DARK WATERS by Katherine Arden — 🎃

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blog - dark waters by katherine ardenIt’s been months since their last terrifying encounter with Seth the smiling man, and friends Brian, Coco, and Ollie have been hitting the books. The misfortunes they suffered over winter break have left them thoroughly spooked, and they want to better prepare themselves for their next inevitable meeting with the stalking fiend. To that end, they have been reading as much about their town’s history of hauntings and other paranormal phenomena. Their paranoid behavior worries their respective parents, however, and so when Coco’s journalist mother suggests they join her on a tour of Lake Champlain while she’s out on assignment, they think the outing will help improve their moods. Only Brian’s parents are hesitant, thinking their son’s slipping grades and distracted demeanor are due to the influence of his new best friends. They allow Brian to go, but only if he promises to limit their time together for the rest of the school year.

They soon set sail, finding themselves among another classmate who also suffered through their harrowing first encounter with Seth and his scarecrows last fall, and who might remember more of the experience than they initially realized. Before digging deeper into that particular mystery, the voyage meets an abrupt end when a creature who may or may not be Lake Champlain’s famous sea monster sinks the boat, leaving the survivors stranded on a nearby island — one that is not recorded in any known charts. A liminal space that will be the grounds for yet another of the smiling man’s tormenting games, the challenges of which threaten to send the group of friends over the proverbial edge.

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I have read and thoroughly enjoyed all three of the books currently out in Katherine Arden’s Small Spaces seasonal quartet, but if I’m being totally honest here, I have a hard time remembering any of the plots from the previous entries. Not in any great detail at least. But it took reading Dark Waters for me to realize that what I look for in these stories — and other middle grade horror affairs — are not intricate plots or intense personal drama, but rather atmosphere (or as a friend called it, “atmosfear“). Which really should have been obvious to me in retrospect: the one thing I’ve praised in all of these books so far has been Arden’s aptitude for ambiance, which borders on the astonishing. Consider the following evocative excerpt:

Spring in East Evansburg, and the rain poured down like someone had turned on a hose in the sky. High in the Green Mountains, the rain turned snow into slush and turned earth into mud. It washed ruts into roads and set creeks to roaring. It sluiced down the roof of a small inn perched on a hillside above town.

The rain had begun at dawn, but now it was that long blue springtime twilight, getting close to dark, and the inn looked cozy in the soft light. The walls of the inn were white wooden clapboards, neatly painted. The roof was red metal. The sign said MOOSE LODGE, and it swung, creaking, in the spring wind.

And this is just what opens the story. 

In addition to the excellent mood-setting, I’ve also come to admire the way she writes her set-pieces: slowly building them up before exploding them into tight, tense — and most importantly, fun — scenes. They do a lot in terms of moving the story along at a steady, stirring pace.

All in all, I enjoyed reading Dark Waters a lot, and would actually put it above the previous two books. I found the writing sharper and more focused than the earlier novels, which I attribute to the isolated setting of the island. Also, this is a creature feature, and those are often just great fun. But I love this series as a whole, and will eagerly anticipate its next and final entry. It’s supposed to be set during the summer, which will give me the perfect excuse to make spooky summer reads a proper tradition.

A SEASON WITH THE WITCH by J.W. Ocker — 🎃

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blog - a season with the witch by j.w. ockerI started J.W. Ocker’s A Season with the Witch late in September, wanting to get into the spirit of the season a little earlier this year. I finished it on a gray, gusty evening a couple of days into October, and honestly I couldn’t have asked for a better atmosphere (marred slightly by the fact that I was getting over a cold). It really is the perfect read to set the stage for Hallowe’en — Ocker’s enthusiasm for the holiday is infectious, and you can’t help but be swept up by the magical pandemonium he chronicles in this spookiest of travelogues. 

This is a book about Salem, naturally. About the charm and chaos and contradictions that constitute the Witch City. To write it, Ocker and his family spent an entire October experiencing the haunted holiday along with Salem and its other guests. It’s an excellent, enviable premise, and Ocker makes the most of it, venturing out into the hustle and bustle of the crowded streets of downtown Salem during the days before retreating back to a rented house or, more often than not, a themed restaurant or bar (wherein he would imbibe colorfully-named concoctions like “Candy Corntini” and “Satan’s Cider”) in the evenings to collect and record his thoughts. The result is a loving nocturne to both a city and the holiday that, for better or for worse, it has come to embody.

