...or, Detective badge part 1 (clauses 5, 7)
Given the number of crime/detective books I've read in recent years, and my enjoyment of all kinds of puzzles, it's no surprise that having finally tried online escape rooms, I've had fun with these. The first two I did were with the Internet Trefoil Guild in one of our meetings, working towards the Trefoil Guild 80th Anniversary badge - and since they were so much fun, I've done a couple independently too.
I also listen regularly to true crime podcasts in Swedish (P3 Dokumentär, or P1 Dokementär) - looking at all sorts of cases, from theft of books from an state library, to arson, murder and terrorist attacks. It's astonishing sometimes to think how one apparently small incident can lead to an apparently unrelated discovery, and suddenly a baffling case starts to fall into place. In these series, the presenter narrates the key events and timelines, but there is a lot of input from investigators, the victims themselves (where appropriate!), friends or family of the victim, and other key people. Fascinatingly, one episode I recently listened to, about a bomb attack in Copenhagen actually had a lot of commentary and explanation from one of the terrorists responsible for the attack. I felt that his input was handled very well; listeners were given his background and his reasoning and justification at the time, but were not, I felt, expected to be either sympathetic or too hostile to this. It was interesting to get a glimpse into his mindset at the time of planning and carrying out the attack, as well as his gradual realisation over time of the effects of what he'd done, and his repentance. The programme ended with him speaking to one of the people injured in the explosion, which was not something I'd anticipated earlier, but which seemed to be very well prepared for and supported on both sides.
I don't know quite what it is about these true crime podcasts that appeals to me so much - maybe it's that they're almost like real-life logic problems: with enough attention to detail and applying things in the right way, it will all fall into place. Certainly the idea of unsolved crime podcasts is less interesting to me, and as for novels in which the big reveal simply reveals a lack of crucial knowledge being provided beforehand - well, the less said the better!
I've recently read two light-hearted 'cosy crime' books which were spur of the moment purchases. First was Death and Croissants by Ian Moore in which a middle-aged Englishman who runs a B&B in France discovers a bloodied handprint on a bedroom wall. Despite his best efforts not to get involved, one of the other guests is determined to get to the bottom of things and drags him along for the ride. Very few people turn out to be who they first seem, and things get increasingly convoluted until the eventual denouement. It's a good, fun romp and quite entertaining - I'll probably look for more by the same author.
Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Sutanto is another tale of amateur slething: when the eponymous Vera Wong comes downstairs to her San Fransisco teahouse one morning, she finds the dead body of a stranger in the middle of the floor. Unimpressed by the police's response, she decides to investigate the death herself (ok, helped slightly by the key piece of evidence she removed from the body before the police arrived...!). An unlikely group of strangers all with links to the deceased are brought together and become friends, while Vera tries to work out which of them is the murderer. The 'unsolicited advice' comes into it as Vera is a very sterotypically strongwilled Chinese mother who is unshakably convinced that her way of doing things is The Right Way, and that noone else does things Properly unless she's there directing them. This might well be the best cosy crime I've read since the Beaufort Scales series (crime, WI, and dragons. And cake!). Very strongly recommended!
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