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I saw the movie The Haunting, which is based upon this novel, when I was 10 years old. At the time, I wasn’t terribly impressed. But then, I was 10 years old. And parts of the movie stuck with me… dare I say even haunted me. And on rewatching it as an adult, I found it a very effective ghost story.

So I finally got around to reading the book. I was intrigued when I read that Shirley Jackson’s own reaction to the film was more or less the same as my 10-year-old self’s. She said that she and her son “nearly went to sleep” watching it. Obviously, the book must be quite different from the movie!

Or so I thought. But frankly, the first three-quarters of the book are quite similar to the film, so that I could easily picture almost all the scenes as I read them. There was a bit more dialogue in the book (which makes it rather odd that Jackson complained the movie had “far too much talk”) but the characters were largely the same as in the film. The biggest difference is the names: the book’s Eleanor Vance became Eleanor Lance, and the paranormal investigator called Dr. John Montague in the novel became Dr. John Markway.

But the core story is identical: Eleanor is depressed after the death of her mother, for which she feels guilty. Due to a documented association with poltergeist activity in her youth, Dr. Montague invites her to stay at Hill House, the sinister old mansion with a gloomy history, where he is conducting research into the supernatural. Having nothing else to do, and no one who cares about her, Eleanor accepts.

Arriving at Hill House, she instantly begins to fall under the spell of the creepy old pile. She befriends the other guests, particularly the confident, witty, and often cruel Theodora, or “Theo”. Theo is implied to be a lesbian, although exactly what this means for the dynamic between her and Eleanor is not explained. It’s not clear if the needy Eleanor wants a friend, a lover, a big sister, a mother—or maybe it’s all of the above.

In any case, she begins to find the dominating presence she craves in her life, but not from Theo, or any of the other visitors, but rather from Hill House itself. The evil manse seems to affect all of the characters, but Eleanor by far most of all, as she grows obsessed with it, gradually losing her own identity as the ghostly influence of the place takes hold.

All this is exactly what happens in the movie, so if Jackson found it boring, she has no one but herself to blame for writing it. Personally, while I didn’t find it particularly scary, I did find it to be a compellingly tragic tale of a depressed woman gradually sinking deeper and deeper into her own hopelessly melancholy psyche. Eleanor is a truly pathetic figure, in the original sense of the term.

The major difference between book and film is when Dr. Montague/Markway’s wife shows up. In the film, she is portrayed as a skeptic, who doubts the hauntedness of Hill House until it decides to show her good and hard. In the book, she and her strange assistant, Arthur, (who is a weirdly misplaced comic relief character) spend hours using a planchette to try and determine the motives of the spirits who reside there. She’s also incredibly annoying, which made me rather disappointed that the ghosts don’t terrorize her the way they do her much less irritating cinematic analogue.

And then we come to the very end. I won’t spoil it, either book or film, for those of you who are unfamiliar with it. Let’s just say the way the film ends includes one of my all-time favorite quotes. Even as a ten-year-old, I could appreciate the way Russ Tamblyn, who up till then has played Luke Sannerson as a wise-cracking, too-cool-for-school playboy, delivers his chilling final line.

In the book, by contrast, the ending is rather abrupt, with no time for a final remark from anybody. I felt shortchanged afterwards. What did everyone have to say regarding what they just witnessed? I’m all for leaving things to the reader’s imagination, but all the same you’ve got to give us something!

The book really doesn’t work as a ghost story. But that’s not to say it’s a bad story. Actually, it feels like two rather good stories that have been awkwardly stitched together.

The first story is a depressing work of literary fiction about a fragile woman slowly losing her mind. It’s well-written, but extremely bleak and depressing.

The second story is a pretty witty comedy about the rest of the ghost hunters at Hill House. The snarky banter between Luke and Theo is quite funny, as are Dr. Montague’s often-futile attempts to be the adult in the room. And the arrival of Mrs. Montague and her incongruously goofy friend Arthur just makes it all the sillier. These characters are all very entertaining, but when their antics are combined with the unrelentingly sad mental collapse of Eleanor, it just feels… off.

I am reminded of W.S. Gilbert’s supposed quip about the actor Beerbohm Tree’s performance of Hamlet as “funny without being vulgar.” It sounds like a compliment… until you remember that Hamlet is a tragedy. And don’t get me wrong, The Haunting of Hill House is pretty emotionally powerful. But then you realize the tragedy could have all been avoided easily enough if people had just behaved sensibly. Maybe the real curse of Hill House is that it makes its denizens act stupidly.

