mysteries – Darker Books

Evelyn Berckman Deserves More Fame

This was first published on our Substack in 2025. This is Part 2 and since I’m republishing these in reverse order (sorry) part 1 is coming soon.

Let’s talk about The Evil of Time by Evelyn Berckman.

I picked up two Evelyn Berckman novels on the same day, because Brave Books in El Paso gave me free beer and offered me pulp fiction. I am a sucker for both. Even though I read The Evil of Time second, it appears to be Berckman’s first novel, written in 1954. This might explain why it was . . . pulpier? than the other novel I picked up, House of Terror (aka The Blind Villain). Hous of Terror was more subtle, centered on complex family relationships, and this one is a more straightforward mystery in a decrepit castle. I actually loved this book, though. It was suspenseful and the mystery was set up well. It actually gave me a “jump scare” moment, which I almost never have when reading.

The story is set in southern Germany in the aftermath of World War 2. We’re following a woman named Keith who works with the U.S. army hunting down and returning art stolen by the Nazis. Her bosses have been searching Drachensgrab, home of the mysterious Von Kaithur sisters. They’re pretty sure there’s a cache of stolen art there–a Greek tapestry, an obscure Rembrandt, a gold cup by Cellini, and a few other treasures. There are also rumors of money hidden somewhere around the place but the big boss, Colonel Ridge, and his crew have searched everywhere and found neither art nor money. Everyone’s been ordered to move on, but technically they have three days left to search and Keith’s supervisor asks her to go up and look around. Maybe one harmless looking expert in history will find something a pack of stompy soldiers missed.

The head of the house, Luise von Kaithur, is a rabid Nazi sympathizer who bitterly resents all these Americans in her home. There are also weird voices and footsteps in the castle at night. Oh, and one soldier “fell” down a flight of stairs and died. But other than that, what harm could there be in having another look around the place?

Still, Keith is eager for the chance to solve this puzzle and maybe show up the annoying and condescending Colonel Ridge. If she could find something big that Ridge missed, that would be worth the danger. I think everyone hopes Luise “I love Hitler” von Kaither will be less frosty towards a blonde woman in civilian dress; that could give Keith more freedom in her investigation.

This castle is one of the most effectively creepy castles I’ve ever read. It’s not even technically haunted but it’s scarier than many haunted houses I’ve read about. Something about postwar Germany as written by someone so close to the actual war gives the setting a feeling of lingering evil that really got to me but beyond that, Berckman’s writing is vivid and creative. Luise and her sister have a grand ancestral estate but pretty much no money so it’s literally falling apart. Keith can see gaping holes where plaster angels have fallen from the ceiling of her assigned bedroom, and when she pulls the covers off the bed she’s offered, rats scurry out. (She wisely elects to find another room to spend her nights in. One of the few with a decent bed and a lock on the door.) Some of her explorations take her to the attic, with odd domes in its floor (the tops of arched ceilings beneath) and centuries worth of junk piled up, and the old chapel on the grounds, whose organ pipes are filled with dead bats. She also explores the overgrown garden looking for a hidden grotto–grottoes were all the rage in the 1700s, the last time the estate was renovated. While she’s continually frustrated in her search for this elusive grotto, she does find proof that she’s not alone with the von Kaithur sisters. She spies a couple of old men creeping about the place on searches of their own.

She also briefly works with the fiercely masculine Captain Barth, almost working up a romance in the brief time they’re together. Just like the other Berckman novel I read, this story is driven by women and the romantic aspects are largely seen from Keith’s perspective. She’s a bit more stereotypical than Dana, the hero of The Blind Villain. Keith is getting older and worried her abrasive smarts will keep her from finding love, so she decides to deliberately tone it down around Captain Barth. She also needs a bit of rescuing by a big strong man at the story’s end.

True to what I love about Berckman, though, Keith is her own agent making her own decisions. At the last second, even while chastising herself for her contrariness, she sends Barth packing. In the end, she goes for Colonel Ridge, who in spite of his cold exterior, really comes through when she needs it. More than that, after he saves her life he shows a softer side and also freely gives her all the credit for solving the mystery. He has to earn her interest by respecting and admiring her as a person. Romantically speaking, it was a pretty progressive ending for an old pulp novel.