The book is as much a history primer as it is a travel guide, with the first handful of chapters dedicated to Salem in the Puritan era — particularly focusing, of course, on the infamous Witch Trials. Specifically Ocker tries to figure out just why an event that was, in comparison to other similar inquisitions of the time, relatively inconsequential, and that most of which didn’t even happen in Salem proper but rather in the surrounding vicinities, came to shape the identity and soul of a single place so thoroughly — not to mention latch itself so fervently to our collective unconscious that the mere appearance of the word “witch” makes one think of Salem. It’s as close to a central theme as this book has, and Ocker tries to offer up different conclusions by interviewing, through the lens of this thesis, several individuals with varying ties to the city. We never really get a definitive answer, though, but the point is that maybe there isn’t one. Cities are made of inconsistencies and complexities as much as they are made of brick and mortar.

It’s a duality and discrepancy those who hold up Salem as a haven for Hallowe’en have to contend with, and which constitutes one of my favorite aspects of the book. A real tragedy happened there, minor or not, and viewpoints differ as to whether adding a weighty layer of morbid celebration counts as disgrace, or if it’s yet another example of human resilience against adversity. Of people, as Stephen King once wrote, dancing in defiance of the dark. Ocker favors the latter:

Everything in the entire world is founded on tragedy. Our country, every country. There’s not a society on the planet that doesn’t have ancient tragedies clawing at its back. The past is a giant corpse. But life isn’t a perpetual state of regret and mourning over those tragedies, it’s taking those tragedies, giving them their due in proportion, learning from them (or not), working to prevent them from happening again (or not), and then we all party because we only have so many holidays in our lives.

A bit irreverent, to be sure, but I stand with Ocker (and King) on this one.

In truth, history is what makes up the bulk of Season, and if there’s one gripe with the book is that at times it seems like too much History and not enough Hallowe’en. Which is funny, because we do actually get quite a bit Hallowe’en. Ocker guides us through the myriad of eerie events, creepy celebrations, and dreadful destinations Salem offers not only during the month of October, but often year-round as well. Everything seems joyous and hokey in equal measure, and it is written in such a fond, earnest manner that it led to the Witch City becoming a personal de rigueur destination. There’s a hell of a lot of Hallowe’en in here. But you still end up expecting more, especially based on the promise of the cover. It’s just as well, though. Hallowe’en always feels like too much and also somehow never enough. It’s part of the ephemeral nature of the holiday.

“You can’t fit a city into a book,” Ocker writes in the epilogue. Which is true: cities are unwieldy by nature, and too full of people (beautiful, frustrating, obfuscating people) to be entirely understood. But you can capture a certain feeling, a certain sense of a season. Ocker let us know back in the introduction: Salem is weird. Salem is absurd. Salem is magic. If the intention was to show us just how weird and absurd and magical the Witch City could get, then A Season with the Witch most definitely met its goal.

WHISPER IN THE DARK by Joseph Bruchac — 🎃

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blog - whisper in the dark by joseph bruchacJoseph Bruchac is an amazing storyteller. Before picking up his books, I recommend you look up videos of him telling stories before a crowd. Chances are, you’ll end up as captivated as his audience. He’s a genuine teller of tales, and there aren’t many of those around anymore.

They remembered the stories of their people and the history of all that happened to them. They passed it down, not in books but through storytelling.⠀

He also doesn’t hold back when writing scary stories for kids. He’s great.

Whisper in the Dark follows Maddy, a teenager of Narragansett descent, who finds herself being stalked by the Whisperer in the Dark, a vampire-like creature that was the subject of countless tales told by Maddy’s family. The book opens with Maddy picking up a call and hearing nobody on the other end — save for her strangely echoing voice. Having just dreamt of encountering the monster in a cave, she imagines the creature improbably calling her from his underground lair. The image of a voice coming out of a phone and echoing in hollow darkness of cave is a scenario I could have never fathomed but is nonetheless thoroughly creepy.

Strange things begin to happen after that call: for one thing, she finds the words ɪ ᴀᴍ ʜᴇʀᴇ scratched into a door. For another even more horrifying thing, her dog is found under a shed, bleeding profusely from wounds that looked like they had been made by something with a razor-sharp edge. Maddy soon realizes that the Whisperer in the Dark is real and is coming for her. She’s determined to outrun the blood-thirsty demon, and with the help of her friends and family — and, crucially, the stories she’s shared with them — she might just get away with her life.