I came away from the book very impressed… by the film. They did a good job of knowing just what to take and what to cut from the source material to turn it into a good, coherent story. Obviously, Shirley Jackson deserves a lot of credit for providing that raw material, but she also deserves blame for not making it as good as it could be.

Well, that’s my opinion, anyway. Lots of people will disagree. Lots of people say it’s the greatest haunted house book ever written. This is why I always take what such people say with a good deal of salt.

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“Everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it,” as the old saying goes. Well, actually, some people do try to do something about it, but the weather is an immensely complex system, and doing something about it is dangerous, especially if you don’t understand it.

This field guide was recommended to me by a woman who works at my local gym, and when I saw the author was a Purdue alum, I was especially interested. I have long believed, as hinted in the book Fitzpatrick’s War, that a secret society of Purdue grads controls the world. I’ve met quite a few Boilermakers, and I can easily imagine them all gathering to boast, like the Stonecutters.

The book begins with an overview of the science behind weather, including a few basic physics principles. Then we have some definitions. (Freezing rain is rain that is frozen, for example.) But after that, we get to the really juicy stuff: namely, what you can determine about the weather from looking at the clouds. I had no idea there were so many different types of clouds; and this book presents detailed explanations of what they all mean, complete with pictures.

Unfortunately, I still can’t claim to be an expert on recognizing the different clouds. But then, I’ve only had a few days. With practice, and with repeated reference to the book, I may be able to become a more competent amateur weather spotter.

Because frankly, the weather is a bit of an obsession of mine. Not least because I’ve noticed the forecasts are almost always wrong. This annoys me. I like to be prepared, and how can I be prepared if I have inaccurate information?

For my money, the best weather forecast site is Tornado HQ. Because it isn’t a forecast site; it’s just a live radar of severe weather. (Sadly for my international readers, it only works for the U.S.) You can look at it and, once you have a feel for how the wind blows, probably guess when the next round of rain or snow will hit. I’ve found I get a far better estimate by doing this than by looking at Wunderground or Accuweather. And just forget about the Apple Weather app; it’s completely bonkers.

Anyway, back to the book. Besides the clouds, the most vital piece of info I got from it was that when you want to know how humid it is, don’t look at the humidity. Look instead at the dew point; that’s the real indicator. Another good metric, which I already knew, is barometric pressure. (The executive summary is: high pressure good, low pressure bad.)

All told, this is a handy guide to refer to if you want to learn how to tell if it’s going to rain for your evening commute just by eyeballing it. And you might as well, because you are not going to get reliable info from the local TV news or the internet.

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Remember that book, CCRU Writings: 1997 – 2003 that I reviewed last Fall? The one full of weird occult philosophical ramblings about AI, techno-demons, and inhuman pseudo-mythology?

If you read that review, or the book itself, and thought, “that was good, but it’s just not bizarre enough”, well, my friend, have I got good news for you!

Cyclonopedia is written in an academic style. Or rather, it’s what would happen if H.P. Lovecraft wrote in an academic style while on acid.

The book is framed as a found manuscript discovered by an American tourist on a trip to the Middle East. What she finds is a disordered collection of notes loosely centered on the works of a Dr. Hamid Parsani, who has developed an esoteric theory of the world, particularly the Muslim world, and the Global War on Terror.

Dr. Parsani’s thesis, insofar as it can be discerned from the many cryptic documents and references, is that the Middle East is actually a conscious organism, powered by a dark god that lives beneath its surface. This viscous Lovecraftian xeno-intelligence is the substance we know as “oil”, and it subtly shapes humanity to suit its purposes. It runs our machines, drives our economies, and provides the impetus for massive wars, all in an effort to increase its control over the Earth as it seeks to burn as bright as its nemesis, the Sun.

Scattered throughout the writing by and about Parsani are references to other characters, including an American soldier called “Colonel West”, a Kurtz-like figure who has begun to understand the bizarre and occult nature of the battlefield and gone rogue, leading a renegade Delta Force unit on brutal sorties informed by his and Dr. Parsani’s research into the esoteric nature of the desert and the demonic forces that rule it.

This West character is especially interesting to me because in certain respects he parallels the real-life Lt. Col. Allen West, who was tried for the use of unnecessary force during the Iraq War, even down to such minor details as the fictional West’s fascination with oil and the real-life West’s line that “if it’s about the lives of my soldiers at stake, I’d go through hell with a gasoline can,” which he said by way of defending his actions. Is this literary license, satire, hyperstition, or mere coincidence?

