The Inspector Wears Skirts IV

 

Retirement Blues

The Inspector Wears Skirts IV
aka 92 Ba wang hua yu Ba wang hua
Hong Kong 1992 Directed by Wellson Chin 
88 Films Blu Ray Zone B

Well now, apart from the first of these movies, which included Cynthia Rothrock, I’d have to say that this series of films is not something I’d really wish to revisit again anytime soon. That being said, The Inspector Wears Skirts IV starts off with a fairly strong opening half an hour, before completely blowing it for most of the rest of the running time. So this at least puts it a little higher in terms of entertainment value than the second and third films in the franchise. 

We actually start with a full blown action sequence of the remaining members of the old SKIRTS unit, trying to save some hostages, with some getting killed or injured. We then get some cartoon illustrations and later freeze frames from old films in the series to fill us in on what some of the characters have been doing since leaving the force. Then we have the graduation ceremony for the new girls, almost all of whom resign because they don’t respect their boss. However, due to a hostage situation and a gangster trying to get the police to release his kingpin father, the remaining two skirts go to recruit some of the old gals, by fair means or fowl, to help them get their mojo back (for want of a better description). They are also led by the new ‘Golden Skirt’ who is there to teach them, played by none other than Cynthia Khan. 

Now, one of the old gals they manage to get back, just about, is May, played again by Kara Ying Hung Wai as a person driven crazy by her experiences in the SKIRTS... so they have to get her released from a mental health institution (think like a female version of Murdoch from The A Team, is the way she plays her this time around). And then, of course, no SKIRTS movie would be complete without the return of Sandra Kwan Yue Ng as Amy, now divorced from the most unlikely guy in the third film and raising her son as a single parent. I have to say, this really shows up the producers idea that the third movie, though still sharing the same director, doesn’t really count as part of the franchise in their books... so it really doesn’t follow on from the character as we left her at the end of the last movie at all.

And I’d like to tell you this was more consistently entertaining than the last one but, we’re again assaulted by very crude and broad humour which mostly fails to land but, at least there’s a lot more action this time around and it feels more like a Hong Kong martial arts piece in that sense. But yeah, there’s really not much going for it and when the finale involves a school full of child hostages (including Amy’s kid) there’s even a sequence where said kid sets booby traps for a comical henchman to get repeatedly caught in, like the film just suddenly turned into Home Alone for a few minutes. 

The one thing which does raise this is the quality of the subtitles... and if you’re buying the British version put out by 88 Films, if you want an extra, unintentional comedy treat (which, lets face it, if you’re watching this series, may well be the only way you’re going to get a laugh)... then said subtitles seem like they’re particular tailored for the British audience. I lost count of the times the various characters say things on the subtitles like... “Bloody Hell”, “Bollocks”, “Piss Off” and “You Wanker”. I mean, I’m assuming this has been re-subtitled for the recent American release of this movie?

Highlights to this one would be the novelty of cartoon pictures, the moment when a gangster in a wheelchair opens fire with twin machine guns coming from said chair and a strange, metatextual moment when one of the characters comments on how dream-like a particular location is, which is all shot soft focus so she’s commenting on the camerawork as much as anything.

However, at the end of the day, a few neat moments and a strong opening do not make for a good film and are unable to hoist The Inspector Wears Skirts IV up from the mess it gets itself into. Probably the second best of the franchise but, yeah, really nothing in here for me to recommend to others, that’s for sure. 

Sudden Impact

Dirty Law

Sudden Impact
Directed by Clint Eastwood
USA 1983
Warner Brothers
Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Okay... more spoilers. Big ones. Take a look at them... make my day!

The Enforcer (reviewed here) was supposed to be the last Dirty Harry movie but, a string of less than stellar box office performances and certain other factors brought about this sequel, Sudden Impact, seven years later. I think it was a good choice and it made the most money, I believe, out of the five movies in this sequence. Although he’d been offered the direction of at least one of the previous Dirty Harry movies and had directed numerous other films, even directing one of the scenes in the first in this series, Eastwood finally agreed to pick up the reigns on this one and he does not disappoint. It was also the last of six movies that he and his then girlfriend Sondra Locke made together. 

This one’s a little different than the others too and, many might say the character oversteps his moral parameters and elevates himself above the law... which, of course, he does but, it’s also a crowd pleaser because of that, I think. It tells the story of Jennifer Spencer, played by Locke, who was gang raped along with her sister ten years prior to the main action of this film. There are flashbacks to that sequence, which made her sister non-responsive and with her mind lost in hospital since... but I have to say the constant flashbacks to highlight characters who took part in this crime does seem a little heavy handed, especially by today’s standards, I think.

So, it’s ten years later and Jennifer is slowly seeking out each of the perpetrators and killing them with a gunshot to the genitals (her signature move) followed by a gunshot to the head. She travels to the coastal town to catch up with the perps one by one in their home territory but it’s also where Harry, played by Eastwood, ends up, primarily to get him out of San Francisco and partially to investigate the first of these crimes, as it’s the home town of the first of an ever increasing number of victims. This brings him into friendship and romantic entanglement with Jennifer and, the usual load of trouble with authority figures.

And it’s all good fun. 

There’s a nice line where Eastwood crashes a party to intimidate a suspect (he manages to accidentally intimidate him into a fatal heart attack) and he foreshadows the potential for harm to two bodyguards by asking the lady on the door to phone for an ambulance due to the two guys suffering multiple abrasions and lacerations. Of course, this is a nod back to A Fistful Of Dollars, by way of Kurosawa’s original template of that movie, Yojimbo, where the leads asks for a number of coffins to be prepared. A lot of the film takes place at night, which seems to give all the characters a more sinister tone and Jennifer is certainly no exception. The play of shadow and light in certain shots really hammers home the darkness, such as a shot where we are watching a front view of Locke working on a painting but the artificially created light throws the shadow of her arm painting into a small section of the screen behind her. There’s almost a German expressionist element to the shot. 

The film opens strongly, after we see Jennifer despatching her first victim, with Eastwood briefly attending a court case before going to a diner and being warned a hold up is in progress by the waitress, who has been serving his coffee for the last ten years, dumping a load of sugar into his cup. It’s in this scene where he first uses his latest  and most culturally influential catchphrase “Go ahead... make my day.” 

All well and good but let’s talk about the waitress in this scene. One of Clint’s early roles was a very brief, almost but not quite an extra level part in Tarantula (reviewed here). The film starred Mara Corday as the leading lady and she and Clint Eastwood had been good friends ever since. It’s she who plays the waitress here and she also turns up in a few other of his films over the years.  

Lalo Schifrin provides one of his best scores for the series, taking on contemporary percussion style orchestration into his usual fusion of jazz and suspense and... it’s really something. There are also a few nods to his original Dirty Harry score thrown into the mix. 

But lets finish up with the real elephant in the room here. The audience probably had a problematic unease building up when they first saw this movie... I know I did. The problem being that, while she’s clearly been disturbed and affected by her experiences, Locke’s character is absolutely who the audience is siding with. Up until now, Harry has always been about justice rather than the law but, it always came down to a line he wouldn’t cross. Justice must prevail but, only within the limitations of the law. Not here though. He finally crosses the line and does the right thing in spite of the law... breaking it and muddying the waters with a specific piece of evidence so Jennifer can go free at the end. I’m still not sure how I feel about it all these years later, in all honesty. It’s a moment which severely compromises the Harry Callahan character but, at the same time, nobody wants to see Jennifer brought to justice for her own crimes either. Everyone she takes out is pretty horrible and her vigilante character is serving up revenge that seems to bring a real sense of justice to the piece. 

So yeah, Sudden Impact brings a taint on Clint Eastwood’s character but it makes it a very interesting entry in the series (although not my favourite... that will always be The Enforcer). After this... well nobody really expected Eastwood to do anymore of these things but, just five years later, what is now the last of the series was released at the cinema. In all honesty, I remember hating that one when I went to see it but, let’s see if it’s improved any over time. I’ll be revisiting that one next.

