Back, on a wet Saturday, to this small quarterly boardgames convention in Watford. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.
1992 mystery; fourth in Brett's Mrs Pargeter series (amateur sleuthing). Mrs Pargeter keeps an old friend company at a visit to a health spa, but Bad Things are going on there.
A reader (hi Dave!) suggested extending the supermarket-finder to locate supermarket fuel near motorway junctions.
Naval technothriller, second in the series dealing with Captain Amanda Garrett and the USS Cunningham. As a Chinese civil war turns one-sided, US forces intervene to prevent nuclear holocaust.
1962 detective fiction, first of James's novels of Inspector Adam Dalgliesh. Sally Jupp the housemaid is found strangled in her bed, behind a bolted door. She'd managed to annoy pretty much everyone in the house… but who turned annoyance into murder?
This Meetup-based boardgames group continues to meet at the Marlow Donkey. I missed the last meeting through having been too tired after driving back from the Eastercon.
2015 YA science fiction, first of a trilogy. This morning Kady broke up with her boyfriend Ezra. But as their mining colony is invaded and everyone has to flee for their lives, that fight starts to seem less important.
This was a second pass at the player-written Mansions of Madness scenario we tried last November (but were stymied by software bugs).
1933 mystery, eighth of Sayers' novels about Lord Peter Wimsey. Victor Dean, a copywriter at Pym's Publicity, fell down the office's iron spiral staircase and broke his neck. But his sister, with whom he was living, found a half-finished letter to the management that made her suspicious, and Wimsey goes in as a new copywriter to see what he can learn.
Pyramid, edited by Steven Marsh, is the monthly GURPS supplement containing short articles with a loose linking theme. This time it's the combination of magic and imagination. Will that be different from the Thaumatology issues we've had before?
We have some very nice ceramic-washer taps. But they come with inserts that produce back-pressure and restrict flow, with the aim of shaping the water into a steady stream. Taking them out gives a very ragged flow. To the 3D printer!
1992 mystery, second in Perry's William Monk series (Victorian police work). Over the winter of 1856-1857 in London, Monk is assigned to a new case: a young widow living in her father's house, found stabbed to death in her bed.
Well, my wife wanted a sandwich while we were on the road. And unlike me she is particular about what she likes to eat, so she wanted to find branches of Tesco. This is a job for: COMPUTERS!
2009 science fiction. Gaia Jones just wants to run her snack stand, on the strange alien-human space station orbiting Mars. But one of the aliens dies in her shop, and things start to get extremely complicated.
My copy of the new (second) printing of Black Orchestra has arrived.
2011 historical mystery, first of a series. In Victorian London, Frances Doughty assists her ailing father in his pharmacy; but someone dies after drinking one of their tonics, and he's the obvious person to blame. But Frances is sure there must be more to the tale.
Back to the boardgame café after a couple of months away. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.
2015 science fiction, first of a trilogy. After the AI catastrophe, there are two sorts of colony world: the ones where computers are strictly regulated and monitored, and the ones where they aren't allowed at all. The "analog ship" Fives Full is navigated by slide-rule and sextant.
2018 SF/mystery; fifty-seventh (roughly, or 46th novel) of J. D. Robb's In Death series. A woman is stabbed while watching Psycho in a cinema; there's no obvious motive for killing her. Homicide Lieutenant Eve Dallas soon discovers roughly what's going on, but it'll still be a long twisty road to catching the killer.
2016 short space opera novel, postscript to the Dread Empire's Fall trilogy. Having won battles by means that weren't approved of, Caroline Sula is promoted to a backwater post: Earth. That's fine; it gives her scope to study Terran history. But she's also a large pebble being thrown into a deep pond of convenient arrangements…
1933 collection of twelve short mystery stories, some involving Lord Peter Wimsey.
1997 Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning military science fiction. Sergeant Julian Class runs a "soldierboy" infantry drone through a neural link, in an eternal war against "rebels". But bigger and more frightening things are going on.
This small one-day boardgaming event has been resurrected with new organisers, but still at the same village hall in Deepest Buckinghamshire. At 20-odd people it was quite a bit smaller than the 70 or so who filled the hall on previous occasions, and I'm not sure why. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.
1967 mystery/thriller or romantic suspense. On holiday in Syria and the Lebanon, Christy Mansel runs into her cousin Charles. They decide to drop in on their great-aunt "Lady" Harriet, who's been doing the Lady Hester Stanhope thing and living in the local style in a remote palace. But when Christy steals a march on Charles and goes on her own, she discovers a rather more disturbing situation than she expected…
2004 space opera novella, postscript to the Dread Empire's Fall trilogy. Three years after the Naxid War, new star systems are being opened up for development. Which means that there's lots of scope for serious money to be made, legally or otherwise.
I spent last weekend at the Eastercon. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.
1932 mystery, seventh of Sayers' novels about Lord Peter Wimsey. Harriet Vane, having turned her post-acquittal notoriety into a boost to her writing career, is taking a walking-tour on the south-west coast of England when she discovers a corpse on the beach, still dripping blood.
In principle I'd really like to have an electric car. I think burning fossil fuels is criminally irresponsible, but public transport isn't up to the sort of travel I want to do. So why don't I get one?
2005 space opera, third and final book of Dread Empire's Fall. Gareth Martinez fights the civil war as a naval officer; Caroline Sula leads the resistance on the conquered capital world.
Some trailers I've seen recently, and my thoughts on them. (Links are to youtube. Opinions are thoroughly personal. Calibration: I hate everything.)