I’m probably making this sound more compelling than it is. Parts of it read like a really dry and incredibly confusing dissertation, punctuated by moments of bizarre horror that aren’t as shocking as they might be simply because they feel so out-of-left-field. Still, like CCRU, the book does manage to gradually instill a sense of gnawing unease in the reader.

And also like CCRU, most of this unease comes from the fact that its central insane thesis seems to align with observable facts. If the Middle East really is a sentient force that compels humanity to wage eternal war over the black gold beneath it, we would expect to see exactly what we do see in the real world.

More curious still are some of the things that the philosophy of Cyclonopedia implies rather than stating outright. For instance, the curious fact that the monotheistic religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all originated in the Middle East, and slowly but surely defeated and subjugated the sun-worshipping religions—a fact which dovetails with the supposed envy the dark god oil harbors against the sun. (“Since the beginning of time, Man has yearned to destroy the sun!“)

It’s worth noting that the basic concept here isn’t all that different from Dune: a mysterious desert populated by adherents of an esoteric religion, and a vital resource that is key to control of the universe. Frank Herbert based his story on the Muslim world to begin with; Cyclonopedia is like what would happen if you removed the sci-fi setting, and restored Dune‘s weird, psychedelic vibe to Mesopotamia proper. Truth is stranger than fiction, and Cyclonopedia is stranger than both.

Now, this is where I need to step back and acknowledge that most people are not like me. Most people like a story with a coherent beginning, middle, and end, and do not like to feel like their understanding of reality is slowly unraveling when they read a book. So I probably have a higher tolerance for this sort of mind-bending madness than most. And even I was getting impatient after a while. In a lot of ways, the book felt like it was building up to a payoff that it never delivered.

So, should you read it? If you love bizarre esoteric theory-fiction that requires a huge amount of close reading to even begin to understand. Since I think that only describes about nine people in the entire world, it’s likely not for you. But if you’re one of the nine, you’ll probably love it.

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Indie writers, take an hour of your time today to watch Saffron Asteria meet the Writers Supporting Writers group to discuss her work. Saffron is an incredible supporter of indie authors, and an all-around cool person. I encourage you to subscribe to her podcast BOOKED and watch her site Indiosyncrasy, which is currently undergoing a revamp, but which has been and will soon again be a wonderful place for indies.

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You all know the story of Mothman. Well, maybe you don’t, but I do. Basically, in 1966 and ’67, there were numerous reports of a strange winged creature appearing in West Virginia and Southern Ohio. Towering and intimidating with its evil red eyes, the monster haunted the hills of Appalachia, terrifying people on lonely roads at night.

And then, in December 1967, as the feeling of fear built to an awful climax, the Silver Bridge collapsed, killing 46 people. And the Mothman was never seen again. (Or was he?)

John Keel was witness to many of these events. A Fortean writer in the business of chasing UFOs, he interviewed many of the citizens in and around the town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia during this period. As well as many other oddballs who appeared, behaved very strangely, and then vanished.

If Keel’s account is to be believed, there was something very weird going on in West Virginia, and indeed, in the United States generally, during this period. There can be no doubt that there was “something happening” there, even if what it was “ain’t exactly clear.” (You can pretty much throw in the rest of the lyrics too; they all fit. And it’s worth noting that song was written in 1966!)

Keel was an entertaining writer, and the way he starts the book is very clever. He plays around with the way an event is described to remind the reader that things are often not what they seem. It’s the literary equivalent of Gene Wilder’s entrance as Willy Wonka, establishing right from the start that you can never be sure whether you can trust this character.

Unfortunately, while Keel could spin a good yarn, and his tales are often quite interesting, he never really does manage to establish what exactly we’re supposed to make of all the goings-on that he reports. A bunch of people saw and heard unusual things, including prophecies of various disasters, some of which happened, some of which did not, and some of which are too vague to say. I’m sorry, but if some non-human intelligence wants to impress me with its ability to forecast the future, it’s going to have to do better than “there will be unrest in the Middle East.” 

As an account of an eerie and surreal atmosphere, not to mention a history of the UFO craze in the late ’60s and early ’70s, it’s an engaging tale. As an attempt to prove any of Keel’s theories regarding preternatural phenomena, it’s kind of a failure, since the entire thing is nothing more than a compendium of what Keel either claimed to have seen himself or been told by others, with no supporting hard evidence. 