Thin Ice

Ice And Lows

Thin Ice
USA 2009 Directed by Robert Harmon 
Sony Pictures TV Blu Ray Zone A

The fifth film in Sony’s boxed set of the complete Jesse Stone TV movies (to date) is Thin Ice and it’s a good one. It’s interesting also that, even though the Robert B. Parker’s Jesse Stone characters and also a couple of characters from Parker’s Spender books are in this, the film is not based on a pre-existing Parker novel, it just uses the characters.

Once again, Tom Selleck plays Paradise police chief Jesse Stone (he also has shares a writing credit on this one... I guess if you spend some time playing a character, you begin to know him) and he’s on thin ice with the members of the town council for not bringing in the cash with parking tickets etc and, instead, actually bringing unwanted attention to the town by solving real crimes. 

Things start strongly on this one as Jesse and his friend, series regular Stephen McHattie playing Boston police chief Captain Healy, are checking something out on a kind of amateur stake out in Boston. Healy gets shot almost to death and Jesse takes one in the arm while they sit in the car... regaining consciousness just in time to put one bullet wound in the fleeing gunman. After making sure Healy is in a relatively stable condition in the hospital, Jesse goes looking for the gunman... while simultaneously being pursued for the incident by Leslie Hope playing an internal affairs officer by the name of... drumroll please... Sydney Greenstreet (no, alas, not that one). During his investigation she, of course, ends up sleeping with Jesse. 

Meanwhile, a mother who has survived the death of her son in a high profile murder case in Mexico has come to paradise because of an anonymous letter she received some years later, telling her that her son is loved. She thinks he was switched and kidnapped but, new regular Rose, played once again by Kathy Baker, is working on this cold case with occasional aid from Jesse and also Suitcase, played again by Kohl Sudduth, who seems to actually be a lot smarter if still a little confused after his awakening from the coma in the last movie (after being shot in the movie before that). 

And it’s a really good one because the way these stories play out are explored in an interesting manner. Such as Greenstreet picking up on the number of people Jesse has killed, directly or indirectly, since the start of his tenure as police chief. Something which I think I mentioned in one of my previous reviews. And, oddly, while this issue is highlighted and brought into question, it’s also the first film in the series where nobody is actually killed violently through his direct involvement, despite the flurry of unexpected violence at the start of the movie. 

Another thing Greenstreet brings up is that Jesse’s MO is to frame people up to get themselves arrested or to produce evidence that they are part of a crime Jesse is working on and, bang on, that’s exactly how he resolves one of the two cases he’s working on in this one.

The other interesting thing about this one is it shows his psychiatrist Dr. Dix, played again by William Devane, as someone who, when he’s not trying to help Jesse out of the bottle (something which he hasn’t yet succeeded in doing), has his own demons he’s struggling with. It’s almost a throw away scene but I’m hoping/expecting they’ll maybe build on that in a future film... of which there are four more left to watch. 

Not much else to say on this one but it’s intriguing that Thin Ice didn’t air on television until two years after it was shot. I suspect that’s because this one leaves it as almost a cliffhanger ending with Jesse suspended from his job without pay until the council can build a case against him to fire him. So I guess we’ll see what happens from here. I hope to find out soon because I’m quite enjoying this film series and I want to see what happens next. 

The Enforcer

Tyne To Die

The Enforcer
Directed by James Fargo
USA 1976
Warner Brothers
Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Okay... more spoilers. 

The Enforcer... not to be confused with either the Humphrey Bogart movie of the same name and, nor indeed, the many films which came after this with the exact same title... is the third of Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry Callahan movies. It’s also easily my favourite one, mainly because his leading co-star in this is just so good and adds a whole other dynamic to the character. 

The film opens with a pre-credits sequence this time around, before going onto the clichéd San Francisco skyline kind of shots you usually get on films of this ilk. Here we see a bunch of ‘terrorists’ (but not really, they’re just in it for the money), who are the main villains of the piece, take out two gas board officials and steal their truck to use for a scene later in the movie. We then, post credits, go into a couple of incidents with Eastwood’s Harry Callahan during his daily patrol, one of which he gets demoted to personnel for, for a few days, before being drafted back into homicide. It’s in personnel that he learns that the mayor is trying to encourage women police officers and he meets and tries to rattle a young female officer who is trying to become an inspector.

When he gets brought back to homicide again, after his partner gets killed investigating a robbery in progress while Harry was cooling his heels in personnel, he finds that the same female officer is his new partner. And this is the movie’s trump card because it manages to deal with inherent sexism in the police force in a positive way... not that we’d had any reason to suspect that Callahan was in any way sexist from the previous movies... but it also gives Clint Eastwood the best co-star he’s ever had (with probably some of the best chemistry too)... 

None other than the, then relatively unknown, Tyne Daly... the great Tyne Daly... plays his new partner Inspector Kate Moore and, boy, does she make an impression in this movie. She does an absolutely fantastic job here as a newcomer to homicide trying to deal with stuff like an autopsy and Harry’s chilly reception but, not only that, she does a great job almost stealing the limelight from Eastwood and credibly working with the actor too, in relatively few scenes (it’s a fairly short movie in the series). We see them create a working relationship which blossoms into a partnership of mutual respect and friendship. So much so that, when she saves Harry’s life for the second time in the movie, during the climactic stalk, chase and shoot finale, she dies from taking a few bullets intended for Harry... and the audience really feels it. Along with Harry of course, who literally blows the body of her killer to bits in the next scene.

So yeah, that unique partnership of Eastwood and Daly, never repeated as far as I can remember, absolutely makes this movie the best of the Dirty Harry films in my book. Once again, Harry has a different catchphrase... this one a sarcastic ‘Marvellous’ every time Inspector Moore does or says something questionable. But, Moore is also given her own catchphrase in this, “Don’t concern yourself Inspector Callahan” which she paraphrases with her last words at the end of the picture.  Now in the previous picture in the series, Magnum Force (reviewed by me here), David Soul was spotted and given the role of Hutch in the hugely successful TV show Starsky And Hutch. Similarly, Tyne Daly does such a good job in this movie it finally led to her hugely successful TV show, as Mary Beth Lacey in Cagney And Lacey, five years later. I like to think of Inspector Moore as a younger, more loose spirited version of Daly’s future signature role. 

Once again, the film is nicely lensed and has some good, creative shot design. One nice touch, for example, is when Harry leaves the hospital room, where his former partner is dying, to go out into the lobby to talk to his boss. As that set of information is conveyed with a conversation between the two men, more information is beings simultaneously given via the big intensive care observation window between the two characters, as we watch Harry’s partner die in the background through the window. 

The music in this one is pretty great too. This is the only Dirty Harry film which doesn’t have a score by composer Lalo Schifrin. I don’t know why but the producers enlisted the help of veteran composer Jerry Fielding instead and, it has to be said, he does an excellent job of keeping the tone of the movies set up by Schifrin. It doesn’t veer too far, I reckon, to the kind of score Schifrin would have provided with the assignment and I’m sure Fielding was probably asked to keep to the same kind of sound scape with his music. It was really nice when, starting in 2004, Donna Schifrin founded record label Aleph primarily to release and showcase her husband’s scores... the Dirty Harry soundtracks finally became commercially available on CD and, even though Schifrin didn’t compose the third, they were nice enough to release Fielding’s score for The Enforcer. So I guess they must have liked it too and it’s a nice thing to do for the fans of this series of movies.

And that’s me done on this third entry in the franchise. The film ends grimly with Harry standing over the corpse of his new partner on Alcatraz island while a helicopter lands to pay the ransom to the kidnappers that Harry has just wiped out. The Enforcer was intended to be the final Dirty Harry film but, seven years later, after a string of box office flops for the actor, he was persuaded to play Harry again. So I’ll be revisiting that one again soon. 

