I'm cranky: I used up all my Hoopla downloads for the month, so I can't listen to the next Ile-Rien novel (The Wizard Hunters, which has some fun subtext for fans of Hercules & Iolaus).

Oh, It's a series? I guess I have a new series, then.

I've been having trouble getting all the way through books in Libby's 21 days, so I have half-plots of, like 4 books in my head right now. It's not ideal

The Ile-Rien novels are a discontiguous series. [link]

The Element of Fire is a quasi-Elizabethan fantasy. Then you skip forward a couple hundred years to a quasi-Steampunk/Sherlock Holmes fantasy (literally: 2 of the characters are a thinly-veiled Holmes & Watson, and the male lead is kind of Moriarty-ish). That's The Death of the Necromancer, and it's pretty spooky and thrilling. That was her first Hugo nom, I think.

Then The Wizard Hunters begins a trilogy about the Fall of Ile-Rien -- it's invaded by a sorcerous people from another universe, and the lead character is the daughter of the Moriarty guy in the previous book. She's great: super sarcastic, kind of depressed, very entertaining and competent. She has no patience for being thrown into another world full of gods and monsters (and beautiful young men).

Last weekend I tossed most of my Gaiman novels in the dumpster (Good Omens has been reshelved in the P section, and the Sandman collections are tucked back with graphic novels where I'd have to disturb the cat so they're still here for now). Today I've been working on updating LibraryThing since I'd somewhat abandoned it for GoodReads the last several years. When I got to the Gaiman books I deleted them from my LibraryThing library, then tried to do the same in GoodReads. GoodReads won't let me delete them. I'm not trying to change the rating or leave a nasty review, just delete my books. I was happy to do this quietly, but now I want to make A STATEMENT.

How bizarre! I just tried removing a random book from My Books just to check that I could and it was fine.

I was able to remove Robert Galbraith books last night, so they weren't protecting the TERF, just the rapist. I guess Dark Horse dropping him today changed their calculus though because I was able to delete Gaiman's stuff today.

Jeesh

So, one of the main reasons I have kept subscribing to the three magazines I have been getting for practically forever is that sometimes when I really like a short story I can track down everything else by the author and have a new oeuvre to be obsessed with. I feel like it happens more often with Ellery Queen than with Asimov's or F&SF but (a) that might not be true and (b) it's probably offset by F&SF having excellent book review columns that also send me to new-to-me authors and, of course, the other reasons I have for subscribing which do apply to all three. Anyway, EQMM has changed their podcasting from a monthly-ish introduced by the editor story usually read by the author to a biweekly more professional sounding production (that combines with the same thing from AHMM so there is essentially a mystery story every week). I have been catching up with that because that's how I am with podcasts, I ignore them for a long time and then catch up on everything I missed. One of the stories I heard recently was part of a series of short stories that I really like - I think they are being called Wade-Jack mysteries by Libby Cudmore and it turns out there is a novel! So I am all immersed in that and enjoying it soooo much. It's contemporary noir with a detective who used to be a rockstar which I thought would be too gimmicky when I first read the first story but it quickly won me over with the sheer humanity and plausibility of all the characters.

So, recommended, the novel (Negative_Girl) or, if you can get them easily, the stories. I would love if they would be collected in one convenient package but as far as I can tell they have not yet. Cudmore has another novel that is not connected to this series but is also very good The_Big_Rewind

And what drove me to think I had to come here to talk about it - in my trawling through everything I could find that is related to the series I cam across an essay by Cudmore (Unsung Detectives From a Millennial Youth) in which she connects her fondness for Blue's Clues with Humphrey Bogart and Bayliss from Homicide and I had to mention that to erikaj!

Relatedly but not of great importance - did you know there are two anthologies collecting crime stories inspired by the music of Steely Dan? That is more than I would have guessed.

I was a teenager when Blue’s Clues debuted on Nick Jr., but if my little sister was watching when I passed through the living room, I stopped to watch. Or stare, really. Steve wasn’t so much about solving mysteries as me getting all warm and gooey when a lanky, soft-spoken sleuth came on the page (or on the screen). This was later applied to Humphrey Bogart in both The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon, Det. Tim Bayliss on Homicide: Life on the Streets and Det. Dutch Wagenbach on The Shield. And when Steve returned for the Blue’s Big City Adventure in a Bogart-style trench coat and fedora? I had to leave the room. I’m only human, after all.

Wow...no, I didn't know about that...feels like spotting a family resemblance or something.