You will find my reaction put better than I could ever hope to express it in the words of Leonard Nimoy on The Simpsons:

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I heard about this book via Audrey Driscoll’s review, and she recommended it to anyone interested in information management. Well, I’m interested in information management! So, naturally I had to read it.

The book includes a brief history of libraries across the world, before zeroing in on the United States’ Library of Congress, and how it evolved from essentially Thomas Jefferson’s personal collection to housing an unparalleled assortment of books, documents, and so on. It wasn’t always an easy road, as shown by the struggles at cataloging and the efforts made by people like Melville Dewey (a man so obsessed with efficient labeling that he for a time spelled his name “Melvil Dui”) to create a system for managing all of it.

Yes, indeed; this book is paean to library science that should make any archivist proudly proclaim, like Evie Carnahan in The Mummy, “I am a librarian!”

The most interesting fact of all that I learned from this book comes from a little note towards the back, referencing the Mundaneum. The Mundaneum was, in effect, a non-electronic internet, created by Belgian lawyers in the 1900s. It was, essentially, a database. In the 1930s, there were even early plans to make it accessible remotely.

The name “Mundaneum” is just so perfect, don’t you think? We ought to start calling the internet “Mundaneum 2.0” as far as I’m concerned. It captures the spirit much better.

Now, as I said, I am interested in information management. What may surprise you is that I am interested in information management in much the same way that Robert Muldoon was interested in velociraptor management. Information, you see, is a dangerous thing.

Of course, unlike velociraptors, information is critical to human life. We need information, and a way to store and retrieve it.

The science of cataloging and accessing information now takes up vastly more of our lives than it used to in historic times. The reason we don’t notice this is that it has evolved more or less concurrently with advances in electronic systems designed to expedite this process. “Anything can be quantified nowadays.”

All of which is to say that there is something about the entire process of information management that feels slightly inhuman to me.

“Big Data,” cloud computing, advanced analytics, and of course our new friend Artificial Intelligence are all refinements on methods of organizing and cataloging information. As this books shows, from the ancient Sumerians on, information management is a practice that has been steadily progressing over time.

But when I say “progressing”… is it progressing the way a garden gradually grows and becomes filled with nourishing food and beautiful flowers? Or is it progressing the way a malignant tumor does? Marc Andreessen said software is eating the world; perhaps it’s more accurate to say information is eating the world.

Is this good or bad? Like Zhou Enlai didn’t, but should have, said of the impact of the French Revolution, it may be too early to say. On the other hand, it might be too late. Or maybe both at once…?

You see what kind of weird and dangerous tricks you can play with information? You came here probably expecting a simple review of a book about libraries. “That seems like a dry enough topic; he can’t make too much of a mountain out of this molehill,” you may have thought. Sorry! Perhaps the wisest course would be to go outside and touch the damn grass already.

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I know, I know; most of you aren’t here for non-fiction. I actually was planning to have a fiction review for you this week. I was! But then… things got busy, and my internet was down for much of that time, which caused me to fall behind on other work, and, and… well, you get the picture. “Excuses, excuses,” you say. “Next he’ll claim a dog ate his book review.”

But I ought to give you something as a reward for your loyally showing up here. So here is a review I wrote, but didn’t really plan to publish, of yet another Napoleonic history book.

As the title implies, this book is actually history of two separate events, 129 years apart, both of which occurred in the same place: Borodino, a place in Russia on the outskirts of Moscow. In 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte’s Grand Armeé finally confronted the Russian Army after a long and frustrating game of cat and mouse across western Russia. In 1941, the German army met a strong Soviet defense, fanatically determined to keep the invaders from the gates of Moscow.

The author interweaves accounts of both battles, to build an almost eerily symmetrical story of how each developed.  Of course, the combatants in 1941 were aware of the historical significance of the 1812 battle, and noted the ominous feelings the word “Borodino” evoked. (Ironically, many of the monuments to the earlier conflict had already been destroyed by the Soviet government, who saw them as symbols of the Tsarist era.)

The 1812 battle, while technically a French victory, has got to be one of the worst moments for Napoleon as a strategist and as a tactician. The book is unsparing in its assessment of the Emperor’s many errors. While Waterloo will always be The Battle that ended Napoleon’s career, it’s pretty clear to me that his single worst miscalculations as a general came at Borodino. (Indeed, it’s tempting to wonder if the doomed last charge of the Imperial Guard at Waterloo was partially in reaction to his failure to deploy the Guard at Borodino.)