You might notice I’m purposely not telling you exactly how the mystery turns out, and that’s because you should really read this book if you can find a copy. It’s a quick read with an exciting payoff. It’s also fascinating and surprisingly spooky. This book, written by an American transplant to England, is very anti-Nazi but it doesn’t have that epic “good vs. evil” feel you get from more modern takes on World War II. It’s got a personal feel, with the German characters all having different feelings about the war and occupation and the Americans never quite sure who to trust. Luise von Kaithur, for example, is a rabid Nazi and everybody knows it but she wasn’t a soldier or even a financial supporter. She sucks but what can you do? Would she be pro-Nazi enough to push that soldier down the stairs? To hide neo-Nazis? Or will she just frown frostily at all the soldiers invading her home and do nothing? Who knows? The small town scale of the story was scary and thrilling but also added some humanity and nuance to the story.

After two novels, I’m already determined to track down more of Berckman’s work. I think she’s due for a revival.

Strange Buildings: a Review

What’s the book? Strange Buildings by Uketsu

How dark is it? It’s a little dark. Darker than Uketsu’s first two installments.

How good is it? 6/10 odd houses

This is the third in Uketsu’s series about strange places and mysterious events but once again, it’s not really a sequel. The author/narrator and his friend Kurihara, the true crime enthusiast, appear again but everything else stands alone.

Strange Houses, the previous installment, was quick and fun with an utterly redonkulous mystery. Strange Buildings is kind of the opposite. The mystery at its heart is less absurd and more interesting in terms of motive and emotional resonance but the pacing drags and the book repeats itself too much.

Uketsu’s books are always focused on laying out a mystery and then laying out the proposed solution step by step so I was expecting that. The previous books managed to roll along quickly and keep a sense of mild tension as the mysteries unfold but this one, much longer than the previous books, dragged on and repeated itself quite a bit. It’s as if Uketsu’s so afraid we’ll miss a brilliant connection between clues that he’s constantly reminding and recapping things. At the end, when the narrator brings all his bits of evidence to Kurihara and begins to tie them together, they spend pages and pages listing all the bits of evidence I just spent a couple hundred pages reading. It got tedious and I started skimming, which isn’t what I’m looking for at the end of a mystery.

It’s too bad the book dragged because as I mentioned before, I liked the actual mystery that unfolded. It combines family drama with cults and organized crime in surprising ways. I’ve always enjoyed Uketsu’s books as fun puzzles but this is the first time I really connected with the characters at all and felt bad for their suffering. In spite of its flaws, I have a feeling this is the mystery that will stick with me long after his first two books have faded from memory.

I know the author is famous originally for YouTube videos and his three translated novels have each been successively longer and more ambitious. Maybe what I’m seeing is the struggle to move beyond cute puzzles into something closer to a real novel with emotional depth. It wasn’t entirely successful on that score but I’m game to see what Uketsu brings us next.

Strange Houses: a Review

What’s the book? Strange Houses by Uketsu

How dark is it? Dark blue like the blueprints for a house

How good is it? 7/10 hidden rooms

Strange Houses is the second book by Uketsu, a mystery-maker who is himself a mystery. I reviewed his first book, Strange Pictures, a while ago. Uketsu is a Japanese YouTuber who always appears in a freaky looking mask, which he also uses in his author photo for his books. (Also, I actually have no idea what Uketsu’s gender is, I’m just making a wild guess based on body shape. Sorry if I guessed wrong.)

But I digress. On to the book. The first one, Strange Pictures, was a series of separate but interconnected stories; Strange Houses is one long story told through a series of three houses. The writing style is extremely minimalist and straightforward, making it a lightning quick read. The writing style also gives the story a clinical feel, like we’re removed from the emotional impact of the mystery as it unfolds. I don’t think this simplicity is a fault in translation. As far as I can tell, this English translation is a good approximation of the extremely accessible style Uketsu aims for.

