In the opening to Sergio Leone’s 1971 film, Duck, You Sucker (aka A Fistful of Dynamite),there’s what one might consider a nod to Sam Peckinpah. All you see is Rod Steiger’s bare feet spread apart as he urinates on a tree trunk that’s crawling with ants. The camera pans down as the tiny insects are washed away in a flood. Two years prior, Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch opened with a famous scene where a group of youngsters are poking sticks at a couple of scorpions being attacked by fire ants. The kids end up setting the insects and eight-legged creatures on fire.

When Leone had originally conceived Duck, You Sucker, he wrote it for an American director because he had grown tired of the Western genre, and The Last Picture Show’s Peter Bogdanovich was an early candidate. But after Bogdanovich’s departure, Peckinpah agreed to direct only to be purportedly turned down by United Artists for financial reasons (arguably, the sole competition Leone had at the time, or since, was Peckinpah – what a union of filmmaking that would have been!). Still, in what would become one of his last Westerns, Leone directs a mini-masterpiece, albeit not as well-known as Once Upon a Time in the West and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, in a genre that forty years later is continuing to feel his influential impact and emulate his style.

[Things are about to heat up...]

We've already learned earlier this week what happens when you mix beer and the Australian outback, and it doesn't end well. Luckily, for Rod Sommerville, 54, of Australia, his story doesn't end in tragedy – it ends in beer.

Sommerville was bit by an eastern brown snake, one of the most highly venomous snakes in Australia – and that place is deadly! After returning home and calling for an ambulance, Sommerville calmly sat down and drank a nice, cold beer.

“I said to myself, 'if I'm going to [die], I'm going to have a beer,”' he told the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin.

Sommerville was treated with the anti-venom and all ends well. That leaves only one thing left to say: Cheers!

 And here we go. This is the episode where I discover I’m really in Twin Peaks, ensconced fully in David Lynch. I’ll give a brief rundown of some of the episode particulars and the way the plot is developing, but I want to get to the end of the episode, to the moment where this show becomes the show I’ve always heard about.

First though, things kick off with a scene so odd, one can only wonder at it. The Hornes (the family of high school femme fatale Audrey Horne, played by Sherilyn Fenn) are having dinner when Mr. Horne’s brother Jerry shows up. Mr. Horne and Jerry then proceed to scarf down fistfuls of baguettes in a grotesque display that made me think immediately of the short films of Louis C.K. Does this scene of absurdist comedy exist for any reason other than to be absurdist comedy? I don’t think so. It’s sorta funny, but it’s mostly odd—and that’s its real function, to create in the episode’s first scene a sense of discombobulation. At its root, absurdism is about thwarting the deep human desire to find meaning. We watch these two grown men yelling at each other through moist mouthfuls of bread, and we don’t know what the hell is going on. You don’t know what the hell is going on? David Lynch seems to say. Good, then let’s get started.

[This show sure knows how to mess with your mind...]

The problem with serial killers and psychopaths in fiction, in general, is that they are banal. If you want to be realistic, the story remains the same: we make our own monsters, and the only mystery is why every tortured child doesn’t become like their abuser. But part of the point of True Detective is that we live in circles, and live out the same stories. With serial killers, it is just more distinct: ritualized reenactment of the story at the core of their being, through their own lens, and inflicted upon others.

The finale brings us full circle in many ways, and the spoilers are after the jump.

[Let's see how this thing ends...]

Zoinks! This Friday night brings the limited theatrical and video on-demand release of the movie Veronica Mars, crowd-funded at lightspeed by fans of the iconic tv girl detective of the 'oughts from Neptune, California. Here's the trailer, with plenty of the signature snark, showing how they'll work in the Then and Now of it all. We're looking forward to it! How about you?

If the popularity of writers such as Donald Ray Pollock, Cormac McCarthy, Daniel Woodrell and Frank Bill is anything to go by, rural noir is a big deal in the United States.

While it may not be anywhere near as well-known, for my money, the 1961 novel Wake In Fright by Australian writer Kenneth Cook is up there with the best of them. The film adaption of Wake In Fright hit Australian cinemas in 1971. Forty-three years later and it’s hard to think of comparable piece of cinema that has come out of the country.