We Indians know what century we are living in, but we also know how we got here. And we remember the stories created along the way.

Maddy is an excellent protagonist, and Bruchac gives us enough details to make her feel real and easy to root for: she’s an orphan living with a white aunt who she loves but also feels misunderstood by her; she has a warm relationship with her Indian grandmother, and they share a love of stories; she runs track; she’s into horror.

She has enough attributes, in fact, that they make the rest of the small cast of characters feel thinly sketched in comparison. But that’s fine. This is Maddy’s story, after all.

Bruchac, as previously mentioned, doesn’t hold back when writing for children. The descriptions of the Whisperer in the Dark are evocative and horrifying (oh he takes the head off the bodies before drinking the blood okay fine). We get a flashback of the car accident that took Maddy’s parents, and it is chilling in its stark, simple brutality. And did I mention the bit with the dog? (Don’t worry — the good girl makes it. But Bruchac did that. To someone’s pet.) He knows children are a little creepy and are all in for this macabre business and he will make no apologies.

Having two horror nerds as protagonists is fun and refreshing in a spooky middle grade novel. Bruchac has fun with it, cleverly commenting on his own story and calling out tropes and conventions by using the horror stories that made them so ubiquitous as examples. The book’s title is also similar to that of a novella by H.P. Lovecraft, and he is name-dropped a couple of times. It makes sense: the action takes place in Rhode Island (prime Lovecraft Country), and its themes and atmosphere sometimes veers into the eldritch. The man’s influence on horror runs deep, but I’m still surprised that the story didn’t comment on his terrible, racist views at all. But I understand that maybe this wasn’t the place for it. Still, on a personal note: a Lovecraftian story written by a Native American author would have sent the intolerant wretch into hysterics and I just enjoy that image.

Mostly though, this is a story about stories — why they matter and why we need them not just for entertainment, but for survival. And those are my favorite stories of all.

The book has illustrations by Sally Wern Comport, whose work is just delightful.

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I read my first Bruchac book last year on October 11, which also happened to be Indigenous Peoples’ Day. I ended that review by acknowledging the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women that has been plaguing their communities in North America for decades and continues to do so still. Once again I’m including some links to relevant charities and organizations on my Linktree page, and encourage you to give them a look and help out if you are able.

JUDGE DEE STORIES by Lavie Tidhar — 🎃

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I’m a big fan of Red Nose Studio. They often work with Tor Books, producing quirky little masterpieces of paper and wood and string to grace the covers of the publishing house’s offerings. But their covers for this set of vampiric murder mysteries by author Lavie Tidhar are on another level. The artwork is what initially drew me in; the murder mystery angle of the stories is what hooked me. This should surprise no one who’s followed my feed this summer. It is my current favorite genre. Vampires are my favorite monsters. It was a no brainer.

Vampires may be creatures of the night, but they also have rules — enigmatic and cryptic though they may be. Judge Dee is a vampire charged with enforcing these rules. Judge Dee does exactly what his name implies.

So I was a little disappointed to find that the mysteries were, unfortunately, mostly trivial and barely mysterious. But I very much got the sense that Tidhar wasn’t aiming to write showy whodunnits as much as he just wanted to have fun with the tropes and conventions of vampire stories — and he very clearly does. (My favorite gag: each and every single vampire prefacing the word “wine” with dramatic ellipses.) 

These stories read very much like experiments in style, eschewing the often august, Gothic sensibilities associated with the elegant ghouls in favor of clever subversions and playful, outrageous scenarios. Which is totally fine — just not exactly what I expected. 

Still, these stories are very much fun, and I particularly recommend it to fans of What We Do in the Shadows, as Jonathan, Judge Dee’s milquetoast human companion, reads like a cross between Guillermo, that show’s similarly long-suffering familiar, and Morty, the pushover from, you know, that other show. The titular character himself reads like an aloof Benedict Cumberbatch. Like I said: fun. You can read all three stories that have been released on Tor’s website. My favorite is “Judge Dee and the Poisoner of Montmartre,” mostly due to the brazen ludicrousness of its plot. (These stories have excellent grandiloquent titles, which I appreciate, naturally.)

A PSALM FOR THE WILD-BUILT by Becky Chambers

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a-psalm-for-the-wild-built-by-becky-chambersThere were robots in the communities of Panga once. But, shortly before a total environmental collapse, they gained sentience and chose to go into the wilderness, leaving the humans to their own devices. People, for their part, respected this decision, and resolved instead to pull their home back from the brink. They began to live in harmony with nature, rather than impose their industrial will upon it. This resulted, eventually, inevitably, into a veritable Utopia where people prosper alongside nature.

