. It relies on some unusual behavior but is the right amount of twisted for me. The main locked room is still good though, not so much for the how but for the why, which connects the murder to a lot of the other weirdness going on throughout the novella.

Because, in the end, this is a pretty well thought out mystery. The multiple perspectives might seem confusing, but most of the connections are made pretty clear early on. I was impressed by how smoothly everything linked together. I’d hesitate a bit to call Eulogy a fully fair mystery. I would be shocked if anyone solved this 100%, since some of the smaller details are mentioned in passing and you really aren’t given the context to recognize their relevance. But those who pay attention and take careful notes can make it 85-90% of the way there. Come the explanation, we see that every key point was at least mentioned earlier, so the ending still feels satisfying. It may not be perfectly clued, but it is well-foreshadowed.

All in all, this was another great mystery from DWaM, and probably my favorite of his stuff that I’ve read so far. This may not be a traditional mystery, but it is a real one. Fans of Kitayama’s The “Lapis Lazul Castle” Murders who are craving something with that same sense of a mystery that takes place on the edge of reality might want to check this out. Recommended. 

Other Reviews: The Invisible Event.

Strange Buildings (2023/2026) by Uketsu (translated by Jim Rion)

I didn’t plan to review this book so soon after it’s prequel, but my library gave me both when I checked Strange Houses out.

As it’s Japanese title, Hen na le 2, implies, Strange Buildings is a sequel to Strange Houses. The publication of the latter book has resulted in a flood of people contacting Uketsu to tell him about their own weird houses. Most of these don’t have an explanation (“I couldn’t bring those stories to an end.”), but there are some that do have answers…and connections. Strange Buildings collects eleven “files” that turn out to have far-reaching links.

I won’t talk about each file in detail; there are other reviews for that. Instead, I must give Uketsu credit for changing things up for this book. Houses used the same basic set up for each of it’s stories. Buildings mixes it up. There’s the conventional floorplan/interview format where the author has to examine houses with weird bits, like a dead end hallway, but there’s also the journal of a young boy subject to horrifying abuse, an exposé on a cult, a historical account of a mill house in the woods. There’s a little more variety to the mysteries as well. Two of the files are linked accounts of a fatal house fire. In another, a man finds that his house is listed on an app for “Incident Properties” “places where bad things have happened,” but his house was built after the date on the app. Most of the files follow the script format of Houses, but the variety in the storytelling gives the book some more life.

Strange Buildings is stronger as both a mystery and a horror novel than its predecessor. On the mystery side, it’s very well-clued. Most of the files have the author presenting an explanation or answering some kind of question, but there’s usually some hanging detail that he can’t explain. The last chapter has best bro Kurihara examine the files himself and connect all this mystery and bloodshed. And it’s good! Just about every twist has some sort of cluing or foreshadowing. The summation even has exact quotes from earlier in the book! I know that some people don’t like Uketsu’s illustration/recap heavy style, and I don’t disagree, but it works really well here and keeps everything clear. There’s even cluing for the big connection between the files, even if it does require some abstract thinking. The connection is weird and creative and hilarious and deeply cynical and kinda gross all at once. Some of it doesn’t work for me (ROT13: fheryl fbzr bs gubfr ubhfrf qba’g ybbx gung zhpu yvxr gur Ubyl Zbgure?), but for the most part I was willing to buy into it. I also had a problem with some of the smaller mysteries, (ROT13: Va Svyr 1, V sryg gung gur rkcynangvba sbe Lnlbv’f zbgure’f orunivbe qvqa’g jbex jryy. Fheryl n orggre rkcynangvba jbhyq or ure srne gung ure “puvyq bs fva” jbhyq or chavfurq, rfcrpvnyyl fvapr n xvq npghnyyl qvq qvr bhgfvqr ure ubhfr? Gur oybbq glcr vqrn sryg gbb qvfpbaarpgrq.) And in File 5 (qb jr rire yrnea jub chg gur ubhfr ba Vapvqrag Ncc naq jul?) Finally, the structure of the book means that the mastermind behind all this bloodshed gets less page time than a bit character. I accept it as a necessity of the culture, but it’s worth noting. And why was chapter 4 written in present tense?

And the horror aspects are better. Much “better.” I didn’t find Houses all that scary, but this book goes to some genuinely dark places. While there’s nothing graphic on-page, Uketsu pulls no punches. It fits with the cynical tone of the book. Just about every relationship or seemingly good deed is exposed as a sham, with something much darker behind it. It gets kinda comical, especially at the end, where Ukestu gives you a plot twist, then subverts it a page later just to set up the bleak ending. I didn’t feel that any of this was sleazy or overly exploitative, but I could see some readers finding the content distasteful.