Wake In Fright was a blistering take on three of the central features of the 1960s white Anglo Saxon culture in Australia: mateship, the romance of the outback, and drinking. Especially drinking.

[It always starts with just one drink...]

Bad Machinery: The Case Of The Good Boy by John Allison is the second volume in the web comic series about the middle grade sleuths of Griswald's Grammar School in Tackleford, England (available March 12, 2014).

I have a huge weakness for John Allison’s Bad Machinery series. While I love most of his work, there’s something about his tales of two rival teams of young adolescent sleuths that makes them very dear to my heart. The girls’ team consists of the responsible, if poor, Shauna; her best friend, the irrepressible Lottie, and Mildred, the rebellious product of an extremely left-wing upbringing. On the boys’ team, you have quiet, handsome Jack; sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued policeman’s son, Linton, and sensible, resourceful Sonny, who is also Mildred’s cousin. Jack and Shauna are sort of dating, but careful to keep it quiet, partly in case anyone on their teams should take umbrage, and partly to avoid teasing from their wider social circles. Goodness knows, Sonny gets enough teasing just as a result of being related to Mildred:

Linton: Are you coming down to the park tonight?

Sonny: No, I'm busy.

Linton: Is it Naturecraft Folk? Leaf touching? A big night of leaf touching.

Sonny: We don't touch leaves.

Linton: NOT EVER?

Sonny: My cousin is coming round. I have to be in.

Linton: A play date! A play date with MILDRED! A tea party with hair brushing and teddies and pony stories!

Sonny (deadpan): Sometimes the pony stories are so good that we don't even get round to the hair brushing.

Jack: Are we going to solve a mystery soon? Other than the mystery of why Linton isn't going to have any friends soon. Because that's not really a mystery.

[Let's go to the carnival...]

If you’ve been pining for the return of Christine Cagney and Mary Beth Lacey since they solved their last case back in 1988, I have some good news for you.

Even if you’ve never heard of Cagney &  Lacey (perish the thought!), listen up.

The girls are back in town—except this time the girls are Janet Scott and Rachel Bailey and the town is Manchester, England. The ITV series Scott & Bailey, available on some Public Television stations (including WGBH in Boston, KCET and KPBS in southern California, and WLIW in the New York area), is close enough to Cagney & Lacey to be an unmistakable homage, yet original enough to stand on its own.

[Let’s hear it for the girls...]

After the pilot episode of the series set up the town and the central mystery of homecoming queen Laura Palmer’s murder, the first regular episode, “Traces to Nowhere,” begins to expand the canvas and deepen that mystery. FBI Agent Cooper, after securing a superior cup of java, questions a young man named James Hurley (played by James Marshall) about a video that shows Laura and her friend Donna (Lara Flynn Boyle) and hints at the presence of an unseen third person. Hurley admits that he shot the video, and that he was indeed having an affair with Laura, cheating with her behind the back of her batshit boyfriend Bobby Briggs, but he denies having anything to do with her death. We believe him, and so does Cooper.

Meanwhile, we get a closer look at the abusive marriage of the waitress Shelley and her asshole husband Leo the truck driver. Shelley is carrying on an affair with Bobby Briggs, but Leo’s got more than few secrets of his own. He’s bringing drugs into town (a lot of drugs apparently, since Bobby owes him $10,000) and he’s concealing a bloody shirt. When Shelley hides the shirt from him, Leo beats her with a bar of soap in a sock.

[You can't trust anyone...]

It seems as if there are certain perks that come with being James Bond, and we're not just talking about the women, gadgets, and suave one-liners. As if all that wasn't enough, listen to the deal that current Bond Daniel Craig was offered by Aston Martin after filming his Bond debut Casino Royale  – any Aston Martin car, anytime he wants to go for a spin. And not just any old spin – a spin around Aston Martin's private racetrack.

Craig's deal is good for any model at any time. But Craig doesn't own an Aston Martin, owing to the fact that the luxury of the car would be wasted in a city landscape like London. Maybe he's waiting for another day.