As for 1941; it’s hard to even get into things like tactics. Two technologically advanced, fanatically indoctrinated, tired, hungry, and desperate armies were hurled together into an unbelievably brutal slugfest in snow and ice. Nowhere is the relentless march of technology made more apparent than in the contrasting of what “artillery” meant in the Napoleonic era versus in World War II.

The author mostly does a very good job of weaving the two campaigns together, highlighting both the changes as well as the broader point that, well, as Ron Perlman would say, “War. War never changes.” There were a few points when I would be reading an account and honestly I wasn’t sure which battle they were in for a few sentences. (And the names are no help; there are men with Polish names fighting for the French, French names fighting for the Germans, and German names fighting for the Russians.)

Is it a good history? I think so. But what makes a good history? After all, even if you knew literally nothing about either battle, just by reading this far you have got a reasonable summary: Napoleon invaded Russia, and he lost. Then later Hitler invaded Russia, and he lost too. Bam, there’s your history! When we have the quiz, you should be able to ace it. Now, we can safely say that we have covered both campaigns when it comes time for our standardized tests.

But perhaps, if you are an inquisitive sort, (a rare thing these days!) you suspect there is more to this story. Maybe there is; but first, a trademark Ruined Chapel-style non-sequitur!

Hey, didja guys hear about the Galactic Starcruiser? It was some sort of Star Wars-themed mystery dinner-theater LARPing experience. But it lost a bunch of money and had to be shut down. Some vlogger on YouTube did a four hour show about how disappointing it was. (Apparently, it was insufficiently immersive.)

I was recently reading David Foster Wallace’s hilarious essay, Shipping Out, about his experience on a cruise ship, and how, eventually, no matter much luxury it provided, it was never really enough:

In response to any environment of extraordinary gratification and pampering, the insatiable-infant part of me will simply adjust its desires upward until it once again levels out at its homeostasis of terrible dissatisfaction. And sure enough, after a few days of delight and then adjustment…, the Pamper-swaddled part of me that WANTS is now back, and with a vengeance. By Wednesday, I’m acutely conscious of the fact that the A.C. vent in my cabin hisses (loudly).

That was in the ’90s. Wallace didn’t even have a smartphone!

Compared to any other point in recorded history, we in the modern West live lives of unparalleled luxury. Kings and queens of yesteryear had not 1/100th of the amenities available to modern people today. And are we happy? No, we are not! We are righteously dissatisfied that the quality of our entertainment is not as good as we imagine it could be. I’m as guilty as the next guy. I write a whole website dedicated to critiquing entertainment.

Which brings us back to Borodino and the book in question. The sheer, unrelenting, all-encompassing amount of horror and suffering described by the accounts of those who went through these battles are difficult to even comprehend. The modern middle-class American, which I am, struggles and fails to appreciate the sheer misery of men marching first in dry heat, and later sub-freezing cold, only to fight and die horribly hundreds of miles from their home. Civilian farmers, old men, women, children driven from their homes by the violence of these same starving soldiers and totalitarian regimes, people ruthlessly gunned down merely for expressing fear in the face of hopeless situation, or refusing to work as slave labor for an occupying enemy force.

It is Hell. It is the stuff of nightmares. I literally cannot, on a visceral level, understand how anyone survived these experiences. What would a soldier, shot with grapeshot and bleeding to death while buried in snow, even say if he could see the modern world, if he could see me? It’s the sort of question that haunted me while reading this book.

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Sorry, no book review this week. Haven’t had much reading time lately. But I will try to have something next week.

In the meantime, tomorrow is Veterans Day in the USA, and so in recognition of this, I thought I’d provide a list of books authored by military veterans. I know a few warrior-bards whose work is worth your time:

-The Ethan Chase series and the His Name Was Zach series, by Peter Martuneac.

Peter is a U.S. Marine Corps infantry veteran, and this comes across in his books. He writes some of the best action scenes I’ve ever read. I recommend starting with his Mandate of Heaven and going from there.

-The Widow’s Son, by Ryan Williamson.

A phenomenal weird Western adventure. Williamson’s military background (Army) comes through most clearly in the banter among the soldiers.

-Intrusion Protocol by B.R. Keid.

