But, at the time of the murder I was watching the Alibi channel
WHAT is it about murder mysteries on the big and small screen that fascinates us? Every night we have a choice of British and American TV series to choose from and, for those with the patience and the eyesight sharp enough to read the subtitles, BBC4 often screens dark, brooding series referred to as “Nordic Noir”.
“Noir” originally described those black and white thrillers of the ’40s and ’50s featuring the likes of Humphrey Bogart, Alan Ladd and Robert Mitchum wearing trench coats and world-weary expressions.
Films noirs were set in seedy nightclubs, grubby top floor offices and rain-soaked streets reflecting lurid neon signs.
And they would always feature a femme fatale who, in the words of Raymond Chandler, possessed “a face to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window”.
There’s never been a better time for mystery fans.
If you’ll kindly join the other suspects in the drawing room, I shall explain why…
On TV we’ve been treated to the final series of Sally Wainwright’s excellent Happy Valley; the sequel to 2019’s Knives Out, entitled Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery starring Daniel Craig as an unorthodox American private eye with a slow Southern drawl and a taste in pastel-coloured fashionwear; and the Gothic mystery The Pale Blue Eye in which a New York detective played by Christian Bale investigates grisly murders at the West Point Academy in 1830, aided by a young Edgar Allan Poe.
Mystery fans will recognise that Bale’s morose detective Auguste Landor is a thinly-veiled version of Auguste Dupin who appeared in the very first detective novel “The Murders In The Rue Morgue” penned in thrown together you know.
In 2023 Agatha Christie’s classic thriller “The Mousetrap” celebrates its 71st year in the West End; a touring version will visit theatres all over the UK; and it’ll open on Broadway for the first time.
This year the copyright on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation Sherlock Holmes runs out, so we can expect a lot of new Holmes books and films, including one in which he’ll be played by Eddie Izzard.
So, if you wanted, you could write a new Holmes mystery.
But make sure you put your name on it before you send it to a publisher, otherwise they won’t know who-dun-it!
I’m too clever for my own good sometimes.