All we know is that for a man whose car rides have a knack for ending in explosions, Aston Martin better hope it has good insurance.

It’s me again, kittens. Your friendly neighborhood Bibliotherapist, and believe me when I tell you that I know what’s ailing you. Yes, you. And you, too. Gather round, chumps and listen up.

As I write this now, we are out of salt, out of sand, and out of patience. I love the winter. Really, I do. It’s just right in my wheelhouse, with all the staying inside, all the cups of tea and cocoa (with whiskey), all the snuggling down to read.

But really? I’ve had enough. And when I have had enough, you know enough has been had by all.

But there’s nothing to be done about it, except settle in for another storm. So here’s my reading list for combating the Snowbound/Cabin Fever situation. Some of them feature snowbound detectives and manor houses, so you’ll know you’re not alone. Some feature sunny and summery vacation spots to give you something to look forward to. Others, well…sometimes it’s good to watch somebody else go on a murderous rampage, so you don’t have to do it yourself.

The Sittaford Mystery by Agatha Christie

Hail to the Queen, baby. Nobody can make a snow day pass more quickly than Dame Agatha can. And while The Sittaford Mystery has neither Miss Marple and her knitting bag, nor Poirot and his little gray cells, it gets extra points for featuring not only a snowbound manor house, but also a murder predicted by a Ouija Board, which is always a plus.

Recommended beverage: Earl Grey Tea with Brandy

[More mystery medicine ahead!]

Here’s how it commenced: One night when I was twelve, maybe thirteen, I caught the film Ten Little Indians on TV. It was the 1965 version, not the best (see 1945’s Then There were None) but compelling all the same. The set-up and execution (literally!) really grabbed me: Take ten strangers, strand them in an isolated mansion, and toss in some shadowy past sins, a slew of quirky murders, and an embedded killer, and what have you got? The beginning of a Christie reader.  

Not long after that evening, I learned that the person who’d dreamed up that dastardly little soiree was a rather renowned Englishwoman, well-born and cultured, who’d been responsible for scores of cold-blooded murders. That week I invested in my first Agatha Christie novel. It was a Dell paperback called Murder After Hours (aka The Hollow.) The cover art reminded me of the Golden Book Encyclopedia covers: a collection of seemingly random objects arranged in still-life. Here, scattered upon a window ledge, were a glowing flashlight, a crumpled note, a teacup and a revolver. Just outside the cracked windowpane, a large owl—shorthand for all things mysterious—sat on a bare black branch and stared forward menacingly. Good stuff. 

[Keep Reading, It's What Agatha Would Have Wanted...]

...baby name expert [Laura Wattenberg] took stock of the increase in gun and hunting-themed baby names. Her statistics [from 2002-2012] show a steady rise in firearm nomenclature.... “Colt, Remington, and Gauge have all soared, and Gunner is much more common than the traditional name Gunnar.”

Ruger is also a surprising new star among current boys' names. But what about the girls?

According to Wattenberg, the fastest growing name for girls in the past year was Cataleya, the main character in the movie Colombiana, where Zoe Saldana plays a child of murdered parents who grows up to be an assassin.

Read the rest by Abby Haglage at The Daily Beast for more unusual trends in baby names. Apparently, by New Mexico state law, you can't name your kid Scrotum anymore. Killjoys.

Providence Rag, the third book in the Liam Mulligan series by Bruce DeSilva, forces a journalist to dig through his town's archives in order to keep a convicted serial killer in jail (available March 11, 2014).

Bruce DeSilva, 2011 Edgar winner for Best First Novel, reflects his 41 years as a journalist in his new novel, Providence Rag, a crime novel inspired by a true story.

The captivating beginning of Providence Rag describes the thoughts of a convicted serial slasher, Kwame Diggs, who is at the heart of this novel. Here, Diggs is a child torturing a grasshopper.

“The grasshopper struggles, its six legs making a faint scratching sound as they rake the stone. The boy burns the legs off one by one, and the scratching stops. Carefully, he amputates each antenna. A brown, unblinking eye stares up at him, pleading for an end to this…”

In the end of the scene, Diggs is amazed at his power:

 “With a start, he feels a swelling in his jeans. He wonders: Am I God?”