The New Avengers

Purdey Hair

The New Avengers
ITV 1976-77
Two series
26 episodes
Studio Canal Blu Ray Box 

When I was around four or five years old, in the very early 1970s, I used to watch repeats of The Avengers on TV and I remember liking it a lot. I saw the Honor Blackman episodes (indeed, I must have seen many of the episodes I suspect are now no longer with us from the first season), the Diana Rigg episodes and the Linda Thorson episodes... and I believe some of my earliest name fictional character recognitions were Kathy Gale, Emma Peel and Tara King*… along with other usual suspects like Joe 90, Captain Scarlet, Doctor Who and Scott Tracy.

And of course there was the solid rock of a character in every episode, the male lead in pretty much every incarnation of The Avengers... John Steed, with his bowler hat and umbrella. Played, as always, by the great Patrick Macnee.

So it was with no small amount of excitement when the 8 year old version of myself received the news that a brand new series of The Avengers, entitled rather practically as The New Avengers, would be on my TV screen soon.

It was on fairly late on a Saturday or Sunday evening, if I’m recalling correctly… and we sat down to watch the first episode, The Eagles Nest, about a group of modern nazis who has been keeping Hitler’s body on ice all these years, until medical science was able to resuscitate him. And I have to say, it was pretty good stuff. We all loved it as a family and it even had Peter Cushing in the episode, as the scientist the new nazis kidnapped to get the job done right.

Now, not long after the show had started, my mother and I were run over by two cars which hit each other before mounting the pavement, out of control, and clobbering us. Since my jaw bone from my ‘against all odds’ still attached head couldn’t be wired back in the normal way, I had to take a few years off school to allow it to heal itself. Every cloud has a silver lining I guess but the problem was, I was stuck in hospital for the first week or two and the nurses on the children’s ward wouldn’t let me stay up with the television on to watch The New Avengers. Which I was very concerned about at the time. Although I did have the special souvenir magazine put out by TV Times to comfort me at some point, which was pretty thick and covered a lot of the show (and predecessors)… an issue which I’m pleased to say I still have to this day.

So, alas, I didn’t see a fair few of the episodes on its original run, which makes me happy to be finally catching up with them again after all these years, in a new Blu Ray set put out by Studio Canal, which looks good but is way too expensive for what is, after all, just 26 episodes.

And I watched these all recently with my mum and it’s still great. Patrick Macnee was still charming as Steed and his two new, supporting Avengers, Gareth Hunt as Mike Gambit and Joanna Lumley as the amazing Purdey (shortly before she would amaze us all again by taking on one of the title roles in Sapphire And Steel), are brilliant.

Some of the episodes… and this is no surprise since the show was using the same writers and producers of the bulk of the original incarnation… are able to capture the surreal and fun spirit of the originals and, others are a bit more humdrum but, even so, the chemistry between the three leads and the dialogue writing for them, was absolutely brilliant and I was a little surprised that these whimsical ‘to and fros’ between the characters still hold up today.

For instance, when Purdey pulls her bra off to give to Mike to use as a slingshot to get them out of a jam, he says “Why didn’t you burn it with all the other ladies?” To which she replies, “I didn’t need to. I already knew I was liberated.”

There were guest directors as well, such as Robert Feust, who you may remember directed The Final Programme (reviewed by me here). And, of course, many actors and actresses who would suddenly turn up for an episode (because who wouldn’t want to be in The Avengers) such as Jenny Runacre, Jon Finch, Ronald Lacey, Deep Roy and even the great Caroline Munro.

They even have a bit of a reunion, with Ian Hendry returning for an episode, although not as the co-starring lead character he played alongside Macnee in the early years of the show. Not to mention an episode where the two bad guys are played by Martin Shaw and Lewis Collins, who would bring exactly the same chemistry they had here to the producer’s next TV show, The Professionals.

Not only that, the set includes the last four episodes, shot and produced in Canada, proudly proclaiming before the pre-credits sequence that it’s The New Avengers in Canada, before going onto the usual action sequence which would then freeze at the crucial part... followed by the wonderful animated credits sequence that came in from about halfway through the first season… and then going back to the freeze frame and concluding the opening scene. As was the format of all the episodes.

And of course, all the music, including the wonderful new opening title music which cunningly utilises his old baseline from the original show in a new way, is by the original show composer Laurie Johnson, who came on in the early days of the show after original composer Johnny Dankworth left. The show is filled with good music including a few sly nods to Johnson’s mentor, composer Bernard Herrmann.

And with episodes dedicated to such antagonists as killer birds, a giant rat in the sewers and a homicidal building… it’s just a fun packed snapshot of what late 1970s TV could be. The New Avengers makes for a nice, if prohibitively expensive slice of TV heaven that audiences of a certain age should surely enjoy and a worthy successor to the original show. Go on, give it a go.

*I’m not forgetting Avenger girls Ingrid Hafner as Carol Wilson and Julie Stevens as Venus Smith... but that’s for another review (coming to a blog near you, sometime late 2026 or early 2027).

Magnum Force

Soul Reaver

Magnum Force
Directed by Ted Post
USA 1973
Warner Brothers
Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Slight spoiler.

For the second Dirty Harry movie, Ted Post took over direction although, it’s been said more than once that things on set were bad between him and Eastwood and, allegedly, Eastwood ended up directing a fair amount of the picture himself. I’m assuming there may be some truth to that and Eastwood certainly had proven himself a good director already, with his masterpiece Play Misty For Me (reviewed here). 

Magnum Force takes an idea for one of the rejected scripts for the original Dirty Harry (which I reviewed here) about a rogue team of killer cops, meting out their own lethal brand of justice, when the bad guys get away or are allowed to walk due to  the stupidity of the legal system. This was inspired by the Brazilian death squads that were in the news at the time. 

There was a good reason why Eastwood particularly wanted to bring this story idea to the screen. The huge positive reaction to the first movie was more than tempered by an outcry that his central character was some kind of vigilante, taking the law into his own hands. While this isn’t actually true if you pay attention on that first movie, that was how the film was being perceived and criticised by some and so Eastwood liked the idea of Harry Callahan using the system he hates so much to align himself against a group of conspirators within the same department he works for. And the guy who co-wrote the screenplay was... John Milius (future director of Conan The Barbarian, reviewed here).

Now anyone who’s seen Milius talk in an interview will know the director is not shy about his love of heavy artillery and war and this certainly comes to the fore in the film, with a lot of talk about the various guns the police are using and the way Harry matches up the shells from the bodies at the crime scene with one he manages to ‘stage vanish’ during a shooting competition. 

And it’s especially prevalent in the opening credits, where Lalo Schifrin’s excellent score (probably his best of the four of the five films he provided for the series) plays out against a hand holding a Magnum pistol in profile against a vivid red background... which looks especially good on Blu Ray. Then as the credits end, there’s Clint Eastwood’s voice performing a heavily truncated voice over of his famous “do you feel lucky” speech as the gun is turned towards the audience and fired at them, presumably a nod by Milius to a similar moment in the 1903 silent film The Great Train Robbery, which scared audiences so much at the time. 

We then move onto the story and we have the relatively recently deceased David Soul playing one of the four cops who are going around executing criminals. It’s said... and this is almost certainly true... that he was spotted to play Hutch in Starsky And Hutch (which debuted on TV in 1975) because of this film. We also have Hal Holbrook (who many readers may best remember as the priest in John Carpenter’s The Fog, reviewed here) as an obstacle of a superior officer who is also embroiled in what’s going on... you’ll probably figure out his part in all this before it gets revealed on screen.

