"'If you'll accept this, sir,' said the policeman, pressing a shilling into the down-and-out's hand, 'you'll have visible means of support and I shan't have to take you along.'" Val Gyrth is wandering the streets of London as a down and out, when he looks down and finds an envelope with his name on it. … Continue reading Look to the Lady – Margery Allingham
Welcome to the television event of the year. Split into two 'volumes', the penultimate season of Stranger Things has been the watercooler tv of late. We're back in Hawkins, with an ever-expanded cast of characters. The youngers are looking so gawky and teenage-y which suits well, given they're starting high school. All is not well: the group … Continue reading Stranger Things (season 4)
"'Thanks, Aunt Harriet.'" This is the sixth book in the Haunted Library Mysteries series, and I think the best so far. My complaints about the series have been "a bit too chick lit", and very little reason for the whole premise: the library's ghost. This one, however, is a whole lot more balanced on the … Continue reading Dewey Decimated – Allison Brook
"The cellar was, at least, a cool respite from the murderous heat wave afflicting the Black Forest, though it smelled like a crypt and I nearly broke my trick knee on my way down the crumbling steps." If you're expecting a fairy tale retelling like so many, you might want to pause and reconsider. This … Continue reading The Book of Gothel – Mary McMyne
"On March 3, 1969, the United States Navy established an elite school for the top one percent of its pilots" - and in 1986 we got a movie staring Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, and Anthony Edwards, about a cohort of these elite pilots. Now, 35 years on, we revisit Captain Pete Mitchell, aka Maverick, as he's … Continue reading Top Gun: Maverick (2022)
"They had been on the island less than five hours and already the whole thing was falling apart." A group of women head to a remote Scottish island for a lavish hen do. But when someone turns up dead, the question of 'who dunnit' only stirs up the secrets surrounding each of them. Jen's friends include … Continue reading The Cliff House – Chris Brookmyre
When Doctor Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) starts having nightmares, little does he suspect the truth: the Multiverse is bleeding other realities into each other. It takes a giant squid monster and a dimension-hopper to reveal these strange realities - and a dire warning that things have to be fixed. His first call for help is … Continue reading Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)
"On a March afternoon a knight and a man-at-arms reached the gate of the Marenite city of Berat." My childhood love of the first book in the Song of the Lioness quartet, Alanna, failed to continue with either adulthood or the series, and alas we don't finish any better. Or any worse, so there is that. Alanna, always getting … Continue reading Lioness Rampant – Tamora Pierce
"Death is good for business." Welcome back to Confection, Oregon, with this second instalment in the Sweet Fiction bookshop cosy mysteries. The town might be full of sweet names, but there's also a killer on the loose! I really enjoyed Digging Up Trouble, where we first met Lexi, manager of her parent's bookshop, just as she … Continue reading A Poisonous Page – Kitt Crowe
As the Disney/Star Wars behemoth rumbles on, this time we're heading back to the midpoint between Episodes 3 and 4: after Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) dispatches the Dark Side-turned Anakin Skywalker, and before a young Luke Skywalker goes looking for a certain Ben Kenobi. We find Obi-Wan/Ben working in a factory on Tatooine, keeping an … Continue reading Obi-Wan Kenobi (season 1)
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