Sun, Crime and Podcasts

 

The weather is still hot and dry. 

Unbelievable for misty old Cornwall. 

We hide in the granity darkness of our sitting room. Walks have to be taken before 9 in the morning or after 7 in the evening. I was watering the vegetables in the garden the other evening  and looking up at our cherry tree saw that, to my horror, even this tall tree's leaves were wilting. Alors! What will survive this dry, hot spell.

I have another review posted on the Euro Crime site. This time it is a crime novel by Greek writer Pol Koutsakis. "Baby Blue" is the second in his series featuring self-styled "caretaker" Stratos Gazis. Greatly inspired by the American Noir films that Gazis quotes by heart, this one involves a hunt for the killer of a journalist and is set in contemporary Athens. Head to the review to find out more.

Meanwhile I am still hooked on listening to fictionalised podcasts.  Still following "Tanis" (see the "Tanis Post") I have also subscribed to PRA's "The Black Tapes" which actually preceded "Tanis" and ran for three series from 2015 to 2017. 

It's another drama played as investigative journalism. "Alex Reagan" (voiced by Lori Henry) and her producer research demons, ghosts and the work and life of the supremely sceptical Dr Richard Strand. Will the podcast return for another series? Is there a rumour out there? Whatever happens, the beauty of podcasts is that you can still listen in as they bob about in the podcast interspace!

Meanwhile The Old Man uses Wimbledon as an excuse for sitting in the dark watching telly all day.

Discovering Podcasts: More Wierdness with "Tanis" from PRA

I am still hooked on my smartphone and listening to podcasts. Having finished "Rabbits" (see that post) from the wonderful Public Radio Alliance ... I am catching up on their earlier show "Tanis" which happily for me and my obsession has just started Season Four.

If Rabbits gave me game-playing conspiracy with a hint of spook - then Tanis gives me horror, myth and murder set in the Pacific North West of America. It's "presented" by podcast host Nic Silver and is constructed as an investigation into the weirdness of Tanis. Which is what? A cult? An entity? Its dark goings-on are said to shift place every 400 years or so. But its current location is ... Yes indeed, Twin Peaks territory. Which does make an old Peaky comme moi very happy.

PRA has made a show full of gripping style: mysterious woods, dark beings, alternate spaces, conspiracy and serial murder. What an elegant shivery stew. PRA calls it: "what happens when science and fiction start to blur".  (Sigh) I am just so hooked.

How to Listen to Tanis

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.

Graphic Passions : "Through the Woods" by Emily Carroll

Been reading/looking at... Through The Woods, just published in the UK by Faber & Faber.

It's a first book by Canadian illustrator-comics artist Emily Carroll...(although she has contributed to anthologies in the past) and it's made up of five short horror stories which seem to be being billed as "for children".
Well... in many ways I never do grow up... so I am happy to be horrified by Carroll's black, white, red (with the occasional swish of rotting green) drawings and hand drawn text... which bring us these dark tales from the forest, where something dreadful always abides... it being a place that is an eternal source of fairy tales of the Grimm kind.

It is hard not to gallop through these stories.... OK. I gallop through these stories.... BUT I know that I will pick up the book again and savour the artwork and the lingering thoughts left by these pungent little tales of the Undead, the Other, -  and the Things which are not what they seem.
Here's what The Independent  has to say in a recent batch review.

My Weekend Creepy Telly Done Gone...

Alors! My dose of French creepiness (The Returned) do finish last week.
In short... The Returned have gone but the good news is that The Returned Are Returning!

The Old Man says enough is enough (for him) of zombies. He will not watch The Returned when they do return.

Il a perdu son courage pour de telles choses..... tant pis.

Sunday Night Is "Les Revenants" Night...

The Old Man still not be too sure about "The Returned" on Channel 4... but I think the suspense and unease is building nicely.

Soundtrack by Scottish band Mogwai is available on download or CD etc.
...... for just when you think it's all over!
(Found this snippet and links on that new Lumi thing.)

"The Returned" | Sundays | Channel 4

I Be Watching "The Returned" On Sunday Nights...

OK, so only one episode so far.... but I am intrigued with the cool French tone of this sub-titled serial concerning the Dead what have come back. And in true French elegance without rotting flesh, teeth and bits dropped off. Oh-la-la.

Give it a go, why don't you.  "The Returned" Channel 4  Sundays at 21.00 hrs. You can catch up on 4od aussi.

Even The Old Man do give it a go when I assure him there be none of the other  bits above.... bloody stumps, decay, grizzly teeth etc. Things what he do not like.....

Mrs D Ponders Crime: "The Woman Who Wouldn't Die" by Colin Cotterill"

Mrs D is very fond of Colin Cotterill's crime books featuring Dr Siri Paiboun.
Set in 1970s Laos, they feature the elderly Dr Siri who is both National Coroner and a late-onset shaman. As well as crime and resolution the books are witty, satirical and ... dare she say it ... have a supernatural element.

It do make Mrs D remember her librarian days in the "halls of academe" when her first humble post was as an assistant in the South East Asia Department.... long, long ago... This was not a supernatural experience in the main but ... come to think of it ... was prob'ly about the same time the admirable Dr Siri be operating.

You will find a review link to the latest in the series, "The Woman Who Wouldn't Die", over on the Euro Crime Blog.

Animated Discussions: Kali The Little Vampire by Regina Pessoa

Following on from the previous flipbook post..... This is the trailer for Regina Pessoa's prize-winning short film for Ciclope Filmes - "Kali The Little Vampire".... a kid with a difference.

R.I.P. Ray Bradbury 1920-2012

When I be a sprout of a teenage schoolgirl... back there in the 1960s... I did buy myself a copy of Ray Bradbury's "The Day it Rained Forever", a Penguin collection of short stories.
Where would my darker imagination be without Bradbury? My psyche rattled for years with the aftermath of "Something Wicked This way Comes". Midwest America would never be the same.

I think he be such an important influence we never knew it. Bradbury wrote "Fantasy" before it became a byword for dragons, wizards, medievalism and works that stretch into at least eight titles. His imagination be prodigious.

Never mind reading his political opinions... George Dubbya be such a good thing... yada-yada.... It will only disappoint. Well me anyway. Why do so many American sci-fi writers turn out to be such raving right-wingers?

Sigh... Good-bye Ray... and thanks for all the stories.