Humans will still be humans, however, and in a perfect world there will still be sadness and anxiety and dissatisfaction. Which is how we find Sibling Dex, a gardener monk. They live a good, decent life in Panga’s only city. But Dex still feels tired: the city is beautiful but stifling; their work is honorable but unfulfilling. Dex finds themself craving serenity and tranquility. And so, like countless humans before them, they pack up their life and hit the road. Settling on becoming a tea monk, Dex will travel through Panga’s communities, offering a service that is considered more therapeutic than indulgent in this society.

And so Sibling Dex soon establishes a routine. Restlessness soon rears its eager head once more, though. Feeling exasperated and balking at the concept of once again changing vocations and rebuilding their life, Dex decides on something a little more drastic and abandons it instead. They go off grid, as it were, heading into the wild towards an abandoned hermitage, ostensibly to find a species of cricket believed to be extinct (an obsession and metaphor Dex holds throughout the story), but in reality looking for some sort of enlightenment. Some path towards happiness.

It’s on this road that they stumble upon Splendid Speckled Mosscap, a wild-built robot that has volunteered to essentially check up on the humans and surmise what they need. To that end, it joins Sibling Dex on their journey, engaging in increasingly philosophical conversations that run the gamut of human (and robot) nature along the way.

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I have revisited a lot of books in my life. Like most readers, I have perennial favorites that I return to time and again for comfort and the warmth of familiarity. Even so, I can’t recall a time when I’ve picked a book back up so soon after finishing it. But I couldn’t stop thinking about A Psalm for the Wild-Built, the latest from Becky Chambers, which is why, barely a day after I first finished it, I found myself starting the story once more. Which should speak volumes as to how much this short novel affected me.

I’m used to having an emotional connection to Chambers’ particularly charming brand of science fiction. Her books have always filled me with warmth and light. The stories may be about alien beings and life in outer space, but they are primarily about capital-F Feelings, written in poetic prose that sings as it burrows itself into my cold, hollow heart. But 𝘗𝘴𝘢𝘭𝘮 in particular not only managed to wedge itself into that ramshackle muscle, but proceeded to fill it with enough of its sacred song to restore the damn thing back to beating life.

It’s the timing of it all. Stories have a tendency to find you when you need them most. So it was with Psalm, speaking as it did to so many things that have taken up space in my brain this past pandemic year: ecology and environment; stillness and solitude; sorrow and stress; productivity and purpose. I saw myself in this story, and more importantly I felt understood by it. It spoke to me, and its voice, like that of a psalm (or a prayer, or a promise), was one of encouragement and reassurance:

The world may be broken, but it might still be mended. You may be hurting, but you could still be healed. You may be lost, but you can always be found again and again and again.

SHIRLEY AND JAMILA SAVE THEIR SUMMER by Gillian Goerz

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shirley and jamila save their summerManaged to sneak in one last mystery book this summer because of course I did. It is still the best genre and I will not hear otherwise.⠀⠀

Some of my notes for Shirley and Jamila Save Their Summer by Gillian Goerz:

  • Got this one because it looked totally charming and also because middle grade mysteries are the best so I had no idea it was actually a Sherlock Holmes reinterpretation. I was pleasantly surprised and delighted. Shirley Bones and Jamila Waheed are great successors (and also have great names).
  • There’s even a Gregson and a Lestrade! They’re community pool lifeguards, naturally.⠀
  • Loved Gillian Goerz’s art, especially her backgrounds: suburban landscapes that feel warm and welcoming and sprinkled with little details like lawn signs and other front lawn décor that I assume are very particular to the region of Canada on which this story is set.⠀
  • Shirley Bones is a relatively straightforward incarnation of Holmes, but I appreciate the inclusion of her mother, who understands and encourages her daughter’s brilliance but understands she may seem eccentric to others and so is protective and watchful.
  • Wonder if we will see Mycroft’s equivalent at some point? Or a Moriarty, even‽ This is the first in a series, so I hope we will!⠀
  • The Waheed family is also great. I love their interactions and their general dynamic. They feel utterly real.
  • Really loved that the focus in this story was more familiar and focused on a community rather than concentrating on two exceptional individuals.⠀
  • Enjoyed the themes of friendship and alienation and how they tied in so well with a relatively simple case. Jamila is the new kid in town and has yet to make any friends — having an overprotective mother doesn’t seem to make things any easier, either. Shirley’s intellect distances her from most of her peers, who view her as weird and aloof and sort of rude (which, like any proper Holmes analogue, she sometimes can be). Kumi is bullied over her size and the fact that she often prefers the company of books over people. Angie’s health is vulnerable after going through cancer treatments and as such she is kept in a bubble by her anxious mother. She uses the analogy of being like an astronaut floating over the Earth — able to see, but not join in. I feel like this applies to most characters here. Even, to an extent, to the siblings Olive and Vee, who go to the pool to escape a hectic household. They’re too busy worrying over their situation in life to pay much attention to their surroundings, which is what sets off the case in the first place. It makes sense that all these lovable misfits get together by the end.⠀
  • The next book in the series will come out later this year and seems to be fall themed. Goerz is a creator after this reader’s heart. Can’t wait to jump back into this world.

