I was thinking about reading the first John Bellairs Johnny Dixon mystery, which is called The Curse of the Blue Figurine, but I logged on to Hoopla and now none of these books are available anymore. So I went on eBay and bought a bunch of them for $30. I didn't buy all of them - I think The Trolley to Yesterday has a really low re-read value for me personally, and I don't think I bought any of the ones that Brad Strickland wrote. I've been working on upkeep on a Substack which is sadnightcrimes.substack.com, it updates on Wednesdays and Sundays. I draw a little illustration for it. I got hit by a truck two weeks ago and it made me a little sore physically, but mentally and emotionally it really knocked me down. I mean, it physically knocked me down also, but the effects were more emotional than anything else. This series is really fun and I have been telling everyone about it. It's set in 1920s New York City, and the first book follows Evie O'Neill, who has been exiled to New York by her parents after one of her "party tricks" reveals that a high class boy - who is of course engaged to a high class girl- has knocked up a lower class girl. Evie can read objects - psychometry - and she winds up in the care of her uncle, who runs the fictional Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult. The first book involves a supernatural murderer, the second a sleeping sickness that affects people who are dreaming, and the third examines what Diviners are and how they came to be. Turns out that there are more Diviners than just Evie, and they all have similar origins - what can her uncle tell her about the mysterious Project Buffalo?
These books are quite long - the first one was a bit of a slow burn but I ran through the last two very quickly. I'm waiting for the library to pull the last one for me - if they don't hurry up I'm going to pop down there and pull it myself. I'm not sure what happened after the first one, but I haven't seen any of the sequels have a cover style like the image above - the design of the covers changed and I don't really like them that much. This one is a little more mysterious, I think. The next book that I'm waiting for, The King of Crows, is the last book, and I'm a little sad about it! I'm not really ready for the end of these fun flapper friends. Usually I never say this, but this would be a really terrific tv series. The rights for a movie were already acquired, but the last book came out in 2020, so I don't know if a project never got off the ground or if the pandemic slowed things down. I don't know if anyone reads my little old blog anymore, but it's useful. I like having it. I think I'm going to leave Twitter pretty shortly. I'm on Bluesky, LiveJournal, and substack. And here.
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AuthorArtist, essayist, divinity school dropout. Here for a good time, not for a long time. Archives
February 2024
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