Books: Endless Night By Agatha Christie (1967)

“Gipsy’s Acre was a truly beautiful upland site with views out to sea – and in Michael Rogers it stirred a child-like fantasy. There, amongst the dark fir trees, he planned to build a house, find a girl and live happily ever after. Yet, as he left the village, a shadow of menace hung over the land. For this was the place where accidents happened. Perhaps Michael should have heeded the locals’ warnings: ‘There’s no luck for them as meddles with Gipsy’s Acre.’ Michael Rogers is a man who is about to learn the true meaning of the old saying ‘In my end is my beginning.’” 

Endless Night is an interesting fun, briskly paced thriller, and despite being well into her late 70s at the time, Christie captures the voice of a young twenty-something narrator (and his many layers). Narrated by Rogers (who becomes more amoral and deeply layered as the tale progresses), the book works primarily, I think, because it stays focused on the two main characters. This is not her traditional cozy mystery/whodunit she was well known for, so I can see why the reviews in 1967 questioned her departure from the norm. 

Perhaps, also, because this tale is really focused on two main characters, they are given more depth and dimension than her typical crime thrillers with multiple folks. While Fenella (Ellie) Guteman comes across as typical character Christie does create (the super rich heiress) she is still somewhat three dimensional Still, any hardcore Christie fan will note there are some patented aspects she’s added, including the sometimes Gothic atmosphere that ran through her earlier work, and the cursed land (which adds a bit of potential superstitions to the book). I have to admit that despite some of those aspects, I was caught off guard by many things that I should’ve seen earlier. 

While I spent my early youth and teen years reading her novels, it’s been a decade or more since I read her regularly (I did read Halloween Party back in 2022 and 4.50 From Paddington in 2020, as well as Death in the Clouds that same year). I gave her up about the time I really got into fantasy novels in my late teens and early twenties. So maybe I’ve forgotten what a brilliant writer she truly was, how layered she can be. While her books were sometimes wildly uneven at times, she was still writing popular fiction and adding a lot of social commentary on British society, poking fun at it, and dealing with dark subjects that appealed to her and, hopefully, her broader audience. And her, it is written, she wrote this book in a flurry of about six weeks, while her other books generally took about three to four months to complete. And you can tell, as the prose moves the book swiftly away. 

I can also see why this book has been adapted several times, as it seems prime for TV or a movie; that includes a British ITV version that adds Miss Marple in 2013, a French TV version in 2021, a new TV version coming from BBC and Britbox International for 2026 and new theatrical version being planned for 2027. 

Mostly though, Endless Night works really well. It has eeriness to it and offers a splendid twist which then makes thing earlier book become more obvious. 

The title is a reference to William Blake's "Auguries of Innocence”: 

"Every night and every morn,
Some to misery are born,
Every morn and every night,
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night."

Books: Project Hail Mary By Andy Weir (2021)

“Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and Earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company. His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species. And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone. Or does he?” 

For the most part, I enjoyed this novel, which plays out like a bunch of science experiments, with a wacky buddy comedy and first contact thrown in for good measure. Andy Weir is a wonderfully nerdy man and Ryland (which really just as variation of his Mark Watney character from The Martian) is man-shaped nerdy science textbook in an astronaut suit.  

But he is Watney, which means Weir has the limited ability to create main a character that we’ve not seen before (perhaps why I’ve not read his second novel Artemis?). But this is the problem in a lot of successful media titles, as the publishers want something new, but what they really want is a variation of the first successful book. 

I think the book would’ve been better if told in third person, because with the added flashbacks, the conceit of the book probably would’ve worked better. The way it’s arranged is designed to reveal things to the reader as they happen, but it’s clear that despite all the doom and gloom of an extinction level event on Earth, Grace was to survive. 

I have other issues with the book –the death of the other two astronauts is just too convenient, which made me wonder if Weir cannot create a workable plot and characterization with two additional people to write for. And while the science sounds sound, it becomes so technical that I found myself skipping over the babble. 

Overall this book was fun even it got carried away with the scientific details.

The Rhesus Chart (Book 5 of The Laundry Files) by Charles Stross (2013)

“Bob Howard is an intelligence agent working his way through the ranks of the top secret government agency known as “the Laundry”. When occult powers threaten the realm, they'll be there to clean up the mess - and deal with the witnesses. There's one kind of threat that the Laundry has never come across in its many decades, and that's vampires. Mention them to a seasoned agent and you'll be laughed out of the room (they don’t exist). But when a small team of investment bankers at one of Canary Wharf's most distinguished financial institutions discovers an arcane algorithm that leaves them fearing daylight and craving O positive, someone doesn't want the Laundry to know. And Bob gets caught right in the middle.” 

The Rhesus Chart is the fifth novel in "Laundry" series of Lovecraftian spy thrillers, and set about a month after the previous book, The Apocalypse Codex. While the bureaucratic aspect of poking fun at corporations still exists here, I found this tale not to be as cohesive is some aspects (the folks testing their new vampire abilities is a hoot, though), so I felt the book was one long prologue with the last quarter being the main plot. 