THE BOX IN THE WOODS by Maureen Johnson

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the-box-in-the-woods-by-maureen-johnsonOn summer break from her creepy, cherished school, and after closing the biggest case of her barely begun career, budding detective Stevie Bell is feeling lonely and adrift. Her friends are scattered to the winds, doing their own thing — and after solving probably the greatest mystery she’s ever going to come across, Stevie, despite her youth, is afraid she’s already become burned out.

Which is when she receives an an email from an eccentric entrepreneur explaining that he has recently purchased Sunny Pines, a summer camp that also happens be the site of the notorious Box in the Woods Murders, where, back in the seventies, four camp counselors were killed, their bodies gruesomely stuffed inside an old hunting blind in the surrounding woods. The morbid mogul means to record a true crime podcast about the case, and wants Stevie to help with the investigation. She can even bring her friends. It’ll be fun. So Stevie jumps at the chance.⠀

Stevie, like Pandora before her, will open the box in the woods, out of which will crawl out not only the sinister secrets of a small, sleepy town, but also the malice long suppressed within.

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As much fun as I had reading the trilogy that preceded it, I enjoyed The Box in the Woods so much more. I tend to find that mysteries work best with singular, standalone stories, anyway, where, much like the many isolated settings and closed circle plots that populate the genre, the imposed restrictions generally allow for tighter, more focused narratives. And that is exactly what we get here: a mystery that is less intricate, to be sure, when compared to the puzzle that was the Ellingham affair, but which also manages to feel considerably more intimate and immediate.

The elements I loved from the previous books remain present here, with some even getting amplified. The characters are still very much quirky and slightly ridiculous, traits that extend even to recent additions to the cast like the camp’s new owner Carson, an insufferable industrialist who made his wealth selling a subscription box of curated boxes — as in, you get a monthly box full of boxes — called Box Box; and Lucas, an eight-year-old camper who happens to be a fan of Nate’s fantasy novel and whose sole mission seems to be to torture him into writing a sequel. Lucas’ obsession leads to one of my favorite exchanges in the novel:

“I think Lucas is going to Misery your ass,” Stevie said. “Sorry about your ankles.”

“I swear to god that kid has been watching me in my sleep,” Nate said, wrapping his arms around himself.

Ridiculous, I tell you. Gotta love it.

Stevie’s pals Janelle and Nate are as delightful as ever. Even David, a character I found to be mostly unbearable, gets a decent showing here, but that’s probably due to the fact that he’s written with an entirely different personality. Nate is a personal favorite, so I was glad to see he got to shine in this book (something which he absolutely hated). Sadly this development does sort of end up sidelining Janelle, one of the few BIPOC characters in the series. A shame and a misstep, since there were a handful of clear ways her role could have been further developed. Alas. Hopefully Janelle gets more of a spotlight in future entries.

Stevie’s anxiety continues to be sensibly explored, which I will always appreciate.

The true crime angle is still, of course, prominent (now with a podcast!). Particular attention is given to the actual real world work of Frances Glessner Lee, a criminologist who built incredibly detailed dioramas depicting death scenes that were used to train homicide detectives in the early days of forensic science in the US.

There is also the surprising addition of some summer camp horror tropes. They help lend Box in the Woods a more menacing air. And although there’s nothing that’s ever explicit (this is YA, after all) the detail the book goes into with the titular murder is notably chilling.