It’s not just the prose that’s straightforward and clinical, it’s the whole telling of the story. The narrator, a freelance writer, and his architect buddy Kurihara start looking at a very unusual floorplan and Kurihara decides it must be a murder house. Things snowball from there, Kurihara’s imagination running wild and the author going along for the ride. The thing is, it quickly becomes clear that Kurihara is pretty much spot on about his theories. The narrator, needing a quick piece for a magazine, writes a story about their murder house theory and ends up meeting someone who knows that house, which leads him to another strange floor plan, and so on. The floor plans are printed in the book so we can puzzle over them, which is fun.

The whole book is a bit like the end of a Sherlock Holmes novel, where he explains in intricate detail how the crime was done. It’s all very logical and bloodless, which is not for everyone. I appreciated the style, though, because the actual mystery they’re unraveling is beyond redonkulous. I won’t spoil all the details but it involves secret children being trained to murder houseguests, and that’s just the beginning of the madness. Normally, I’m all for diving into the emotional depth and moral complexity of a story but this one is so farfetched that it doesn’t bear thinking about. The very dryness of the narrative keeps all that just slightly in the shadows, like a horror movie that never quite shows you the monster. For me, it works better that way.

I’m starting to find Uketsu’s books easy reads, light little palate cleansers between more shocking or draining books. They’re still full of murder so I probably shouldn’t say this but I ended this book with a smile on my face, satisfied after a fun little romp through the murder houses. Which, now that I think about it, might be a major flaw in the books. I didn’t find either of them scary at all because none of the characters are fleshed out enough to relate to. For me, they’re fun quick puzzles but if you’re looking to immerse yourself emotionally this is not the author to take you there.

The Atrocity Archives

This review was first published on our Substack in 2025. Now we’re reprinting it here. Enjoy . . .

Let’s talk about The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross. My husband gave me this for Christmas, presumably because it looked interesting and possibly full of nameless horrors. He knows I like nameless horrors.

This book is actually a shortish novel followed by a longish short story. They’re both about the same guy, Bob Howard, who works for the “Laundry.” The Laundry is a super secret British security/spy operation dealing with supernatural and otherworldly threats. Bob is an IT guy/hacker looking to break into field work, hoping that will be more exciting than hex-proofing people’s computers and updating software. Once he gets his big break, Bob finds that field work is even more exciting and also more terrifying and tragic than he thought it would be.

The first story introduces Bob and some of his coworkers as they do some minor spying, attend meetings, and do some training, and then follows Bob as he gets mixed up in events far above his pay grade. The major incident involves some remnants of Nazi occult research that created some dangerous and unstable connections to other dimensions. Bob ends up having to actually enter one of these dimensions to help resolve the crisis. It’s pretty thrilling and actually quite creepy and sad in parts. (Unsurprisingly, the Nazi occult experiments in Bob’s universe were just as brutal and gruesome as their less occult experiments in the real world.)

The second story sees Bob working in a different department of the Laundry, with a different boss. But he also still works IT (there’s a real shortage of computer savvy at the Laundry) so his old bosses also make demands on his time and now nobody’s sure who pays him for what projects. Is this a promotion? Who knows? Between IT tasks, Bob’s new boss sends him to Milton Keynes to solve what everyone hopes is a minor problem. It turns out not to be a minor problem at all–someone has hacked into England’s extensive network of surveillance cameras and can now use them to burn basically anyone to a crisp. Bob, still fairly new to field work, suddenly has to find the hackers and stop them before he’s burned to a crisp himself. In spite of the dark themes here, this second story is actually a bit lighter and funnier than the first. Go figure.

This book plays heavily with H.P Lovecraft’s ideas of “strange geometries” opening gateways to other worlds filled with malignant monsters. In this universe, summoning demons and monsters has as much to do with math and physics as it does with magic or religion. I find Stross’s mixture of science fiction, horror, and spy novel thrills pretty exciting. It’s a clever combination and he does it well.

