2019 thriller, thirteenth and as of this writing last in the series about Charlie (Charlotte) Fox, former soldier and currently private bodyguard. After stumbling into an ambush aimed at someone else, Charlie quickly jumps from unemployed into a new bodyguarding gig. With an arms dealer, but you can't have everything, right?
Also known as "more stuff by me that you can buy".
I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved list parsing and combinations. (Note that this closes today.)
1985 SF, fifth of its series. A stolen ballistic missile submarine is somewhere out there in time…
2019 urban fantasy, third and to date last of its series. Dr Greta Helsing is invited to step in as clinical resident at a spa for mummies. But something very strange is going on…
I ran another mini-convention for the community from discussion.tekeli.li, as well as local gamers.
2019 romance, third in the Reluctant Royals series. Nya Jerami, daughter of the man who tried to overthrow the Thesolan government, finds herself thrown together with Prince Johan Maximillian von Braustein, bad boy darling of the tabloids…
1995 romantic drama, dir. Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy; IMDb / allmovie. Two people meet on a train, and decide to spend the night exploring Vienna.
2019 comic fantasy, second and to date last of the Inspector Paris series. The invasion from fantasyland has been repelled, but things aren't quite back to normal.
I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved list testing and matrix reconstruction. (Note that this is open until 19 February 2023.)
2012 military SF, ninth of this ongoing series. After the events of the previous book, Daniel Leary and the Princess Cecile are sent to get a privincial admiral moving in the right direction to head off a war-starting coup. Of course it's always more complicated than that.
2011 mystery, third in the series (police plus amateur detection). When a team looking at coastal erosion turns up six bodies, Ruth Galloway, a forensic anthropologist just back from maternity leave, inevitably gets involved.
This Meetup-based boardgames group continues to meet in the Britannia.
1973 mystery, eleventh in the series about Superintendent Henry Tibbett. Henry and his wife Emmy visit her sister Jane, the local Cruelty Lady (representative of the RSPCA). A local character has been imprisoned for vehicular manslaughter, and Jane ends up fetching and looking after his floating population of dogs… but should it be two or three of them?
2012 historical drama, dir. Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, John Goodman: IMDb / allmovie. How to get six American State Department employees out of revolutionary Tehran? The CIA pretends to make a film…
2019 romantic fantasy, fourth of its loose series. Kate Davies is a Guard, one of the magical police force of England. There was more interesting work when the men were off at the Great War, but what's left is better than nothing. Her new assignment is to help out Giles Lefton, mathematics professor and puzzle-solver, as he tries to solve the riddle of a country house that has suddenly appeared, surounded by a mass of roses.
I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved list searching and directory evaluation. (Note that this is open until 12 February 2023.)
Here's how I use graphical emacs as the working editor on a remote machine.
1956 police procedural, third in the 87th Precinct series. A young man is found hanging from his barred window, but he clearly died of an overdose first. What's going on?
2011 science fiction, dir. Joe Cornish, John Boyega, Jodie Whittaker: IMDb / allmovie. The aliens picked on the wrong gang.
2018 urban fantasy, second of its series. Dr Greta Helsing is in Paris for a conference on unnatural medicine. But other people are there too.
2012 audio adaptation by Joy Wilkinson of Christie's 1945 mystery, in three 30-minute episodes. The feckless and erratic wife dies of cyanide in the champagne at her birthday party; suicide, everyone supposes. Then a year later her husband recreates the event, and dies the same way…
2017 SF, fifth of its series. Montgomery and the Mage-King's forces are cleaning up the conspiracy… but someone else is ahead of them.
I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved various sorts of list filtering. (Note that this closes today.)
2014 crime, third in the Sean Duffy series. In 1983, Sean Duffy finds himself fitted up and thrown out of the RUC, but destiny hasn't finished with him yet as he's brought back to track down one of the Maze escapees, an expert bomb-maker who's dropped completely out of sight.
Back to the boardgame café.
2002 mystery. In a small town in upstate New York, a child is left on the church steps. A few days later, a young woman who's recently given birth is found murdered in the snow…
Some trailers I've seen recently, and my thoughts on them. (Links are to youtube. Opinions are thoroughly personal. Calibration: I want a trailer to tell me what's different about this film; the marketers want it to tell me why it's like all the others…)