The Comfort Of Knowing There Is A Solution (To Something, Anything)

Meet me in the Mystery & Thriller Section of this Capricorn season from hell

Happy terrible 2025 and also Capricorn szn! A disproportionate amount of my best friends and favorite people to work with are all Capricorns (ambitious, loyal, determined, with a healthy balance of suspicion and stubbornness, with a dash of sensitivity they hide so well - it sounds about right) - so Happy Terrible Birthday Month to you all (you know who you are) !!! - I’m considering buying you all the Flamingo Estate coffee table book to feed your perfectionist inner witch or the Dyptique Drogerie candle which smells like there’s absolutely nothing wrong going on in this world. Or, you know, both. “Both” actually feels kind of right right now.

Now, in a surprise to no one - I almost didn’t write the newsletter this week again because why does anyone care about anything when the country is equal parts on fire and under snow (if a disaster movie opened with scenes of last week, we’d all yell at the Mark Wahlberg proxy and whoever was cast as his unlikely love interest to GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE ASAP) but then - as always, in times of crisis, fiction came to the rescue.

Specifically, the mystery kind of fiction.

In a past life (read pre-pandemic), I worked on an (elevated, it should be noted) true crime festival. This was in PEAK true crime explosion era, as it was transforming itself from something tawdry to something prestige authors and auteurs were getting on board with (for every Nancy Grace there was Fincher making “Mindhunter”, for every “Forensic Files” there was HBO working on “I’ll Be Gone In The Dark”). Now, obviously times have changed and we are on the other side of that particular hill (Discovery and HBO ARE ONE AND THE SAME (MAX), Peacock has a meta true crime show “Based on A True Story” which is actually pretty charming, etc etc) but the question we got asked by the press by far the most was “Why do we think this genre is so wildly successful?”. Especially with women. Who, as we all know, traditionally are the ones getting murdered, and not doing the murdering. And we did our research and the obvious answer was:

“In an world we cannot control, it is very satisfying to know there is a solution waiting for you at the end of something terrible”

I’ve said it enough times in public that I grew to believe it, but there is something to it. It is the same logic that applies to Dry January pursuers - a desire for control. Everything is an open-ended mess these days. Try as we might, we are not in charge of anything - the economy, the weather, the election, whatever comes after January 20th. So, while we (stubbornly, suspiciously) await the inevitable next bad news - why not solve some things in our head in the meantime.

It also just so happens that I saw the single best thriller I’ve seen in a LOOOOOOONG time and read one of the best thrillers I’ve read in a while in the last week (taking my own medicine and whatnot) so the rest of this newsletter will follow the classic recommendation format, starting with these two:

• Red Rooms (a movie) - I love going down non-English-language movie rabbit holes on itunes (you just need to give into the “Customers also watched” and see where it takes you) because it is truly a treasure trove of original thought. And “Red Rooms” popped up as a result of me loving “The Night Of The 12th” (great movie but don’t go looking for a satisfying ending there) and IT BLEW MY MIND (and Jason’s mind, and as a fair warning, your mind is probably next). A French-Canadian sinister-to-the-point-of-sadistic gem focuses on Kelly-Ann, a gorgeous, clearly neurodivergent full time model and part time online poker hustler (she just loves figuring a game out) who is attending a murder trial of Ludovic Chevalier, a bug eyed sliver of a man accused of killing three blonde teenage girls, filming it, and selling the tapes on the dark web’s so-called “Red Rooms” (a clear homage to Kubrick’s “Shining”). Only two of the tapes are available, the third one is missing, and without revealing too much, what starts out feeling like a classic true-crime junkie journey to the dark side, becomes something so much more. The movie is equal parts shot in a utilitarian manner (the court scenes are all long shots, clean lighting and exposition) and gorgeously OTT (showcasing Kelly-Ann’s life - both personal and professional). The result is a state of constant discomfort, but also something you can’t look away from. One of the quotes on the trailer claimed that this film “out-Finchers Fincher” and I am inclined to agree (it also out-Mann’s “Manhunter” in many ways or at least provides a very 2024 worthy interpretation of that entire vibe - IYKYK). Anyway, a can’t miss.

• Havoc by Christopher Bollen (a book) - I mentioned in my last newsletter that getting my hands on this book (that rare end-of-year genre critical darling) was a big part of my personal journey this Holiday season (which had few more ambitious goals, and was perfect because of it), and so when it finally did arrive I prioritized reading it over an insane pile of other books that (im)patiently await me. And it was great. A tight 240 pages of a 80 something year old woman (who is more sinister than she initially seems, but maybe less sinister than she wants us to believe) and an 8 year old boy (who is a probably evil force to be reckoned with) facing off in a luxury hotel in Egypt, it was a perfect little poison pill for the chaos week we were in. The book is set in current times (well, in that weird, not-quite-post-pandemic window of late-2020-into-2021) but it could be set in 1940s, 1920s, 2050s, whenever. It is very Highsmithian in spirit - meaning claustrophobic and darkly funny and sharing the White Lotus DNA and not at all going in any direction you assume it does initially, and I cannot wait for it to be made into a movie starring the ghost of Maggie Smith and a time traveling 1993 version of Macauley Culkin. Witty, stylish, deadly.

And if these two sound like not your cup of tea, here’s a handful of worthy recs from my brain’s archives:

BOOKS:

• Anything by Lisa Jewell

• Anything by Alafair Burke

• All The Sinners Bleed by SA Crosby

• EARLY stages Louisa Luna (The first two Alice Vega novels in particular)

• The first few Jackson Brodie mysteries by the GREAT Kate Atkinson (“Case Histories” remains a book I think about at least once a month)

• “The Secret Place” by Tana French (to me, her best work)

• Nicci French’s Freida Klein series (starting w/ Blue Monday)

MOVIES/TV:

• Yes, the Fincher opus is flawless for winter: “Girl With The Dragon Tattoo”, both seasons of “Mindhunter”, “Zodiac”, “Gone Girl”

• OG “Prime Suspect” w/ Helen Mirren

• “Unforgotten” - the single best thing BBC did in a long time (4 amazing, heartbreaking seasons w/ Nicola Walker, and an okay 5th one)

• the original Sidney Lumet adaptation “Murder On The Orient Express” (Connery! Redgrave! Bergman! Finney! I could keep going!) as well as the Herbert Ross high camp on the high seas “The Last of Sheila” (we have posters to these two movies framed in our library/TV room, and for good reason). Nothing that came after - from the Branagh Christie Adaptations to “Knives Out”/”Glass Onion” holds a torch to it

Any must read/sees on your end?

Until next time, stay safe and mostly sane out there, friends!