My copy of the book (and maybe all copies?) has a very long afterword that, in part, talks about the crossover between spy novels and horror. Lovecraft’s characters, in particular, were often scientists and explorers searching for clues about the eldritch horrors visiting us. Conversely, spy novels during the Cold War were set against the very real threat of nuclear apocalypse, giving them a background of Lovecraftian existential horror. It’s an interesting perspective and it suddenly makes me want more horror/spy thriller mashups.

In the very long afterword, Stross also mentions British spy novelist Len Deighton as an influence. I went out and bought a Deighton book (The Ipcress File, if you’re interested) and though I didn’t particularly enjoy it I totally see what he’s talking about. Deighton’s spies are written as very ordinary working stiffs, worried as much about how to stretch their very small (and often late) paychecks as they are about action and world events. They’re kind of the opposite of James Bond’s suave persona. In Stross’s book, Bob and his coworkers are written the same way. Bob has as much trouble with office politics as he does with secret Nazi files and death rays. It makes the characters relatable and fun even in the midst of epic horror-filled drama. On the down side, Stross also imitates Deighton in being a bit long winded at times and sometimes getting the mix wrong (for me, anyway) between workaday side business and cool action and monsters. Still, the creative blending of genres and moments of great horror and drama were worth it.

The Atrocity Archives is, of course, the first in a long series of Laundry books. This is often the case with both horror and spy thrillers, so I was expecting that. I liked this first one enough that I’m sure I’ll eventually pick up the next in the series, though both stories had strong solid endings so they’re fine as a stand-alone work. Still, if you’ve read the next story or two, do tell me how they are. I’d love to know.

The Moonstone

This review first appeared on Substack back in 2025, before we started publishing over here. It was written by me. Enjoy.

Let’s talk about The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. I got this from the Barnes & Noble classics shelves at some point (but you can also read it free from Project Gutenberg). I’d enjoyed The Woman in White, his most famous book (or the one that makes all the gothic literature lists) and decided to try another one.

I’ve got to be honest, The Moonstone is not that dark. On a scale from powder puff pink to the alarming maroon of dried blood, The Moonstone is at worst a lovely blush rose. It is, however, an early forerunner of the modern cozy mystery novel. It features a possibly cursed and definitely valuable diamond (the moonstone of the title), an English country estate, several good suspects, brandy spiked with opium, and the weary but keen-witted Sergeant Cuff. It’s an entertaining story even if there is only a single death involved.

The story starts in India, where the moonstone is stolen by Colonel Herncastle during the Siege of Seringapatam. (That was a real battle, by the way. Collins did some real research for this novel.) Herncastle steals the moonstone from the local temple, killing the people guarding it, and then he doesn’t really know what to do with it. He keeps it a secret for years, afraid the Indians will find it and steal it back, and upon his death he leaves the moonstone to his niece Rachel as a birthday present.

A family friend, Franklin Blake, offers to deliver it to Rachel at her home in the countryside. It turns out Herncastle is right about the Indians; three of them are hot on Franklin’s trail, looking to intercept the moonstone and take it home.

At this point, I was afraid the Indians would turn out to be the villains. This novel was written in 1868, so I started bracing for some racist colonialist nonsense to pour forth. I was surprised and delighted when that didn’t happen. I mean, we don’t get any serious anti-colonialism and it’s definitely not an informed or nuanced take on Indian culture. It’s still kinda racist. But the Indians are not the villains, and when they finally manage to steal the moonstone away from the real villain and take it home, this is presented as a just and happy ending. Good for Collins, being somewhat less imperialist than most. Polite Victorian hand clap for him.

Anyway, even though the story begins and ends in India the main mystery is focused on the guests and staff at Rachel’s birthday party. She wears the moonstone for her party, stores it for the night in a drawer in her sitting room, and wakes up to find it gone. Franklin, who by now is infatuated with Rachel and eager to give any help he can with this mystery, gets the renowned Sergeant Cuff to come out and investigate.

In a surprising twist, Cuff gets sent away before fully solving the mystery. To everyone’s surprise, Rachel is thoroughly uncooperative with the investigation and furious with Franklin for dragging it out. Cuff is making progress but keeps being blocked by Rachel, and eventually Rachel’s mother just pays him and sends him away, afraid of upsetting her daughter further. It’s her diamond; if she doesn’t want to find it her mom’s not going to force her.