There is also the issue –more so here than in the previous books- where narrator Bob needs to stop and tell the reader other parts of the story Bob was not involved in. And he is using information after the fact to fill in certain sections. Stross, as noted, has done this before, but here it becomes an annoying trope. Either write the book from one character POV or write it in third person. Skipping back and forth indicates to me that the story had problems and this was the only way to make it work. 

It’s still a fun and funny book, and by now I’ve learned to really not pay too close attention to all the computer term gobble-gook (if I was a computer nerd and RPG player, some of this would make sense?), but once in a while, I wish he would explain some stuff. We also end with a loss of major character and what it means for Bob, and a potential martial problem between him and Mo (who, unfortunately, is hardly in this tale). 

I’ll be back for book six in the near future…

Books: Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World By Mark Waddell (2025)

“Colin is a low-level employee at Dark Enterprises, a Hell-like multinational corporation solving the world’s most difficult problems in deeply questionable ways. After years of toiling away in a cubicle, he's ready to climb the corporate ladder and claim the power he's never had. The only problem is, he’s pretty sure he’s about to be terminated. Like, terminated. That's tough, because his BFF has just set him up with a great guy. In fact, maybe he's a little too great. And asks a lot of questions. When Colin meets a shadowy figure promising him his heart’s deepest desire, he can’t resist the urge to fast-track his goals. In return for a small, unspecified favor, he asks for the one thing that will improve his life: a promotion. But that small favor unleashes an ancient evil. People in New York are disappearing, the world might be ending, and Management is starting to notice. Getting to the top is never easy, and now it’s up to Colin to save the world. It's the ultimate power move, after all.” 

During the last season of Buffyverse series Angel, our hero vampire took over running the law firm of Wolfram & Hart, which was a powerful national and interdimensional law firm, run by an ancient cabal of demons known as the Senior Partners, who worked through their powerful principal agents in the Circle of the Black Thorn. So in this book, there are some similarities with that company and Dark Enterprise in the often amusing Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World. There is also a large dose of corporate satire mixed in, along with horror and some romance.

 

Part of the fun of the book is Colin himself (though some of the secondary characters come off better), a man who desires power and wants to achieve his goals no matter who gets in his way - but he’s also more empathetic than other anti-heroes. In one way, I don’t see Colin as truly evil, it’s just he sometimes allows horrible things to happen to people and property in pursuant of his goals. But he also explains, near the end of the book, intends to continue working for Dark Enterprise, murdering people, because basically this is him doing self-care and actualizing his self worth! So beyond dealing with therapy issues, it also parodies relationships,  along with taking a sledge hammer to all the selfishness we see every day as we struggle for success.

 

So it’s full of dark humor, with morally gray characters (especially our protagonist) and lots of death and the near destruction of New York. But while all of that is terrible, it's sort of humorous death and destruction (also note that due to its supernatural nature, Dark Enterprise can be rebuilt and restaffed rather quickly, as the entire staff can slaughtered, and the building heavily damaged and within days, it’ll was back to operating condition with the entire staff replaced). And that’s a great distinction. So while Colin really is a maniac, and boyfriend Eric is thicker than a Christmas Yule log, author Waddell is able to keep the balance between humorous fiction and a psychotic murderer as a hero.

 

Not sure if Waddell will write a sequel, but to be honest, there is a TV series somewhere in this book.

Books: Curtain Call to Murder by Julian Clary (2024)

“It is opening night at the London Palladium, and tensions are running high amongst the feuding cast of "Leopard Spots." Amongst them are an ageing lothario, a national treasure, an amateur psychic and a comedian-turned actor all vying for the spotlight. When an on-stage accident forces an unexpected intermission, it is clear only to dresser Jayne that the drama has turned deadly. Can she step out of the wings and identify the killer before it is too late? Or will murder make an encore.” 

Clary does take an interesting, if often tedious, route setting up this whodunit. Instead of starting with the murder, we go roughly 170 pages into the backstory before we get to Peter Milano’s death on stage. I mean, it’s another way to set the table for the murder by giving all the exposition upfront instead of incorporating throughout the book. It tries hard to give the reader a better chance of figuring out who the killer “will be” instead working it out through the rest of the tale. 

Also the story is told from different perspectives: first person diary entries from the protagonist, WhatsApp chats, newspaper articles, and notes from Clary, who exists as a minor character within the tale (I’ve always had issues with authors who insert hyper-reality versions of themselves into their own books. It’s weird and arrogant). 

Clary also gives a piss-poor look at a certain gay character, who while probably does exist in real life, but I still found Gordon a terrible human being. There are a few plot holes that made me role my eyes at, and that’s not even counting some of the typos and sentence structure that should’ve been caught by a better editor. 

In the end, despite attempting (as noted in the prologue) to upset the apple cart in telling these British cosy mysteries, Curtain Call to Murder, while sometimes funny and odd, never fully gels and becomes more than just a bit too campy and trashy, and not very deep, for my tastes.