“Oh, England’s fantastic for this kind of thing,” - Alfred Hitchcock on the 10 Rillington Place murders
Reg and Ethel Christie had lived at 10 Rillington Place, London, since 1938 but strange things had happened in the winter of 1952/53. Nobody had seen Ethel since December and Reg disappeared from the flat altogether in March 1953. When their landlord instructed a workman to clean up the Christies’ kitchen, the workman found what appeared to be human remains behind an alcove. Three womens’ corpses were stuffed in there. And the mystery of Ethel’s absence was soon solved: her corpse was under the front room’s floor. As the manhunt for Reg Christie began, the police would soon unearth more horrors on the property…
It’s the summer of 1920 and Tom Birkin, fresh from the trenches of World War One and slowly acclimating back into civilian life, arrives in the English countryside town of Oxgodby on a commission to uncover/restore a medieval painting on the wall of the local church. And there’s where he meets the one that got away: Mrs Keach, the Reverend’s wife.
Back in 2007/08, I was a regular reader of Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish at The Atlantic and, when I finished his articles, as I often did (I was working a particularly dull desk job at the time that afforded me plenty of time for reading), I’d read other writers’ pieces on the site. Ta-Nehisi Coates was one of these writers and I enjoyed his work much less than I did Sullivan’s - everything was race-related to Coates and, worse, his writing and points were both forgettable and vague.
Because story, Magus - the evil manifestation of the evil-sounding but actually good Adam Warlock’s personality - is somehow free and trolling around… trolling for POWAH! And what says more powah than the Infinity Gauntlet? That’s right, it’s another Jim Starlin comic starring Thanos with Infinity in the title, involving a bad guy after the Infinity Gauntlet and Earth’s Mightiest Heroes out to stop him - it’s time for The Infinity Gauntlet 2 aka The Infinity War.
“May you live in interesting times” - apocryphal “Chinese curse”
A woman begins making rich home-made treats for her office - much to the quiet indignation of her secret co-worker boyfriend, whose culinary tastes run to the more basic side.
A male feminist pushed too far. A couple of friends hook-up, destroying one of the friend’s lives. A closeted man represses his very strange fantasies from everyone - until he doesn’t. A hyper-driven type A personality’s bizarre life goal clashes with his girlfriend’s. An identity-obsessed individual changes the internet. And presiding over all of it is Tony Tulathimutte (hereafter referred to as TT), a writer and potential character/s in the novel Rejection.
In 1949, aspiring New York playwright Helene Hanff saw an advertisement for an antiquarian bookseller in London that shipped books internationally. A fan of obscure and old books, she reached out to them with a list of books she’s looking for, thus beginning a 20 year correspondence between herself and the principal bookseller at Marks and Co, Frank Doel, based at 84 Charing Cross Road.
You know how a lot of people think Superman is a boring character because he’s overpowered - nothing really hurts him besides the green rock and he can do whatever, whenever, however, effortlessly. Because he’s Superman. But it’s too much and makes it really hard to get people invested in a character so wildly unrelatable. Now imagine the entire cast of a series were ALL Superman. That’s The Power Fantasy.
The Turtles are broken up and scattered across the world: Donnie is enslaved and forced to fight cage matches against mutant-haters; Mikey’s starring in a hit Japanese TV show about his life; Raph’s in prison; Leo’s in India, meditating with non-mutant flesh-eating turtles. Meanwhile in New York City, a brutal new mayoral candidate seeks to consolidate his populist anti-mutant platform with the help of the Foot Clan.
The Daughters of America finals boxing tournament in Reno takes place over a couple of days where female teenage fighters gather to see who’s the best boxer in their class.
Political blogger Christopher Swann attends a conservative conference, uncovers secrets and gets killed - but whodunit? The answer lies somehow in an obscure 1980s novel called My Innocence, the last book by conservative writer Peter Cockerill - or more precisely, an early proof copy of that book…
Literary widow Anna Williams-Bonner decides to write her own bestseller, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s just that easy to write an acclaimed commercial novel, even when you’ve never written a word of fiction in your life, and soon she’s as famous and wealthy as her late husband! But oh no someone knows her secret - what’s she gonna dooo…
This short story collection was originally entitled You Know You Want This but quickly got changed to Cat Person and Other Stories because Cat Person became a hit online, got optioned and then made into a movie, and is by far the best story in this collection. It’d be amazing if the other 11 stories were even half as good as Cat Person but, alas, there’s only one other good story here - Look At Your Game Girl - and a middling one - The Mirror, The Bucket, and The Old Thigh Bone. The rest is cat litter.