I’ll stop short of telling you the entire plot. You can look it up on Wikipedia, anyway. Let’s just say there are several twists and turns before we get to the end and it turns out Cuff really did figure out the likely culprit before everyone else did.

The story is told through a series of witness statements and diary entries, gathered by Franklin Blake from various people involved. When Rachel had Cuff fired, she also broke up with Franklin and stopped speaking to him, but he’s still determined to solve the mystery for her. Most of the narrators, from the amusing Betteredge to the self-righteous religious nut Miss Clack to the sad and mysterious Ezra Jennings, have their own distinct voices and backstories. It was fun to read the story through their eyes and watch it unfold from different angles. I also enjoyed Cuff, who was great at solving mysteries but kind of disillusioned about human nature; he eventually retired to become an obsessive rose gardener, which feels to me like a very English thing to do.

Cozy mysteries have become a huge genre, and you can see many of their features developing here. It’s got a lot of twists and turns without being particularly scary and as I said at the top, only one person dies. The Moonstone reminds me why I read so many older novels. Many of them are quite good once you’re used to the older language and writing style, and it’s so interesting to see where our modern tropes and genres were born.

The Twisted Thing: a Review

What’s the book? The Twisted Thing by Mickey Spillane

How dark is it? Super dark purply-black like a black eye

How good is it? 7/10 gut punches

This is a Mike Hammer mystery. I had heard of Hammer and knew he was one of the classic hard-boiled detective characters. I pictured him vaguely as one of those tough talking film noir characters. Back in the day, Mike Hammer mysteries were wildly popular, maybe the most popular of hard-boiled detective stories. Which makes sense, because Hammer is the most over-the-top hard-boiled detective I’ve ever encountered. He’s completely ridiculous but also utterly awesome.

This book starts with Hammer beating up a crooked cop and only gets more violent from there. Hammer is huge and angry and kinda looking for excuses to pull out his gun. (Which he constantly calls his “rod” because he’s super hard-boiled and unbothered by metaphor.) He will punch a dude for the smallest of reasons, and this is treated as more heroic than psychotic. Hammer is also irresistible to the ladies and always lookin’ to get laid. He’s chock full of film noir slang and old school outlaw masculinity.

He’s almost an offensive caricature of a hard-boiled detective, and the whole book is full of vaguely offensive stereotypes and stock characters: the ex-con trying to make good, the former sex worker hiding her past from her employer, the murderous lesbian with masculine vibes, the boy genius who’s emotionally stunted, the cop on the take, the casino owner with mob ties . . . every character is so over the top it’s actually hard for me to be upset about it because none of it feels serious. If you think about this story for even one second it gets pretty silly.

But Mickey Spillane’s writing is so tight and gripping that I didn’t have one second to think about how ridiculous it all was. It was thoroughly fun to watch Hammer punching twits in the face, sneaking around in dumbwaiters, swimming through freezing water to find the bad guy’s escape route. This story is all plot all the time and I couldn’t help but enjoy it. I was way more excited by reading Hammer’s adventures than I was by any of the other hard-boiled classics I’ve read.

If you’re looking for something classy, I doubt Hammer’s what you’re looking for. Stick to P.D. James or Agatha Christie or, if you’re in a noir mood, maybe Raymond Chandler. If you want action and the hardest of hard-boiled insanity, this is the detective for you.

Who Killed Aunt Maggie

This review first appeared on our Substack in September of 2025.

Let’s talk about Who Killed Aunt Maggie by Medora Field. This is one of a handful of pulp novels I picked up in El Paso. I basically scanned the pulp table looking for female author names and murdery titles. I knew nothing about Medora Field and I didn’t know how hard this book is to find these days. Like a lot of pulp paperbacks, my copy started falling apart the second I opened it up, so I’m not surprised they’re becoming rare.

