Criminal Activities: Reading & Watching

My latest review on Euro Crime is for James Wolff's first novel "Beside The Syrian Sea". It's set in the Middle East and involves a son's attempts to get his father, an ISIS hostage, released from captivity. The father is an earnestly moral cleric and the son is a desperately introverted intelligence worker finding himself suddenly without the boundaries he has so carefully maintained and quite literally in a new land.
I was gripped by it, not just by plot and thrill but by  its characters and their relationships. I also somehow found it "terribly British" ... in the nicest possible way. Read the review in full detail here at Euro Crime.

Meanwhile, as they say, there has been much to watch on telly. I haven't really enjoyed Season 2 of the Belgian thriller "Salamander" but I still watched it through. Nor, I must say, am I enamoured of Belgian thriller "Rough Justice" either. But still watching. Perhaps my dissatisfaction lies in the completely straight-faced, lugubrious main characters of each series? My Belgian favourite? (Sounds like a variety of iris, don't it.) When it comes to Belgian thrillers on British screens over the last 12 months - my highlight remains Season One of "Professor T". Not at all to everybody's taste, (sigh) it was to mine. The Old Man gave up on its fantasy musical breaks and opted for the washing up, but I was hooked. Although ... I realise now ... it carries the motif of straight-faced Belgian leads to bizarre extremes with its emotionally locked-in, germ-obsessive, forensic genius that is Prof T. Yes I know there have been other series predicated on emotionally damaged, clever-clogs analysts - but they don't have fantasy musical numbers! End of.

Aah! Not Belgian I know - but I forgot  season Four of "The Bridge". Now there's another "straight-faced" lead  - but no fantasy musical numbers - yet.
Am I watching? Of course I am.

Last Orders At The Post Referendum Café

"Service!"

"Hallo. Today for starters we have a choice of....
Dithers with a side order of Confusion; a warm salad of Backstabbers; or a small plate of Cold Regrets.

For Mains we have ... Roulette Aux Crabb; Brexit of Leadsom; Blanquette du Fox au Sri Lankan Hobnobbing; Gove a la Murdoch; Theresa with a side order of Relief aux Chagrin ... or
Corbyn Ostracised and Served in a Vacuum.

And if you wish to choose your dessert now, we can offer you ... Eton Mess, Westminster Mess, UK Mess or Europe Mess (the difference is in the size of the portions)... Oh ... and we do have a very small portion of Hope on a Bed of  Dual Citizenship.

May I take your order now?"

Thrillers - Talking To Dead People

So it's not just Mrs D that sits and chats with dead people (see previous post)...
The Old Man very obligingly joined me in watching the first episode of "River" on BBC ONE this week. (13th October).. in which DI John River, played (.... a bit inexplicably...) by the very excellent Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgard, chats to murder victims much to the alarm of his colleagues. Hang on, in some ways this sounds like a plausible plot for a slightly cheesy American cop show, but let me tell you they did this first episode really well.Original, convincingly uneasy, emotive and nicely photographed/filmed. If this continues I shall most certainly be watching the whole six episodes. (BBC do not let me down.) And... The Old Man survived this episode even though I thought he would be challenged... not by the concept... but by knowing when he was seeing "dead" people. It's complicated... but The Old Man doesn't always understand certain transitions and his hopeless-facial-recognition thing don't help.

Tonight there will be more dead people taking to live people on the telly. I look forward eagerly to sitting in front of the second series of French "undead" drama: The Returned on More Four (Fri 16th Oct) at 9 pm. The Old Man is more unsure of this one but I was hooked by the first series... dead child victims of a coach crash, one by one return to their families in a French Alpine village... followed by other people who died some years earlier. Far from being a horror-fest, the series explored the psychological impact of their return... but eventually, of course, things got a bit spookier. It's taken some time for The Returned to "Return" but now it has. Good.