Back in the ‘80s, Lester’s drunken slob mother hooked up with Norse God Odin and produced Lester. Now he’s fat, ungainfully employed and in his 30s - and it’s the apocalypse for no reason. So Lester decides to prove his worthiness to his deadbeat dad. Hold onto your sides - this one’s going for big yuks!
Franny is a lonely schoolgirl with a permanently runny nose who befriends a convenience store robber that transforms into a giant bug for shooting a kid during his botched robbery. The two become unlikely friends and go on the lam. A giant bug… what??!
Amanda and Ed’s lives are going great until, wouldn’t ya know it, she goes and gets possessed by a demon! Now their marriage is going to pot and it’s all the demon’s fault! Time for some magic shampoo to save the day - but is it too late?!/1,
It’s the height of the Vietnam war and Nick Fury has gotten himself captured by the Vietcong. Fury being Fury, he knows all about the CIA’s massive drug-smuggling operation and they can’t afford for that knowledge to potentially leak. The CIA needs a mindless, efficient killing machine to take him out, just in case - who else but Frank Castle? Time for him to… Get Fury!
With Germany’s surrender in May 1945, the war was over for some of the Allied soldiers in Europe who returned home. Like Ralph’s dad, who was physically maimed in a flamethrower attack, but also mentally broken - what we call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder today and was called shell shock at the time. And though the family unit is restored, the experiences of war have changed Ralph’s dad - forever.
Jacob Finch Bonner, a once promising novelist whose career has now flatlined, is resigned to being a humble writing teacher. Then he meets a cocky student convinced that he has a can’t-fail novelistic plot that’ll make him rich and famous. Jake reads a fragment of the novel but hears the plot in full during their only one-to-one. Years pass, and Jake learns that his student never did write his incredible novel - because he died mere months after telling Jake the full story. Jake decides to realise his student’s plot but without crediting him - which does in fact finally make Jake a bestselling author. Except now he’s getting messages from a mysterious person online threatening to expose Jake’s theft to the world. Who is this person and how do they know his secret? The plot unfolds…
I don’t think I’ve ever read a book and been at a total loss as to describe what the story was or who any of the characters were, but that’s entirely the case with Cain’s Jawbone!
Old age, eh? That’s kinda the theme for this collection of short stories by Sarth Ifrikan writer JM Coetzee.
The Pole is the longest story here, taking up nearly two-thirds of the book. An elderly Polish pianist falls for a slightly younger Spanish woman and woos her, old folks-style. It’s a realistic romance story where Coetzee doesn’t go for overblown melodrama, but the story is still quite predictable. And boring.
Cartoonist Alec Robbins is married to classic cartoon pinup Betty Boop and they’re madly in love with one another. They also can’t stop having orgies with the likes of Bugs Bunny and Peter Griffin. Then Sonic the Hedgehog gets jealous and tries to assassinate Alec. You know - that hoary old canard!
In his 2010 book The Shallows, Nicholas Carr argues that the internet is changing the way we think and act - for the worse. Shocker! I don’t think anyone would argue differently, given the prevalence these days of garbage timesink sites like TikTok and news stories about how literature students these days can’t read books, let alone the average person!
Lorelei Lee is 18 years old, hot, blonde and dumb. So of course men are falling over themselves to marry her. So LL stumbles from one wealthy guy throwing money at her to another, all while traipsing around Europe, with her faithful sarcastic buddy Dorothy along for the ride. Then the book ends.
This Penguin Little Black Classics edition collects two stories: the novella-length White Nights and the short story Bobek, both by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, a writer whose name I’ve seen spelt differently depending on who’s publishing him, and many publishers publish him. Why is that?! It’s his name! The vagaries of the Russian language eh?
Quin is a hotshot New York editor working at a major publishing house - who is then accused of inappropriate behaviour by a growing number of women. An older, wealthy man in a position of power preying on young women? Surely not! How far did Quin go and what will be his fate? He and his friend Margot look back on his past dalliances and wonder as they head towards the answer…
Joe Sacco published between a page and four pages at intervals from January to July 2024 on The Comics Journal website about his thoughts on the current Israel-Palestine conflict that kicked off on 7 October 2023 when Hamas attacked Israel. The pages amount to roughly the length of a single issue comic which is published by Fantagraphics this week (or you can read the instalments for free on the TCJ website).
The Facts behind the Helsinki Roccamatios is a collection of four stories by Yann Martel. I loved the title story, thought another one was ok, and the other two were quite weak.