This book is casually racist. It was published in 1939 by a well off white lady from Georgia, so it’s no surprise. The only black characters in this mystery are servants, and they’re all portrayed as kind of dumb and childlike (and extremely devoted to the rich white family who employs them). Late in the book there’s a short speech about the moral inferiority of black people. Medora Field (married name Medora Field Perkerson) was an advice columnist and historian who wrote a book about Georgia’s historical buildings and was friends with Margaret “Gone with the Wind” Mitchell, who was also racist.

Honestly, it’s the unthinking casualness of the racist bits that gets to me. I read a lot of older novels so I’ve run across a lot of racist and sexist and colonialist content. As a modern white American lady, I have the luxury of taking a detached view of most of it. A surprising number of old novels actually examine and push back against the views of their time in ways that are interesting and hopeful, even when they fall far short of modern standards. Sometimes, though, there’s just zero thought and zero pushback and the old timey awfulness just sits there stinking up an otherwise decent story. (I suppose that’s sometimes true in contemporary fiction, too.)

It’s a shame because this is an otherwise decent story. Not great, but decent. The mystery takes place in a grand old plantation house Sally Ambler has inherited from her family. She’s offered to host an impromptu engagement party for her friends Claire and Bob. Bob’s old fling, Eve, is crashing the party and Sally’s Aunt Maggie has also been staying at the house to look through the library and do some family research. Maggie has also been nosily looking at all the recent renovations and making one last search for the secret room their ancestor was rumored to have built back before the Civil War.

As soon as she arrives to get the party ready, Sally feels something isn’t right. Who was that man she saw dashing away through the backyard? Where have the servants got off to, when they were supposed to be here dusting bedrooms and preparing dinner? She’s a bit spooked, but soon all the guests arrive and those thoughts are pushed out of her head. Until bedtime, that is, when she walks out of the kitchen to find Aunt Maggie crumpled at the bottom of the back stairs. At first Sally assumes Aunt Maggie fainted or somehow tripped down the stairs but it soon becomes clear that something far more sinister is afoot . . .

We spend a lot of time watching characters bumble about the house while learning about their various tense relationships and wondering who might have motive for such a crime. Sally and her husband try to call the police but the phone line has been cut. They try to get Andrew, the butler, to drive to the nearest town for help but all the cars’ tires have been punctured. A fierce storm comes up and the electricity goes out, which leads to a night of various suspects roaming about the house with candles, finding clues and having spooky moments. This isn’t the tightest of mysteries but there are fun and intriguing moments as the night progresses.

The next day they finally get the police and coroner out to investigate but at first this only leads to more confusion and questions. The coroner, by the way, is a blind lawyer. In these forensics-heavy days of medical examiners and crime scene investigators, it’s easy to forget that coroners with no medical expertise did and still do exist. This coroner’s expertise is in ferreting out motives and secrets by listening intently to the way people talk. He’s an interesting character, but he’s also the one who gives the racist speech, so that ruins things a bit.

After a lot of worrying and conjecture and confusion, Sally literally stumbles onto the mystery’s solution, which is a lot more tense and suspenseful than it sounds. The book’s finale was pretty exciting. Not sure it was worth the racism, but it was a good ending.

And there we have it. Who Killed Aunt Maggie was an interesting experience but I’m not itching to find Field’s second novel. It might interest you to know both of her books inspired movies in the 1940s; I haven’t seen either movie and the synopsis for the Who Killed Aunt Maggie film sounds not much like the book, but if you’re into old movies you might look them up. Tell me if they’re any good. Tell me if they’re also casually racist.

Stubs: Part 2

It’s the Friday before Independence Day here in the USA, which means we’re all too busy loving/hating America to read full reviews. It’s also the day after my birthday and I’m probably getting a tattoo as this goes live. Yes, we all lead very full lives and today I’m just leaving some quick mini-reviews here of a few books that didn’t quite fit the normal profile for one reason or another. Enjoy.