Another new aspect that left me impressed was the brief exploration of ethical dilemmas in criminal justice work. With the Ellingham case, for instance, Stevie had a benefit of distance that allowed her to deal with the facts in a calculating, clinical, detached manner. The players involved were all long gone, after all. With the Box in the Woods Murders, though, the crime being relatively recent, Stevie has to deal with witnesses who are very much alive, many of whom still carrying the trauma inflicted by the atrocious act. It’s uncharted territory for Stevie, and watching her navigate these moralistic waters was interesting indeed. Character growth! ⠀

Finally, thanks to the self-contained, concentrated nature of the stand-alone, I found the central mystery of Box in the Woods a lot stronger and significantly more satisfying than the present day puzzle of the main trilogy, the conclusion of which felt somewhat rushed and a little lackluster. This one felt properly wrapped up and, much like Glessner Lee’s dollhouse dioramas, perfectly compact. I was also thrilled to see Stevie finally getting to do a proper, honest-to-goodness Summation Gathering.

Mostly, though, I’m grateful that I didn’t have to wait too long for another Stevie Bell mystery romp. Here’s hoping for many more to come.

THE TRULY DEVIOUS TRILOGY by Maureen Johnson

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truly devious trilogy - maureen johnson

My murder mystery midsummer truly reached a zenith with the completion of Maureen Johnson’s Truly Devious trilogy. I had first read — and thoroughly enjoyed — the first entry last year, and I finished it feeling something I had not felt toward a series in quite some time: an eagerness to get to the sequel straightaway.

Despite my excitement, that did not happen. It’s that same old story: other books got in the way. But the news for the Knives Out follow-up that began to come out out in May once again sparked my interest in the genre (the original film did the same — hence me picking up Truly Devious in the first place).

Anyway.

If you’ve followed my Instagram stories at all during these past few months then you already have an idea of how much fun I’ve had reading these books. They hit many of my targets: quirky, clever characters who are as ridiculous as they are resourceful; snug, well-thought out settings; atmosphere in abundance. All aspects that pretty much guarantee my enjoyment. I also admired the way Johnson was able to combine the tense, thrilling facets of true crime narratives with the more classic and considerably more chill vibes of the mystery genre.

Mainly though, I loved how, with the character of Stevie (our tenacious protagonist), Johnson explored the matter of anxiety with a perspective that can only come from intimate, immediate experience with the disorder: candid and sincere, but so full of empathy.

Mental health is health, and health is always a situation in flux. Many, many people have anxiety and depression, or other issues. It’s just a part of life for them. For me, anxiety has been an issue, and the way I have worked with it is to accept it as a part of me. I do stuff with it. It’s just there.

— Maureen Johnson

If I had anything in the way of criticism is that the conclusion did leave a bit to be desired. This may seem like a crucial misstep, but Johnson’s writing is so damn clever and compelling that it more than makes up for it. But in any case, it was the journey that made the whole experience worthwhile for me, and I will readily trail along in whatever other jaunts Johnson decides to send her stalwart sleuth next.

THE MURDER ON THE LINKS by Agatha Christie

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the-murder-on-the-links-by-agatha-christieDisappointed at the severe lack of golf-related hijinks in this, but other than that Agatha Christie’s The Murder on the Links is an utterly fun and thoroughly twisty ride.⠀
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I’ve been working my way through the Poirot novels out of order, picking up whichever one happens to catch my fancy at the time. It wasn’t until I read the back matter that I realized that this particular book was only the second entry in Poirot’s mysteries, and, having read a couple of the later novels, I was just impressed with how much of a complete character he seemed even this early on. One would assume that in a long-running series such as this one the defining characteristics of the protagonists would emerge gradually and organically over time. But Poirot seems clearly defined from the outset. The reliance on psychology over physical evidence to solve crimes; the emphasis on using one’s “little grey cells”; the general air of outlandish grandiosity and pompousness. It was all there from the start. Good show, Christie.⠀
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Anyway.⠀
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A fun fact about me is that my godfather was an amateur golf player and used to take me out to play when I was a kid. I had my own set of small golf clubs and everything. It was adorable. I inherited his regular-sized clubs after he passed on. They’ve all regrettably been lost or thrown away through the years due to my own carelessness, but I still have one huge driver that I keep in my room. It has the name “Big Bertha” engraved on it. I’m convinced she would make an excellent weapon in a murder mystery. Someone get on that. My gift to you. ⠀
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Also yes I one hundred percent read this after watching Knives Out for the hundredth time.