The Powerhouse by John Buchan is a 1916 thriller mystery about an international secret criminal organization that's absolutely laughable in light of (1) the later course of history and (2) the development of the genre. Readable, pleasant narration, and quite a turn of phrase, but insubstantial.

The Patient in Room 18 by Mignon G. Eberhart is set in a private hospital in the American Midwest in 1929, and that made it interesting at first. It has some gobsmacking passages that it doesn't seem to know are racist ("This other guy was obviously wrong to be prejudiced against this mixed race woman but she is obviously fashionable and lazy because of her Black ancestry" - the enlightened detective). The plot relies on a witness to the first murder waiting a week, then deciding to spill his guts to the narrator in a clump of bushes where anybody could overhear, then refusing to say who did it and running away to get murdered while the narrator is just like "Huh!"

I watched the new Agatha Christie's Seven Dials Mystery, and then reread the book, as I had only a slight recollection of it. The visual design and costumes charmed me, but I was baffled by adaptation choices. Then I watched The Residence, which was much better, and visually lovely as well, as expected from Shondaland.

I stopped reading the works of Freeman Wills Crofts - I read all I could find, but there are more that I haven't yet. The guy was quite prolific. Then I finally got around to reading John Dickson Carr's The Hollow Man, the last book I hadn't read on the bookclub list in Wake Up Dead Man. It was... okay. It did not revise my previously unfavorable opinion of JDC as a mystery writer. It's a fun enough and okay read, but it's not satisfying and the tone and style are... weird. I suppose if I want to articulate this better I'll have to read more of his work.

Anyway, I've been reading some other random early mystery novels since then - AEW Mason (pretty good but some Of Its Time issues), GDH Cole (the majority of the narration is by silly characters whose cluelessness the reader is presumably meant to see through, a narrative technique which makes me gnash my teeth), JJ Connington (better but loses major points for extended scenes of a dumb detective being dumb and his smarter boss being even smugger and more secretive about everything than Sherlock Holmes).

I also have experienced a change of heart, not about the NHL - it's still evil and its culture is toxic and most NHL hockey players suck - but about posting the unfinished hockey WIP with all the names changed. I didn't want to do that from 2016 until like, this month, but now I think I would be okay with it, provided I did finish it (I like the bit I have anyway). I can't at all explain why this feeling changed, though. But clearly we've all been able to process quite a bit about the nature of fanfiction with the names changed since the release of Heated Rivalry.

I keep thinking I want to write something about one of these things, but shingles is making it uncomfortable to sit up with the laptop and type and I keep going, "Fuck it, I have a moderately horrible ailment anyway right now, so lying down and resting is virtuous", and crawling into the flannel duvet tent against the radiator with Sipuli. It's nice in there. In fact at times it's so toasty that I forget it's chilly out in the rest of the house.