Most Delicious Poison

Written by Noah Whiteman, the title Most Delicious Poison: the Story of Nature’s Toxins from Spices to Vices pretty much sums it up. I dip into history and popular science on occasion, and this one delivers some pretty interesting info about how plants protect themselves and how humans have learned to use those defensive chemicals as flavorings, medicines, and recreational drugs. The book is inspired by Whiteman’s struggle to understand his father’s debilitating problems with alcohol, so along with exciting stories about medicine and interesting facts about flavorings, we get vulnerable discussion of the more dangerous uses of plants. It’s not exactly our usual Darker Books fare but I found it fascinating and quite moving in parts.

Mystery of the Witches’ Bridge

Last October we stayed at the McCoy Hotel in Tucson, which had a cute red desk with a pile of paperbacks on it for our reading pleasure. This was in the pile. It’s a mystery for youngsters written by Barbee Oliver Carleton; the internet has precious little about her but she apparently wrote a lot of stuff for youngsters. This book is kind of quaint and cute, with detailed and interesting descriptions of the Massachusetts wetlands where it’s set. It’s not particularly spooky or exciting but it’s fun in a Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys way.

The Devil’s Butcher Shop

Last Halloween I wrote a bit about the New Mexico State Penitentiary, which is probably haunted because of the deadly prison riot of 1980. Back then, I said I’d bought a book about the riot but I hadn’t read it yet. This is that book. The main reason I’m making this a stub instead of a full review is that, even for a hardened true crime enthusiast like myself, this is a hard book to get through. It’s not for everyone. Still, I was riveted by Roger Morris’s book, which details not only the riot but the appalling mismanagement leading up to it and the shocking lack of consequences afterward (both for the murders committed by rioters and for the negligent and corrupt managers of the prison). It was thorough and moving, and I appreciated the way Morris built sympathy for the prisoners while making it clear that the actions of many prisoners during the riot were also inexcusably awful. This one will stick with me a long time and I’m glad I read it, but it’s definitely one of the darkest books I’ve ever read.

Curioddity

This one, by Paul Jenkins, is the opposite of dark. I bought it at an occult book shop in Tucson and it’s got a mysterious cover so I thought it would be at least a little dark. Instead I got a rollicking absurdist adventure with a lot of goofy humor. The book is not set anywhere in particular but Jenkins is a British comic book writer, which explains why the book felt so much like a Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett project. It also explains the main character, Wil Morgan, who is exceedingly straitlaced and depressed about life; he’s constantly baffled and disconcerted by the zaniness suddenly springing up around him even though it’s making his life better by leaps and bounds. This type of straight man seems common in British comedy. Anyway, the book is fairly funny and if you like British goofiness you should read it. But it isn’t dark. Not even a little bit.

Strange Pictures

I got Strange Pictures in Tucson, at Antigone Books. It’s mostly a feminist/social justice bookstore, which means its horror section is tiny (even tinier than it is in most bookstores) but also very dedicated to minority authors, which made for interesting browsing.

Anyway, I picked up Strange Pictures by Uketsu mostly because the author’s name was Japanese. My family lived in Japan when I was in high school and even though I don’t speak the language, I’ve read a lot of Japanese novels in translation. Mostly literary stuff but also authors like Yoko Ogawa and Ryu Murakami who write horror and speculative fiction.

Since I don’t speak Japanese, I didn’t realize Uketsu’s mysteries were famous on YouTube until after I bought the book. The cover calls him a “mystery-horror sensation” and he may do horror tales on his channel but Strange Pictures is pretty much straight mysteries. There are several shortish mysteries, each one with its own solution, and they all nest together to solve a larger mystery.

This book was a quick read and very focused on logical puzzles and following clues. It had a very well done “Sherlock Holmes” vibe, where clues are clearly laid out and everything fits neatly together by the end. There’s not much exploration into psychology or deep emotions but the characters are pleasant and usually relatable. There are definitely some dramatic moments and a few surprises. Also, the “strange pictures” of the title are actually pictures that are printed in the book so you can try to solve the puzzles yourself if you want.

