Nov 15, 2009

murder mysteries!

our local weekly newspaper had halloween photos, and one was of a group of people dressed up as the characters in CLUE! colonel mustard, miss scarlet, the whole gang was there with a rope, a candlestick, so funny!
yesterday i was involved up close in a new kind of mystery. for years i've read mystery novels, working through all the classics, then on to the ones with great characters, the ones in interesting settings, then i stopped for awhile. lately i've read a couple of unusual ones.
one is the first of a series from Cuba, translated from Spanish, Havana Red, by Leonardo Padura. the story is told by a Cuban cop working on a case in contemporary Cuba involving the murder of a gay man dressed in drag. the writing is great, and it has a literariness unusual in mysteries.
the policeman's interactions with suspects and friends illuminate some of the mysteries of Cuba itself and what life there has been like in the past few decades. the internal reactions of the main character, confronted with gays and female impersonators, are especially fascinating.
oh, and the new kind of mystery i was involved in is one that is taking place in Second Life even as it is being written as a serial on a blog! the doctor in Second Life who is investigating the murder took me to see the crime scene, the bloodstains, the body on the table in the lab awaiting the post mortem, and a few of the suspects!
reading a serial on a blog is tricky, you have to sort of rewind it to the first post to begin. but the pictures are beautiful! there are other amazing tales on this blog, too, if you like swashbuckling adventure and explosions!

1 comment:

  1. Awww, thanks mate!

    Hey, I was listening to Radio 4 at the weekend and they were raving about a series of mystery/cop novels set in post WW1 Germany - see if you can find them!

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