No mention is made of Harry Callahan’s end scene in Dirty Harry, where he throws away his badge and walks away from policing. I guess he must have changed his mind. Mention is made of his partner in that film retiring but this is the first film where his partner gets killed... quite possibly because of him, or at least, because of what he finds out. 

It’s not a particularly action packed film but it is nicely put together and the pace never really feels slow. As a kid I always liked this one the least (until The Dead Pool came out) but these days I actually quite like it. Again, it benefits hugely from being able to watch it in its original aspect ratio, as opposed to the pan and scan versions we would have seen on TV in the late 1970s. It’s also very much a seventies film in that little details of shots which are aesthetically pleasing are dwelled on, even though they don’t contribute to the unfolding of the story in any major way. So, for instance, there’s a wonderful shot of one of the killer’s police boots splashing through a wet puddle, followed by a shot highlighting the wet footprints of those boots on some steps. It’s a pleasure to watch things like this which are just catching little elements of life, rather than having to have everything leading into something else in the story, to be honest. 

Harry’s catchphrase in this movie is “A man has to know his limitations” but I can’t remember if this made it into any of the other movies. Certainly, although Schifrin’s score is excellent and using a more frenetic melodic palette, the orchestration is the same and, although there’s not a lot of it in the movie, Harry’s theme does make the occasional appearance in at least one scene (I think it’s only one scene actually but, it’s certainly there).

The final showdown between Harry and the motorcycle cops is lengthy but doesn't really feel particularly climactic. The bikers seem to go down too easily (these days they’d get up for another few rounds of fighting) and David Soul’s villain especially, left to last (well, almost last... but again, that gets into spoiler territory), literally just drives his bike off a ship into some water and, well, the fall supposedly kills him. That’s probably true to life but, yeah, you wouldn’t get away with that in Hollywoodland these days, that’s for sure.

The film is pretty good though. Certainly bleak but also with a certain charm and Eastwood in particular is very good as the lead here. And Schifrin’s score really picks up the pace and follows through, creating tension in shots which might not work if it wasn’t for his persistent half jazz, half suspense stylings. Magnum Force further cements Eastwood’s international superstar status and it’s revisiting films like this that reminds me why he has that reputation. I’m looking forward now to revisiting the third one in the series next, as that one was always my favourite (even without Schifrin on scoring duties). 

Evil Bones

Animal Tragic

Evil Bones 
by Kathy Reichs
Simon and Schuster
ISBN 9781398531222

So here we are again. Another year, another new instalment of Kathy Reichs’ Temperance Brennan novels... the real Temperance Brennan, not the bizarrely un-Tempe-like version that appeared on the Bones TV show. Although... okay, I’ll get to that in a little while.

It goes without saying that Kathy Reichs’ books are cool page turners that, more often than not, cause the reader to hurtle through them at a very fast rate and, this one is no exception (I think it’s the quickest I’ve ever read one of her books). And this one, Evil Bones, ticks a lot of the signature boxes I’ve come to expect from this writer, in a story that involves Tempe and her usual accomplices investigating a series of killed, mutilated and unusually posed animals, courtesy of a serial killer who is obviously going to be stepping up to humans not too long after the book begins. 

So, signatures like... we have the usual, abundant number of cliff hanger sentences to end the majority of the chapters, to keep the reader jumping into the next chapter without pausing. Such as “Looked around in shock. Ruthie was gone.” or “As I turned, I felt something sting my left arm. A moment of dizziness. Then the world went black.” or even, the more succinct, “Holy Bloody Hell.”

Also included are the usual dalliances with Temperance’s dream states but, I have to say, the author shows a little more restraint than usual in terms of the real estate given over to her main character’s adventuresome slumbers in this book. That being said, there is a moment when Tempe enters a kind of trance state and has a ‘Millennium TV show’ style direct connection to the mind of the killer... which seemed a bit odd and is not mentioned again in the rest of the novel. Is it a case of future character development or, maybe it’s a pointed reference to the books Reichs writes with her daughter, which I’ve not actually read. I’m not sure... to be honest. But it was a strangely off-kilter moment in the book. 

However, it doesn’t really matter because the book crackles along and captivates the reader at every turn. One interesting thing I found was, given the title of the novel, a definition of an evil act, from one of Tempe’s long term psychologist friends. The key points being the committing of a horrifying act accompanied by the deliberate planning of such and also coupled with the deed itself being an inexplicable thing in the eyes of other people.

All good stuff then except... okay, I have a few bits of negative criticism this time around. 

So aside from the annoying habit of, once again, referencing Bones as a TV show in the world of the novel (without Tempe mentioning once that the character on the show has the same name as her), I was quite taken aback when Reichs calls her character’s famous phone ring tone ‘the Kill Bill whistling clip’. Surely Reichs, along with a gazillion other people, will recognise that specific piece of music as being a main theme from the movie Twisted Nerve which Tarantino just needle dropped into his own film at an appropriate moment. 

And I also didn’t have too much trouble identifying the killer this time around (after my initial suspect turned up half way through the book as the next human victim). A certain mode of transport and the reoccurrence of it and its famous logo in the text seems to point fingers at the miscreant fairly early on. So, yeah, not fooled for very long this time around, I have to admit.

But the real problem for me is... this didn’t quite feel like it was Temperance Brennan doing the narration here. As in, it didn’t quite feel totally like Kathy Reichs writing this one and, I dunno, like I said, Tempe just doesn’t seem herself as much as usual. I doubt the idea but... it did make me think, at one point, if Reichs has started employing a ghost writer or uncredited co-writer to get her yearly novels out? Which just seems wrong... but I know other modern writers have done a similar thing of late. And the characters don’t seem to be firing on all cylinders this time around either... displaying the lack of quick action and logical deduction you would expect to find in a badly written horror movie. Not to mention it all feels a bit less epic than many of her previous novels. So, yeah, I was a little concerned at all this. 

But, not, as I said earlier, to the point where I didn’t thoroughly enjoy this book and, although not a jumping on point, fans of the original Temperance Brennan should definitely get a kick out of Evil Bones. So hopefully we’ll have another one published next year, for sure. 

The Guest

Guest To Kill

The Guest 
BBC Four Episodes
September 2025

Warning: Mild spoilers.

The Guest is a four episode mini series put out by the BBC and, truth be told, it’s not the kind of show I would usually watch. However, my parents had it on in the background while I was doing something for half an hour and I made a note of it and came back to it a few days later to start it off from scratch on the BBC iPlayer. Because I found myself drawn to it, not so much by the story as I was by the acting of the two female leads, who were really giving some subtle and interesting nuances to their characters. 

These were Gabrielle Creevy as the down on her luck, poverty stricken Ria, who is not making enough money out of being a cleaner to keep herself and her boyfriend in food and, her new benefactor, the rich and powerful Fran, played by the great Eve Myles (who I best remember from Doctor Who spin off Torchwood).

Fran throws large amounts of cash in Ria’s direction and has her come to work in her… well it’s a bit of a mansion house with a neighbouring guest house. Her husband is away most of the time, seeing to his part of their company business overseas and, Fran takes to Ria and, cautiously, Ria also is somewhat seduced by Fran’s lifestyle. But there’s always a catch and as she starts to explore the fate of the previous cleaner, the contents of the ‘forbidden, locked room’ and starts paying attention to what business Fran’s public facing job is fronting (especially when she’s promoted to being her PA), things take on a sinister turn.

Not least of which is when Ria accidentally murders, in self defence, a suitor who at first seems to be just someone she met on a dating app but, it’s not too long when, despite her investigations and text messages from his phone after he’s very much deceased, she realises he also has a link to whatever’s going on at the house that Fran and her husband Simon built.