On the one hand, this book has almost none of the weirdness and complexity that I look for in a darker book so it’s not gonna stick with me the way my favorites do. On the other hand, it’s so logical and neatly resolved that I was quite charmed and satisfied with the experience of reading it. I fully plan to find the sequel, Strange Houses, at some point. There are still several murders in this book so it might sound odd to say, but I think of this as light reading.

Embrace the darkness and read more books. As always, follow us here or on Substack.

Silent Girls

Eric Rickstad’s The Silent Girls is the first in a trilogy, apparently. If I hadn’t figured that out already, the major cliffhanger at the end would have tipped me off. Thing is, by the time the cliffhanger happened I was a wee bit tired of this book so I’m not sure when or if I’ll find out the end of that new mystery.

This is one of those super gritty mysteries that keeps you guessing because everyone in it is definitely awful enough to murder someone. Even our hero, honestly. His defining features are his tragic backstory and the fact that he drives drunk a lot. Enough that I expected it to become a plot point somehow, with him swerving all over the snowy winter roads while fully loaded, but it turns out that drunk as Frank is in this book, it doesn’t affect much of anything.

But anyway, back to the tragic backstory. Once upon a time Frank was on the police force of his small Vermont town, probably with a good career ahead of him. Then his sister and her husband were brutally murdered, leaving a miraculously unhurt (but now orphaned) baby daughter. Frank quit the force and became a private detective, partly so he could focus on raising his niece and partly because of his guilt over the whole situation. When the killer arrived, Frank’s sister was at the house waiting for him to show up; he was late for the millionth time because he was busy having meaningless casual sex with some gal. To be clear, no one was expecting this killer to show up. Frank wasn’t neglecting his duty or intending to put anyone in danger, he was just being normal amounts of douchy and self-involved. Still, he feels incredibly guilty about it and now that his niece is off at college and the horrible killer is about to be paroled, it’s been on Frank’s mind more than usual.

None of that is the mystery. It’s very much going on in the background and it’s very important to Frank but the actual mystery is mostly unrelated–a local teen has gone missing and the cops are starting to worry that the disappearance is related to a handful of others over the last few years. This is a mystery novel so of course they’re connected, but the missing girls are from widely different areas and seem to have nothing in common. Frank and the town’s two detectives, Harland Grout and Sonja Test, have a devil of a time connecting the girls and figuring out who might want them dead.

I don’t want to give too much away but I will say this mystery deals heavily with teen pregnancy and the abortion debate. It doesn’t try to take a definitive stand, which I appreciate, it just touches on various sides of the issue as the mystery is unraveled. I enjoyed the complexity there and the mystery was kind of farfetched (as most mysteries are) but it was interesting and had some dramatic moments and exciting twists. It was exciting to watch these detectives connect the dots, and the mystery was unraveled slowly in a way I enjoyed.

None of the characters quite held together for me, though. Rickstad was quite descriptive and gave us plenty of hooks into their psyches but none of it felt quite coherent. Sometimes it felt like jumping from scene to scene without quite enough to connect them. Each scene might be dramatic and emotionally fraught, but they don’t quite build up into the compelling whole I was hoping for. This is especially true of Grout and Test–we’re given all these tantalizing little peeks into their personal lives but none of it really goes anywhere. Sonja Test, for example, has become a fanatical distance runner and it’s heavily implied there’s a backstory to this new compulsion. I was intrigued by this and hoping we’d find out what’s going on with her but we never do. These dropped threads were disappointing.

Sometimes I browse through reviews after I finish a book and I noticed someone complaining about editing. They were pointing out small annoyances like a person with makeup running down her face in one paragraph and then further down the page described as not wearing any makeup. I’d noticed some little things like that, too, and it got me thinking that lack of editing could explain most of my issues with this book. Take the same characters and mystery but tighten up a few places, expand others, have the detectives interact with each other more (they often seem to run on parallel tracks even though they’re on the same case) and the whole book might have felt more real and compelling.

It does seem like this was Rickstad’s first novel so it’s possible these rough edges are smoothed out in the sequels. And that cliffhanger is quite a doozy, relating heavily to that tragic backstory I talked about, so I might have to give the second book a shot sometime. Eventually.

Embrace the darkness. Read more books.