In the end, I still enjoy Strange Pictures the best out of Uketsu’s work. It’s the best as a novel. But I can’t deny that Strange Buildings addresses every issue I had with Houses and is a massive improvement. If you completely bounced off Houses I don’t think this will make you a fan, but if you thought that Houses was good but flawed, or just thought the concept was neat, Strange Buildings is very much worth your time. If you’re a fan of mystery and horror in general, you should check it out. Recommended. 

Other Reviews: Stephen M. Pierce, Beneath the Stains of Time, The Library at Borley Rectory, A Weekly Dose of Architectural Books, Fang's Mystery Blog.

Driysham 2 (2022) written and directed by Jeethu Joseph

Earlier this year, I reviewed the Malayali movie Drishyam (Visual) and really enjoyed it. It was a solid crime drama about a father trying to help his family after his eldest daughter accidentally killed a rapist. And the central alibi could have pulled right out the Golden Age. So it was with some interest that some friends and I sat down to watch Drishyam 2.

The movie takes place seven years after the events of the previous one. Georgekutty and his family are doing pretty well, all things considered. Georgekutty is now the owner of a movie theater where he gets to show off his favorite movies and is even working on a film of his own (though the production is going quite slow, to his wife’s frustration.) The family now lives in a nicer house. Georgekutty even has fancy CCTV at the theater and his old TV repair shop. Youngest daughter Anu is in her rebellious teenager phase, but she’s making friends at her school. There’s even hope of marrying off Anju, the eldest. Yes, life is looking very good for Georgekutty.

But there are shadows darkening the family’s lives. Anju suffers from nightmares and seizures from the trauma of Varun’s murder. Anu’s love interest has an unhealthy interest in the murder. Georgekutty’s newfound success breeds resentment among his neighbors, who are now more willing to believe that his family was involved in Varun’s murder, and it’s affecting his daughter’s marriage prospects. And the police haven’t given up trying to nail the family.

And unbeknownst to anyone, Georgekutty was seen that fateful night. The witness was arrested that same night and doesn’t quite realize the implications of what he saw, but he’s a desperate man, and there’s a reward offered for any information on Varun’s body…

After finishing the movie, my first thought was that I didn’t like it as much as the first one. But that’s a little unfair. Drishyam 2 is better paced than its predecessor. It’s still about an hour before the plot really kicks off, but there’s more intrigue since we know about the Sword of Damocles over the family’s head. And the midpoint has a really good twist that recontextualizes what we’ve seen so far.

My main issue was with the structure of the film, which really isn’t its fault. The original Driysham had a really fascinating cat-and-mouse game and central problem (How did Georgekitty fake an alibi?) Here, the tension comes from Georgekutty being oblivious to the tightening net around him, meaning we’re tapping our fingers waiting for it all to explode. This means, however, that the counterplays are all confined to the last half-hour of the movie. They are foreshadowed, but, like the first film, not in a way where you can watch and predict what the endgame will be.

And don’t get me wrong, the endgame is great. But it lacks the sheer impact of the first movie. To be as vague as possible about both: In the first film, Georgekutty beats the police in part because he’s able to manipulate them into destroying their own case. He knows how they think and act and exploits that. When he wins, it feels like well-deserved karma. Here, his plan boils down to "lie,” with his machinations meant to make that lie plausible. And they are good machinations, but because we’re not given the same insight into what he’s doing, they lack some oomph. It just felt implausible to me that he was able to get the police off his back with this plan, even if one of the main ideas is really clever. Maybe it would have helped if, after we get the evidence that “proves” his family is innocent, we were given a few minutes to see the aftermath and wonder how he managed to pull it off, but instead we get the moment and the explanation right after that.

Really, I’m just complaining that nothing can beat the final shot of the previous film.

There are also a couple of loose ends. The bit with Anu’s boyfriend being interested in the murder goes nowhere. The resentment towards Georgekutty from his neighbors also doesn’t impact anything, which is a missed opportunity in my view. Georgekutty’s plan in the previous film hinged on public sympathy, and it would have been interesting to see him try and account for a lack of it this time around.

But again, most of this is just me disappointed that I didn’t get the movie I wanted to watch. In the end, I have to give Jeethu Joseph credit for making a sequel that really does feel like a plausible outcome of first film. If you liked Drishyam and want to see Georgekutty win again, this is a solid sequel. Just keep in mind that this is a different film. Recommended.