The story did not, I have to say, go where I wanted it to go… I was expecting more of a very classic horror element to creep into this by the third episode (I thought they were just being really clever about things, okay?) but it’s more than made up for in the chemistry between Fran and Ria. These are not two dimensional characters and they both carry hidden secrets. Creevy plays it very understated but less is definitely more and you can see her working things out behind her eyes as she progresses further down the rabbit hole. And as for Eve Myles performance as Fran… it’s probably the best I’ve seen her. You can see how her character has let herself become something of a monster over the years but there are also some heart rending scenes where you realise just how she’s gravitated to this and Miles take on the role is so pinpoint on the more, turn on a dime, slightly unstable parts of her personality that... well, like I said, best performance I’ve seen her do. Both actresses rely on the physicality of their expressions and the way they express and change their attitude from minute to minute... well, it’s just a pleasure to watch. 

And I think that’s me done with this one, actually. Like I said, The Guest is not my normal go to for TV entertainment but serendipity shone and I stumbled on a really interesting piece of work here. I think the story could have been a little more complex or, perhaps, a little more explored as there are some very short hand emotional beats on some of the supporting characters (perhaps another episode would have been beneficial) but, yeah, this one has some breathtaking acting performances and I will certainly try to put this one onto people’s radar, I think. 

True Detective Series Two

Sleuth or Dare

True Detective Series Two
8 episodes June - August 2015
USA HBO

Okay... so the second series of True Detective takes a bunch of new characters and locations and, as far as I can tell, doesn’t actually relate to the first series in any way. This one is set in Vinci, California and deals with three police detectives (initially, their status changes somewhat throughout the course of the story) and one career criminal who is trying to leave his illegal empire building behind him and retire to a lucrative, legitimate business.

So the three detectives of the tale are Detective Ray Velcoro played by Colin Farrell, Detective Ani Bezzerides played by Rachel McAdams, Officer Paul Woodrugh played by Taylor Kitsch and all three of these are from different territories, teamed up initially to solve the murder of the right hand man of the career criminal... a victim who has been tortured to death and his eyes burned out with acid. 

The fourth protagonist of the tale is the criminal himself, Frank Semyon played by Vince Vaughn... who wants to find out who is attacking him through the death of his employee and just what is going on and, of course, will it impede him in his chance to become a legitimate business man. 

Now, I was not as on board with this one at first... mainly because I liked the first series so much and particularly the two characters played by Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey. But... and this is no bad thing... this second show is definitely not trying to reproduce the same atmosphere used there and, as I slowly got into the characters and how the various pieces of the jigsaw come together, I enjoyed this one almost as much. 

There are a couple of basic similarities to the first one though. Such as the story taking place over different time zones. However, in the first series it was a good decade or two between settings and this one takes place for two weeks over the first part of the case and then just a couple of months down the line, after the aftermath of the carnage of the shoot out which ends the investigation. Unlike the first one, though, it doesn’t ping pong between the two times and is presented in a more linear fashion.

Secondly, the initial investigations in the first two seasons ends the careers of the main protagonists... and this one, with the catalyst for that happening at the end of episode four in a most spectacular action sequence, sees them coming together again to work the case and dive deeper into it a little later. 

So, yeah, this one has a very different atmosphere from the first season and, I think if I were to compare it to something... and this was perhaps on the mind of the writer simply by osmosis... it would be the novels of ace crime writer James Ellroy, especially his LA Quartet of novels. I mean, the characters in this are all either bad and compromised in some way or have a huge chip on their shoulders. Or both. It’s like the world of Ellroy’s LA, where nobody is really good, especially the cops, is playing out in a slightly more toned down version here. It’s not as in-your-face violently gory as Ellroy, quite a lot of the brutality is implied here... but I can’t help but think Ellroy’s writing must have has at least some influence on the DNA of season two of this show. 

The acting is terrific. I’ve never been a fan of Colin Farrell in the past but he does an excellent job here of giving his character many facets which gives the audience an insight into his motivations and choices. McAdams is equally good in this and, as the only one who isn’t bent and on the take initially, she has a steely determination which puts other characters on edge. Taylor Kitsch is incredible in this. It took me a while to figure out that this fairly ‘contained to the point of instability’, confused character once played a very confident John Carter of Mars (reviewed here). He looks totally different here and, if I hadn’t read the cast list, I would have never known it was him. 

And as for Vincent Vaughn, well. Such an understated performance where he mostly uses his eyes and forehead to give an air of intimidation but, also a certain thoughtfulness. He’s a man who wears his history on his sleeve almost and, even though you see him do brutal things (like using pliers to extract the gold teeth of someone who won’t do what they’re told), you end up totally sympathising with him somehow and, yeah, rooting for him by the end of the show, for sure. In much the same way you sympathise with Robert DeNiro’s character in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In America, even though you know he’s done brutal things in his past. Vaughn, who I’ve seen do both comedy and human monster really well, in the same film no less in Freaky (reviewed here), really manages to ring the sympathy out of this while being totally shark-like in his role of head hoodlum (something which Jimmy Cagney could also channel well in some of his gangster pictures, if memory serves). It was such a good choice to cast him here and he pretty much steals any scene he’s in, in my opinion. 

And, yeah, that’s me done. The ending is not remotely similar to that of the first season, in the way things get resolved (or might possibly get some kind of closure after the end of the last episode) and the downward spiral it takes is not much less than the audience may be expecting by the last few episodes. So, yeah, it’s hard to compare it to the first series since they are both very different animals but I certainly thought True Detective Series Two was very good television and is worth a watch if you are into stories with a gritty undertone to them. 

True Detective Series One

No Regrets For Our Sleuth

True Detective Series One
8 episodes February - April 2014
USA HBO

I’ve been wanting to catch up with True Detective for a while now... since hearing about Series Four, in which Jodie Foster apparently takes on a story with a supernatural horror element. And, despite the fact that each series is set in a different location and telling the story of different characters portrayed by different actors, I really wanted to do it properly and watch it from the start.

So the two main protagonists in this first series are Detective Marty Hart, played by Woody Harrelson and his new, unlikely partner Detective Rust Cohle, played by Matthew McConaughey. And these two do not like each other much right off the bat, mainly because... due to a back story which we find out a little way into it... Rust is basically a nihilistic, anti-social and somewhat unfeeling (and certainly unsubtle) person. Marty is more of a religious family man but, not above cheating on his wife Maggie, played by the great Michelle Monaghan.

The main story about an investigation of a series of murders involving ritualistic, devil worship style symbols and possible child molestation is told in flashback as part of a look at ten or so years of the partnership between Marty and Rust, before something gets in the way of their abrasive relationship which Marty can’t let go (which, by the way, you will see coming a mile off). The flashback comes from multiple, cross cut narratives around about 20 years later, as each of the two, in turn, are being questioned by police detectives about a new case which resembles their old one. In the original first murder discovered by the detectives and the audience, a naked girl is left for dead, tied to a tree with antlers on her head. The case in their ‘present’ versions also has a posed, naked woman with antlers. At some point towards the last third, Maggie is also brought in and questioned, to add to the narrative. The last two episodes show Rust and Marty reunited in present day, over their own research into the killings, which Marty had thought been put to bed a couple of decades before. 

And this was a brilliant show for a few reasons... one is that the characters are so well built and developed that you really believe in the relationship between them, as they verbally careen off one another. Secondly, the dark nature of the murders and the way it almost feeds Rust and taps into his bleak outlook as he takes work well into the point of obsession, makes for an interesting show. 

Thirdly... and take this as a back handed compliment if you will... I didn’t see where the ending was going. In that, after episode three I was pretty sure where it was going but, it turns out, the story of the show wasn’t nearly as twisted as I was expecting, to be honest. I’d assumed Marty’s wife and two young girls were part of a devil worshipping community that tied directly into the killings but, it seems I was wrong. On the downside, the villain is more like the version of the Green Goblin that Steve Dikto had wanted to give the readers of The Amazing Spider-Man comic book(and which caused him to leave Marvel comics way back when) as opposed to the one that Stan Lee gave us, when it turned out to be someone very known and visible to the readers. Here, the villain of the piece is pretty anonymous and, although Rust does meet him in his investigations decades before, he doesn’t put that together until after the final confrontation with said villain. 

