Reading, watching, listening

Pro Bono – Seicho Matsumoto (Kodansha USA)

While in Australia I picked up a copy of Matsumoto's Points and Lines reissued now as the more romantic and literary sounding Tokyo Express (Penguin Classics, 2022) with a matte cover of a woman staring out a train window. The 1970 Kodansha International edition – glossy paperback, man in a raincoat – puts the map of Japan at the front of the novel because it's crime; the new edition puts it at the back because it's literature. The 1970 version is correct: a non-Japanese reader requires the map because geography is crucial to the plot. Practicalities aside, do new readers require such framing to appreciate this classic novel? Matsumoto and his contemporaries are well-constructed and good reads – anyone can enjoy. Fedoras off, as always, to the translators. (Pro Bono is translated by Andrew Clare.)

Also re-reading old Delacorta novels, Stanton Samenow's Inside the Criminal Mind, James Bridle's The New Dark Age. 

Poker Face

Liking this very much. Episode two written by Alice Ju was just superb. The series is a homage to 1970s Saturday night mysteries with the same strengths and weaknesses – it tapers off as it goes on, and Charlie's psychic ability causes plot problems, but it's a hell of a lot of fun. Writers for Columbo described that show as one of the most challenging gigs of its day. Creators Richard Levinson and William Link speak about it in depth here. Note that the show's format upset studio executives terribly – they could have noted it to to death – yet audiences didn't seem to mind.

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