Many chapters are introduced with Diggs’s twisted thoughts as he grows into full adolescence driven by sexual needs and the physical power to fulfill those needs.

He lingered under the tree, giving her time to fall asleep. Then he laid his binoculars in the pine needles, crawled out from under the branches, vaulted her white picket fence, and crossed the wet grass to the rear door. There, an overhead lamp was burning. He reached up and gave the bulb a twist, extinguishing the light.
He tried the door. It was locked. He considered breaking a pane of glass to reach the inside latch, but that would make too much noise. Instead, he edged along the back of the house, looking for another way inside.

[Hold on while I go make sure my door is locked...]

Candles can be soothing, aromatic, and perfect for adding some warmth to a cold winter's night. But if you prefer a side of “creepy critter” with your candles, these might just be the ones for you. These candles will be available at PyroPet later this month, just in time to send those winter blues running—or maybe just send you running away screaming “Kill it, kill it with fire!” Either way, we think it'll be a fun addition!

Brooklyn Graves by Triss Stein is the second traditional mystery featuring historian Erica Donato, who'll research Tiffany glass as well as the murder of a family friend (available March 4th, 2014).

Erica Donato is a single mother of a teenage daughter and an overworked, underpaid, dissertation-writing apprentice historian. In the space of one twenty-four hour period, all of the balls she has been juggling drop around her. At work, she is assigned a historical research project involving the Tiffany family—yes, that Tiffany. Between exploring dilapidated mausoleums containing Tiffany artwork in Green-Wood Cemetery and digging through turn of the century letters, Erica must complete all of her other academic work.

Then Erica’s daughter, Chris, drops a bombshell. A good friend of the family, Dima, who worked as a custodian at Chris’ school, has been killed. He was shot through the head and found lying on his front lawn. In the days after the news breaks, Erica tries to help her friend, Natalya, Dima’s wife, navigate the waters of police interviews and grief. However, as she works to help Natalya, Erica discovers there’s more to this family than meets the eye.

And history doesn’t always stay in the past.

Brooklyn Graves is the second novel in the Erica Donato series. Here history meets modern Brooklyn. With her contacts and background in New York history, Erica is where the past and present meet. She sees connections and links where others don’t.

Neat, historical touches are woven throughout the story. Erica’s first brush with Tiffany artwork takes place, macabrely enough, in a cemetery: Green-Wood Cemetery. There are mausoleums with stained glass windows attributed to Tiffany’s work. Erica visits the cemetery with the preeminent Tiffany expert, Dr. Thomas Flint. Together they learn there may have been damage to the windows, a circumstance that greatly bothers Dr. Flint and causes Erica a mountain of follow-up work.

[The broken-windows theory of solving murders?]

Board Stiff by Annelise Ryan is the 5th in the Mattie Winston Mystery series about a small-town coroner who'll investigate the death of a nursing home owner (available March 4, 2014).

Mattie Winston is a nurse-turned-coroner by profession, living in a small town in Wisconsin. Mattie is tough, never dainty, and sweet on Steve Hurley, a local homicide detective whose ex-wife, Kate, just moved back in with him. When Kate shows up on his doorstep, Hurley finds out that she’s not so much his ex-wife as his current wife (since she never signed the divorce papers) and she’s not so much alone, as she's traveling with the 15 year-old daughter that he never knew he had. Feeling bad, Hurley lets them stay with him, causing Mattie to enter a downward slide. Losing your boyfriend is one thing, but finding out he’s still married and has a daughter is more than most people can handle.

As the story opens, we find Mattie attending a mandatory therapy session, ordered by her boss, Izzy, at the coroner’s office. It’s a requirement to getting her old job back, which she desperately wants. She might as well work for the coroner if she’s not going to date Hurley. Since they broke up, the conflict of interest issue is a moot point. In addition, she’s been spending a little too much time at the casino, and kind of needs to stop.

[Troubles beget troubles...]