But, yeah, I had a really good time watching this one... partially, perhaps, because I seemed to be able to worryingly identify and relate to Rust rather than the more optimistic Marty character but, hey ho, that’s the way it goes sometimes. I was a little disappointed that one of the main characters I was expecting to die at the end doesn’t but, that sense of slight let down was somewhat tempered with the way in which a central character’s outlook was forever changed by his experiences at the conclusion of the story.

So, yeah... I really liked True Detective Season One and am looking forward to seeing the other three seasons at some point very soon, I hope. This was definitely good television, as far as I’m concerned.

Identity Unknown

The Long Goodbye
Yellow Brick Road

Identity Unknown
by Patricia Cornwell
Little Brown
ISBN 9781408732618

Warning: Very small spoilers.

So, my annual Christmas ritual of receiving and reading the latest Patricia Cornwell novel is once again complete. This time it’s the latest entry into her long running Dr. Kay Scarpetta books, who is such a popular character that Nicole Kidman will soon apparently be playing her on our TV screens (although, honestly, the more I hear about the production the less I’m liking it, particularly in terms of casting and also time settings... I’ll try not to mention it again in this review and stow it until the proper time to talk about such things).

Identity Unknown is set in the springtime and utilises all the usual suspects of Cornwell’s growing list of regular characters... so her husband Benton, her old partner Marino, her sister Dorothy, her niece Lucy and her newest regular, Lucy’s special agent colleague Tron. And I’m pleased to say Lucy... my favourite character in the series of books, who I’ve read growing up over the novels from being a teenage computer nerd into someone who invents the software and systems that are used on a daily basis in the shadowy underworld of the world’s top security organisations... takes a much more active role, or is at least present most of the time, throughout the course of the novel.

Like a fair few of Cornwell’s most recent, gripping mysteries, this one takes place in a very small timeframe. Not as short as some of the novels but, if my calculations are correct and not including the final ‘Ten Days Later’ section, I’d say the action of this one takes place around two and a half days from the opening of the story, when Kay is called away from her autopsy rooms to go and recover the body of a former lover who has been dumped from a UAP onto the yellow brick road. Specifically, UAP stands for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon and it’s what the kids are calling UFOs these days. Could this case link to the murder of a child she is currently investigating? And could the fact that the body has been dumped on the yellow brick road of an abandoned theme park based on The Wizard Of Oz mean the case is even more closely connected to Kay than she initially thinks?

Shenanigans ensue as the obvious suspect is Kay and Lucy’s old arch enemy Carrie Grethen, who seems to have taken herself off the government radar again. Is she responsible or is there some other threat masterminding the series of brutal coincidences as the case unfolds and another death happens? Kay is yo-yo’d around from the crime scene to Langley to NASA (although she doesn’t, alas, meet Callie Chase from one of Cornwell's other series of novels there) and even to an underwater body retrieval as she and her friends work the case.

The thing I like about Cornwell is that, along with the healthy dose of imagination required to write, she always researches her stuff throroughly (as indicated by the photos she shares during her research on Twitter) and I tend to think of her as someone on the cutting edge of things which, I suspect, often bleeds into her novels. So when, as expected, the UFO does not turn out to be of extra-terrestrial origin, she also throws in a little incident of Kay’s distant history which tends to throw some positive confirmation that something alien in origin did, in fact, happen during the famous Roswell Incident. So that’s kind of interesting and of note, I think.

Other than that, a short review because, well, Cornwell is undoubtedly the queen of the mystery thriller and they don’t come any better than this. Scarpetta’s first person narrative flows along at a rate of knots, as usual and, there’s also a section when, once the villain in this book (and I won’t tell you who it actually is) is caught, there is still more action to be had as wheels turn and a side character tries to come along and take out Kay and Marino. And I’m not telling you how that goes either.

All I will say is, Identity Unknown is another highly addictive piece of storytelling in a series of novels which mostly all are as good as they get. If this one had its covers covered in glue it would not make the book any more ‘unputdownable’ than it already is. If you’re a fan of these novels then this is more of the same and is definitely worth your time. Now, I have the long waiting time to get through until I can get another Cornwell novel for next Christmas.

The Christmas Murder Game

Murder Mansion

The Christmas Murder Game
by Alexandra Benedict
Bonnier books
ISBN: 9781838775384

The Christmas Murder Game is the first of what I shall, at present, call a trilogy of unconnected Christmas murder mysteries by writer Alexandra Benedict. I read the second and third ones, Murder On The Christmas Express (reviewed here) and The Christmas Jigsaw Murders (reviewed here) last year, not knowing that she’d actually written a trio of books three years running, starting with this one. Alas, there’s no new Christmas mystery by her this year but I live in hope that another one will be forthcoming at some point.

This one starts as the others, with a brief set of rules telling the reader how to play various games hidden within the text of the book. This one has two hidden games in it (plus an acknowledgements word search at the end)... the first being various anagrams of the gifts of the twelve days of Christmas hidden within the text of the relevant chapter and a second game being the titles of 12 of Benedict’s favourite mansion/manor house/family get together style mysteries hidden in the prose.

This book tells the story of main protagonist Lily, who returns after some years estranged from her adopted family to Endgame Manor in Yorkshire, taking the trip up from London near the start of the book. Her mother, who she found dead as a child in the big maze on the grounds of the house was the catalyst for her Aunt Liliana adopting her and taking her away from the manor at a young age. However, now Liliana is dead and her written voice from beyond the grave beckons Lily back to take part in the last of her annual Christmas games against other members of the family... the prize primarily being inheriting the house and grounds but, in the letter sent to Lily, the main stake is to uncover the equally cryptic hidden clues to find that her mum didn’t slash her own wrists as had been reported... but that she was, in fact, murdered.

And it’s just as good as the other two Christmas themed books I mentioned above... in fact, I think this one might just be my favourite of the bunch. Naturally for these kinds of books, the story focusses a lot on the various family characters, their history with the main protagonist and the secrets about various people, including Lily, as the plot goes on. And, also like a lot of these kinds of books, sometimes you can’t see those twists coming and... yeah... other times you do. But I certainly didn’t see an early complication for the central character coming before it’s revealed a few chapters into the novel, so I was pleased and pleasantly surprised by that.

And the writer is very skilled, not just with the puzzles, anagrams and the general enigma of the main plot but, also with the beautiful, sometimes poetic way she expresses things. For instance, in a brief childhood flashback when a character has the complex house of cards he was building knocked down by his sister, Benedict describes “His tears falling like spades down his cheeks.” And another phrase which impressed me with its vivid evocation of sense memory from earlier in the book was, “Lily yanks her bobble hat down over her ears. She’d forgotten how the Yorkshire wind wants to get to know you…”

And I’m doubly pleased to say that I learned something too from this book. I’d never come across the term before but now I know that prosopagnosia is the term for the neurological disorder known as face blindness. Anytime I learn something like this from a novel, I’m always pleased.

However, other than that, I’ve not got much else to add by way of observations on The Christmas Murder Game. The main reveal of a certain antagonist didn’t exactly blind side me, to be honest but, the old giallo ploy of leaving so many suspects on the loose did at least slow me down a little. I very much enjoyed this one and would recommend it as a December read if you are into mystery novels, for sure.

Fire And Bones

In Fire Straits

Fire And Bones
by Kathy Reichs
Simon And Schuster
ISBN 9781398531178

Okay, another one of my very brisk reviews, this time for what has shifted from being my second ritual Christmas read to, over the last few years, my number one August holiday read. I always start the latest of Kathy Reichs’ Temperance Brennan novels on the first day of my holidays, which usually coincides to roughly when they’re published each year.