This one is military sci-fi, a genre near and dear to me. A tech-heavy adventure that’s a thrill for all of us who grew up playing games like Halo.

-Sunder of Time by Kristin McTiernan.

A sprawling, epic time-travel novel with some heavy religious overtones. McTiernan does a good job of bringing the harshness of medieval life home to the reader.

-Forbidden Kisses by Sha Renée.

We’ve heard of military sci-fi, but military romance? Hey, why not! It’s a cute, light-hearted story.

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Look, I know this book is about American football, and I know most of my readers couldn’t care less about American football. But hear me out, okay? Because this post isn’t really about football. I mean, there will be references to some football-related matters, but you can skim past those if you want. No, this post is actually about something deeper, more essential… this post is about aesthetics.

What do I mean by that? Time will tell. For now, let me begin by summarizing: Paul Brown was the coach of the Cleveland Browns, who dominated the sport during the 1950s. Brown’s teams racked up records and championships during the first few decades of their existence. Until a new team owner, Art Modell, took over and fired Brown after a few bad years.

Like Coriolanus, Brown decided to raise a team of his own in the south, and take his revenge. And thus the Cincinnati Bengals were born in 1968, and instantly became a major rival of the Browns. Throughout the ’70s and ’80s, the Bengals and Browns met twice a year, usually with one team having something to play for and the other merely playing out the string on a lost season. Oddly, surprisingly often, the team with nothing to play for would win.

The ’80s were peak years for the rivalry, with both teams enjoying considerable success during the decade, although neither ever managed to win the Super Bowl. Twice, the Bengals fell short to San Francisco 49er teams coached by a former assistant coach of theirs, Bill Walsh.

And then, in 1991, Paul Brown died, and the two teams collapsed. The Bengals became a perennial joke throughout the ’90s and the Browns–well, remember that Modell fellow from before? He packed up and moved the team to Baltimore, rebranding as the Ravens. Not until 1999 would Cleveland be granted a new team, with the colors and records of the old Browns, but most certainly not the tradition of winning.

And this is Knight’s thesis: the Bengals and Browns are haunted by the man who essentially created them both. Somewhere out there in the ether, the ghost of Paul Brown hovers over them, looking down with grim disapproval at his once-proud teams. Neither can succeed until this angry spirit is appeased.

Of course, this is all a manner of speaking, in the grand tradition of sports curses. There are plenty of obvious materialistic explanations for the Bengals’ and Browns’ many failures. Although, there are some things that do strain probability…

This book was published in 2018, and since then both teams have enjoyed some success. The Browns finally broke their playoff-less streak in 2020, and the Bengals actually made it to the Super Bowl in 2021. (Losing, it must be noted, in very much the same way they did to the 49ers in 1988.) So perhaps the curse is lifting. But can it really be said to be ended until at least one of these teams holds aloft the Vince Lombardi trophy?

Knight’s prose is light and enjoyable, and he has a knack for clever phrasing and for highlighting amusing instances of ironic misfortune in the histories of both clubs, of which there are many. I’m pretty well-versed in football trivia, but I still learned a few new factoids.

All well and good, you say; but why am I dedicating one of my October blog posts, normally reserved for reviewing Halloween-related stories, to this book?

Watch this clip of the Browns/Bengals game from Halloween of last year. You don’t need to know a thing about football. All you need to know is that it’s Halloween night, and two teams whose colors are orange and brown and orange and black, are battling it out under the lights, amid a sea of roaring fans, many of whom are rigged out in costumes befitting All Hallows’ Eve.

The whole spectacle is weird and eerie, and, I’d argue, perfect for Halloween. The NFL should make it a tradition: every year, on the Thursday, Sunday, or Monday night closest to October 31st, the Bengals play the Browns. It’s really the perfect uniform combination for the occasion.

Now, it’s true that other teams, including the Broncos, Bears, and Dolphins have orange in their uniforms. (And indeed, the Bengals played a memorably weird game against the Dolphins on Halloween a decade ago.)  But only the Bengals and Browns have that added (pumpkin?) spice of being arch-rivals. The memories of past triumphs and defeats echoing in every hit; the vaguely Biblical theme of two feuding brothers, and the added passion of the costumed fans, all combine to make a potent brew for epic gridiron madness.

