Murder Mystery

Over the last few years the Swedish Film Institute have blessed us with some amazing restorations of crime films from the 1950s. We previously looked at a collaboration between two giants of Swedish crime writing, as well as the first two…

“Nordic noir” has been a popular genre in the English-speaking world since the 2000s, with the 2007 Danish drama The Killing’s breakout success a large factor. (In fact The Killing was much more successful in the UK than it had been in…

It’s interesting the upstate mansion has become a symbol of prejudice in the cinema of Trump’s America. Opposition to the “elites” was a rallying cry of the man’s incendiary presidential run. Yet it’s the not-so-humble abodes of the upper…

The Mysterious Case of Golden Age Detective Fiction An English country estate. A detective pacing the room, explaining how they have solved the crime, revealing the solution to a puzzle and the clues which were there all along.…

For those who are aware of the works made by filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda, an eyebrow might be raised upon seeing the title of his latest offering. Kore-eda is widely known for his social dramas that explore the nuances of familial discord,…

Often crime mysteries use real-world issues as backdrop. The detective trying to uncover a murder, for example, may stumble into a web of corporate or political corruption, a community rife with simmering misogyny and/or a hotbed of racial…

One of my favourite tropes of the golden age of television is that of the murder mystery in a small town. Although so many shows of recent memory rely upon such a plot-line – Twin Peaks, The Killing, The Fall, True Detective, Fortitude –…

I present part one of my new four-part John Garrison serial. Every Tuesday for the next few weeks, we'll follow Garrison to see if he can catch a maniac murderer, and stay sober doing it. Blood on the Paddle – Chapter One ‘Qu'est-ce Que…