This latest adventure for the forensic bones lady is entitled Fire And Bones and involves Tempe being brought in as a side effect of a favour she does for her daughter. Her daughter’s ‘loaded’ best friend is a would be reporter and podcaster who interviews a reluctant Tempe for a new case involving arson. The result being that the people in Washington where a fire killed four people want, as a result of watching that interview, Tempe to help out with her expertise in bodies recovered from said fire.

The other side effect of this is that Tempe gains a new ally and, possibly, a new semi-regular character for the series, I hope... as she ends up staying with the lady who interviewed her in her... well it’s pretty much a mansion.

But with a second fire occurring and other fishy things happening, it’s a case of no arson around when Tempe gets on the case.

So this one, without trying to put in any spoilers, leads back to a long standing feud which started during prohibition between some bootleggers and other unsavoury characters of the time. And aided by her new friend, plus her own ingenuity, Tempe seems to be a little ahead of the police at most turns of the investigation on this one. Once again, though, this puts her very much in harms way.

Now, in terms of the mystery, it’s a bit of a jigsaw of suspects and interested parties and, though I didn’t see part of the solution, certainly the follow up attack after all has supposedly been put to bed, didn’t surprise me in the least. There’s a character who is introduced about a third of the way into the novel who I realised, as soon as I found out that character’s profession, was probably involved (or would be) in the various incidents which come to light. So, yeah, the story does telegraph itself to a certain extent, it has to be said.

That doesn’t matter too much to me though, because once again it hurtles along at a fair lick and is never not entertaining and thrilling. There’s a reason I read these at the start of my holidays... they relax me and I know I’m going to tear through it quickly, setting up the tone for my time away from the office. And once again, Reichs doesn’t disappoint.

Now a couple of things of note... the writer seems to be relying less on the hard cliffhanger/foreshadowing allusion at the end of each chapter as she so often has in the past. I mean, there are a couple of last liners in a more familiar style here such as... “We both knew I’d never make that call. We were both wrong.” but, for the most part, the last lines of each chapter are not promising (and often they used to deliver, so I’m not knocking the practice at all) some kind of hard revelation in the chapter to come. Truth be told, I kinda missed them though. I mean, the novel doesn’t suffer from it in any way, it has to be said but, it’s just the kind of writing I’m used to reading from her.

The other thing I should mention in terms of the story is that Andrew Ryan, Tempe’s long suffering boyfriend, spends most of the book away and unmentioned, for reasons I won’t go into here. But I did miss the banter between the two. Obviously, there’s a little of it here but, yeah, it definitely felt like Reichs was trying to change the way she writes these things somewhat... at least that’s what it felt like to me.

One last thing... and the hobgoblin of little minds like mine, perhaps... is the basic brush with the metatextual that rears its head in the text. In once sentence, Reichs... talking as Tempe, the books are always told from a first person point of view... mentioned that someone in the story binge watched all 12 seasons of Bones on television. Now Bones, of course, is a kind of TV universe of a slightly different version of Temperance Brennan, based on her earlier years and perhaps a little more on the writer herself. But these books, which are stories which I can’t help but feel are grounded in a certain reality, are now suggesting that in the world of Temperance Brennan, there’s a TV show top lining a character called Temperance Brennan, from a different viewpoint, so to speak. Which doesn’t quite sit right with me for some reason but, hey, it’s a nice reference either way.

And that’s me about finished with Fire And Bones, I think. If you’re already an avid reader of Kathy Reichs and love this character as much as me then you really can’t go wrong picking this one up. They’re bright, breezy and informative so, you know, if modern thrillers are your thing, give this (and the series in general) a go. Can’t wait for the next one.

The Jetty

Dragons In Ember

The Jetty
4 Episodes
Airdate: July 15th 2024
BBC

I can’t remember what it was that I was reading, a couple of months ago, about Jenna Coleman’s new BBC mini series The Jetty. But it had Coleman promoting it big time and I really liked her both in Doctor Who (although I thought her character arc in her last season was a bit ropey) and in The Sandman (reviewed here). And I wanted to see her in something else and... yeah... The Jetty is not bad.

It features Jenna Coleman as Ember Manning (a detective in the Lancashire police force), Ruby Stokes as her teenage daughter Hannah, Archie Renaux as her police partner Hitch, Amelia Bullmore as her mother Sylvia and Tom Glynn-Carney as her husband Mack... who has been dead for just under a year when the series starts. Ember is working a case where a place from her past is burned down but, it soon intersects with a ‘missing believed dead’ case of a young girl from years before, which a pod caster played by Weruche Opia is investigating.

And it’s quite good but also has some week spots, I reckon. Some of the episode cliffhangers are pretty great... such as when you think they have found the body of someone they are looking for in a lake but it then turns out to be one of the other regular characters you didn't realise was dead. But the writing seems kinda... I dunno... like it’s shifting. I think it may have been recut from the original order of the edit too, probably for reasons of pacing, because it occasionally suffers from that thing where one character is in on something they shouldn’t have known about yet and then, at other times, covering old ground about something they have already been seen to be knowing about.

Let’s cover the good stuff first. The performances are great. Jenna Coleman is, as always, totally brilliant in the role and, also, a big shout out to Ruby Stokes who does really well as her daughter, struggling with big emotions and getting herself into more trouble. And the chemistry between them is also really cool... a second series of this would be nice, although it may not be in the pipeline.

And it looks good too, with some nice sweeping landscapes and some nice rich colours in the night sequences. The music, which I think is composed by someone called Tim Morrish (although I’m not sure... the IMDB is being pretty bashful around that subject) is quite nice and minimalistic, reminding me a little of Hans Zimmer in places. Alas, there’s no commercial release of the score that I can see.

The one annoying thing is the old giallo trope about there being too many suspects. As Ember realises there are more and more connections to her own past, I was pretty sure there was going to be an end twist but, because there are so many characters and I had about four suspects in it, the solution became a bit hit and miss. I suspect this is the case of the writers throwing as many people into the mix as possible to try and hide the truth.

As it happens... and without giving anything away... there’s a double ending with not one but, two killers involved and, I have to say, the two people were both two of my possible suspects. So I was kinda disappointed that it went down those routes, to be honest. And, believe me, it’s really not as much of a twist ending as people are making out... most people will get there way before, I think. But that’s my only real issue with it... well, that and the question of... why is there suddenly a common thread in both this and films I’ve bought in the last year that features women ‘jacking off’ horses? Is this some kind of trending theme? And on the BBC no less.

But yeah, the show was absolutely riveting, for the most part and, I ploughed through the four episodes quicker than I thought I would. Jenna Coleman is also one of the show’s producers and I think she helped develop the role and the story (the original ending would have had someone not on my list of suspects doing the first murder)... so she’s obviously put a lot of work in on this and, certainly, she does carry the show considerably, playing a much more ‘world weary’ character than I’ve personally seen her pull off before (and when I say pull off... no, she’s not the one pulling off the horse in this). I have to say that I’ve got even more respect for her as an actress than I used to... so hopefully that’s the reaction many people will be having. I certainly think this was a good role for her and hope she continues to do some more genre work in future. The Jetty is a pretty good watch and certainly one I’d recommend.

Whispers Underground

Sub Stack

Whispers Underground
by Ben Aaronovitch
Gollancz
ISBN: 9780575097667

Whispers Underground, by Ben Aaronivitch, is the third of this writer’s Rivers Of London series and, I have to say, I really do like this set of novels (and thankfully, there are a fair few of them still to explore, since I caught up with these late in the game and, as far as I can tell, he’s still writing them). A quick summation for those who are not familiar with the series... these novels deal with the exploits of a British copper called Peter Grant with various other supporting characters and are kinda like Harry Potter for adults... if Harry Potter worked in a small, barely tolerated magical division of the British police.