And, in my opinion, football is as much a part of the Halloween season as jack-o’-lanterns and candy. Granted, I live smack dab in the middle of the state where the sport was effectively invented, but it is impossible to imagine midwestern Autumn without the thwack of offensive and defensive lines smashing together, seeing replica jerseys everywhere, team banners and pennants flying amid the Halloween decorations, and hearing the Monday morning radio shows buzzing about how the season is going. There’s a reason why, when I wrote a short story as a love-letter to the Halloween season, I had to include a scene at a football game.

And, as some of you may know, I am not even primarily a fan of either of these teams. (Though I will always have some fondness for the Bengals.) My team plays further north, and is more associated with the “something of winter in their faces” that  John Facenda once spoke of, than with the warm orange-and-brown hues of Autumn. Yet, my judgment remains the same: the Bengals and Browns are the perfect Halloween teams.

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This is a cozy mystery. I don’t read a lot of cozy mysteries, unless you count Zachary Shatzer’s Roberta and Mr. Bigfluff stories, which are really parodies of cozies, rather than straight-up cozy mysteries. That said, this is a genre where the line between serious and parody is sketchy at best. More on that in a bit. But c’mon, it’s a Halloween book. How could I not read it?

The protagonist of the book is Tessa, a 30-year-old woman who has moved back to her small Minnesota hometown after the death of her husband. To take her mind off her loss, she has thrown herself into the job of helping out at her family’s B&B and helping run the town’s annual Halloween hayride.

The latter becomes more complicated when Earl Stone, the rather unpleasant fellow who owns the land for the hayride, is found run over with the tractor. Tessa is forced to use the detective skills she’s learned from listening to True Crime podcasts to solve the case. And all this while juggling deciding which of her two admirers–Clark the handsome football coach or Max the handsome policeman–she will favor with dressing up in a couples Halloween costume.

Already, you perhaps begin to see what I mean. The news of the murder, and the news that two of her suitors want to dress up in matching costumes, are given equal emotional weight.

Also, the writing style itself is a little… curious. Generally, it’s thought to be bad form to repeat the same word too many times in a sentence. Yet, this happens frequently here. Indeed, it happens so often it’s almost like a kind of literary device. Mark Paxson once wrote a story where he would pick a word out of the dictionary at random, and use it as a prompt for what would happen next. It feels like something similar is going on here, only the challenge is to see how many times you can use the word in the same paragraph.

But again: it’s a cozy mystery. Cozy mysteries are, by their nature, not that serious. That’s not to say it’s an outright comedy like Shatzer’s books are. At least, I don’t think so.

Perhaps the best way to describe it is as camp. Camp is always a difficult thing to define, though; and one man’s camp may be another man’s… whatever the opposite of camp is. But offhand, I’d say this book is more camp than Mr. Humphries.

I was able to figure out who the killer was about 70% of the way into the book, but again: “Zis is a cozy, ve don’t surprise here!” Cozies are about the familiar and the comfortable; surprise and suspense are antithetical to this. Perhaps the whole concept of a cozy mystery is inherently contradictory, like asking for “safe danger.”

Then again, isn’t this the whole concept behind amusement parks, too? The illusion of danger, while actually being rigorously designed for safety? No, faulting a cozy mystery for being too predictable is like faulting water for being too wet.

You know what this story needs? A change of narration. Instead of being told by the investigator herself, who makes all the deductions plain to the reader right away, we needed a framing device. Someone telling the story of Tessa’s investigation through their own bewildered eyes. A Dr. Watson, a Captain Hastings, a (to use that memorable phrase of Stephen Leacock’s) “Poor Nut”:

Here, at once, the writer is confronted with the problem of how to tell the story, and whether to write it as if it were told by the Great Detective himself. But the Great Detective is above that. For one thing, he’s too silent. And in any case, if he told the story himself, his modesty might hold him back from fully explaining how terribly clever he is, and how wonderful his deductions are. So the nearly universal method has come to be that the story is told through the mouth of an Inferior Person, a friend and confidant of the Great Detective. This humble associate has the special function of being lost in admiration all the time. In fact, this friend, taken at his own face value, must be regarded as a Poor Nut. 

That’s from Leacock’s essay “The Great Detective,” which I highly recommend.

Still, the acid test of any book is whether or not the reader enjoys it. I actually did enjoy this. Perhaps I enjoyed it in the same way I enjoy Captain Corelli’s Mandolin or Elvira’s Movie Macabre, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. And so ironic enjoyment comes right around to being sincere again. Strange how that works.

Anyway, if you like cozy mysteries and/or Halloween, give it a whirl.