The first novel (reviewed here) found Peter and his unfortunate partner Lesley, stumbling into this section of the force due to various things which happen to him and he is taken under the wing of a centuries old (the age is doubtful and not revealed as yet in the books I’ve read) teacher called Nightingale. I say that Lesley is unfortunate because, during that first adventure, her face fell off and no amount of plastic surgery, to date, has been able to fix this (at least by the third book). However, in the second novel, Moon Over Soho (reviewed here), she demonstrates a similar gift for magic as Peter by the end of that one and so is back in this one as a full fledged apprentice, staying at The Folly with Peter, Nightingale and sinister housekeeper Molly.

This one is more of the same but it also, again, has a slightly different flavour to it, starting off with the murder, on a tube train track, of the son of an American ambassador and leading to somewhere I really wasn’t expecting... but which is a great ‘take’ on the title of the novel by the time you get there. While the previous one had more of an emphasis on action than the first, this one dials some off that back again but it’s never less than entertaining. The ambassador’s son was stabbed to death with the shard of a broken pot and, because Peter is becoming sensitive to the remnants of magic, he realises that magic had been used to fashion the particular pot that is identified as the murder weapon. So things go from there as he joins the homicide squad but also separately investigates the magical stuff while the investigation is ongoing.

He’s hampered and helped in this by a wealth of new characters, some of whom I’m guessing may return in later books, like a female FBI agent who inevitably learns of the existence of magic, in no uncertain terms, while she’s tagging along and following Peter and Lesley in their investigations. And there are some really nice sequences to this, set underground in both the tube system in London and the sewer system... and even deeper than that when Peter is left for dead in a collapsed tunnel made by an ‘earthbender’ who can burrow through solid ground at speed.

The time is a lot more compressed than I thought it would be in relation to the previous stories. It’s clear that while this is the third novel, the events of the first book only took place about a year before. The book is structured over the space of one week on the approach to Christmas day, with section headings taking on the name of the day and chapter headings created from the areas of London in which Peter finds himself at any given time (the book is told completely from first person narrative stance by the main protagonist). Also, although the main plot is nothing to do with the previous novel, which left things dangling in the air in terms of the villain of the piece for that one, there are certainly lingering encounters at two points with that particular menace... the writer dangling these scenes because he obviously doesn’t want the reader to forget that villain, who is obviously going to be a kind of ‘arch nemesis’ for Peter, Lesley and Nightingale at some future date.

And, as the others in the series, there’s a fair few bits of pop culture reference thrown into the mix. For example, the elvish language as created by J. R. R. Tolkien turns up on one of the pots... and being as it’s not the ‘real elvish’ language of the world of these books, it’s only Peter who recognises it enough to get it translated. There’s also a nice reference to the British horror movie Death Line, which is also set in the London Underground system and which I still, amazingly, haven’t got around to watching. And I was also pleased, bearing in mind when this book was written (before the Chibnal era) that Peter and his family all gather and watch the Doctor Who Christmas Special each year.

And I think I’ve revealed as much of Whispers Underground as I want to other than to say that, in the last chapter, there's a nice hook when one of Peter’s new ‘colleagues’ tells him about a ‘talking fox’ she has been communicating with. So I’m guessing that’s a nice little set up for something coming in a later novel, for sure. I absolutely loved Whispers Underground and will definitely continue on to the next one at some point soon... hopefully this year if time permits.

Livid

Livid Let Die

Livid
by Patricia Cornwell
Sphere Books
ISBN: 9781408725818

Warning: There will be some spoilers of a plot element which makes itself known fairly early on in the book but, yeah, if you want to go in completely spoiler free then please don’t read this.

Livid is the latest in Patricia Cornwell’s long running series featuring forensic pathologist Dr. Kay Scarpetta and, as regular readers of this blog may remember, it’s also my annual Christmas ritual to start the new Cornwell book on Christmas day.

This one takes place in just a couple of locations and once again, like many of Cornwell’s recent books, it takes place over a very short space of time. This one, for example, is written first person view from Scarpetta’s point of view (as is usually but, not quite always, the case) and takes place over the course of... not quite two days. Maybe around 30 - 35 hours of a time frame done in ‘real time’, or as near to that as you can get with via the written word. This kind of approach seems to suit Cornwell well and makes for a very intense and suspenseful time for the reader. As is sometimes the case on these things, there is one last follow up chapter which takes place a week later and which the writer uses to explain and sum up the various plot threads and address their resolutions.

This one starts off with the end of a day in court where Kay is being picked on and badgered as a witness by the prosecution of a very high profile case, which has transformed the locality of her and her crew into a powder keg of an angry population who could get violent at any time. However, while the case in court is important, it’s what happens away from the court, simultaneous to those events, which bring in the meat and bones of the book. The Judge in the trial is a very old friend of Scarpetta’s and, while this is going on, the Judge’s sister is found murdered in a macabre manner at the family home. It’s up to Kay, pushing against political red tape which means her no good outcome, to investigate as she begins to uncover a weaponised ‘microwave’ gun and stumbles headlong upon yet another corpse in her investigation.

It’s nice that nobody really gets left out in this one in terms of Cornwell’s extended Scarpetta family, either. Chiefly it’s about Kay and her right arm Marino investigating these things but, the plot also involves her niece Lucy (one of the best characters in these books), Kay's criminal behaviour specialist husband Benton Wesley and even her annoying sister Dorothy, who by this point in her adventures is married to Marino. Plus the usual extra cast of colourful and deadly characters who are both aiding and abetting her investigation.

It’s well written and, unlike other brilliant crime writers who end each chapter on a revelation, is fairly straight on with the narrative, allowing the unfolding events to do the work rather than resort to mini cliffhangers to keep the audience engaged (which is, honestly, not a problem for me, I love that kind of writing also but it’s nice to see a master at work who doesn’t feel she needs to do that all the time). It’s also, as I’ve gotten used to with Cornwell lately, quite frightening. Not because of the scenarios she dreams up but because, as well connected and meticulously well researched as Cornwell always is, you know you are looking at something which could indeed happen or, quite probably, has happened. So when you read about a microwave weapon that can take out security cameras and cook your brain at the same time without any normal means of detection... you have to start worrying about the state of weaponised technology we’ve reached now. I mean, the idea of a directed microwave gun is certainly nothing new... I was reading about it in Doc Savage novels of the 1930s where he was faced with such a threat (although I don’t think the character had a modern name for such a weapon until a partial sequel to a particular pulp written in the early 1990s). But the fact that Cornwell is now writing about them as a matter of fact is absolutely terrifying.

Now, I have one nit pick with this one and that’s when Scarpetta uses the phrase ‘reasonable certainty’. My dogmatic brain tells me that you are either certain about something or not. However, it might be that it’s a specific legal term and... oops, I just blundered. Here we have writing as it happens folks. I just did a Google search on the phrase mid sentence and, it’s indeed a legal term and not an error after all. So, yeah, if I’m nit picking anything at all it’s maybe a clarification of that for the less informed reader but... hmm... yeah... running through my own wet paint and moving swiftly on. Forget I said anything. Don’t talk down to the readers, for sure.

Okay... my only other thing worthy of perhaps me mentioning is that I was pretty sure the book was going to have a big set piece of an end game where Scarpetta herself is targetted with the microwave gun and, yeah, it’s a cliché perhaps but that definitely happens and, frankly, I wouldn’t have it any other way. This is a writer giving her audience what they want in terms of the end pay off and Cornwell certainly doesn’t steer away from it here.

And that’s me done for another year on Patricia Cornwell’s latest novel, Livid. It’s a ritual I enjoy going through time and again and one of the bright and comfortable spots of my life, truth be told. Once again the writer delivers a taut, suspenseful and utterly compelling page turner of a mystery which rewards the reader at every twist and turn. And, as usual, I can’t wait ‘til the next one.