Nick Krauser's Blog, page 10

#129 – Sick Heart River, John Buchan BOOK REVIEW

It’s nice to see a master story teller at work. Most people know John Buchan from his famous spy thriller The 39 Steps and, until Sick Heart River, I’d only read that. This is his last novel, drawn from Buchan’s …

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#128 – Skulduggery, William Marshall BOOK REVIEW

It’s funny what you can learn about the real world from fiction. I remember the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China in 1997, and the BBC desperately putting a brave face on it. I’d only just graduated university …

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Ask Jimmy #5 – A Christmas Tale

Chapter One – A Knave’s Lucke One of the comments on a previous Ask Jimmy requested tales of classic Mystery Method bar game and working in teams. These tales I have by the bag full. Back in the times of …

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#127 – The Countess Of Monte Cristo vol.2, Alexandre Dumas BOOK REVIEW

I’m not sure how many of these The Count Of Monte Cristo knock-off fake sequels I want to read. Why couldn’t Dumas have just written a real sequel to his best book? It’s not like he was shy about creating …

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#126 – Jordanetics, Vox Day BOOK REVIEW

Some books need to be written. For the most part, the stuff I see in the alt-right and PUAspheres is just “me too” rubbish. I don’t mean the #MeToo movement of false allegations sweeping Hollywood, which was a fabrication of …

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#125 – The Haunting Of Toby Jugg, Dennis Wheatley BOOK REVIEW

Dennis Wheatley was mostly interested in three types of story: Historical action adventure in the vein of Alexandre Dumas (e.g. his Roger Brook series), wartime spy thrillers (e.g. his Gregory Sallust and Julian Day series), and occult horror. As the …

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#124 – The European Emergence, Time Life BOOK REVIEW

I don’t think I’m surprising any of you when I say the plots of many well-known fantasy epics are lifted from real history. The most recent case is Game Of Thrones, which started as a retelling of the English War …

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#123 – Fooling Houdini, Alex Stone BOOK REVIEW

It’s quite common for people to seek a unified theory of everything. Physicists are always at it, whether it’s String Theory, the Standard Model, or pissing about with fractals. Hippies are equally into it though, because they lack the mathematics, …

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#122 – Reign Of Hell, Sven Hassel BOOK REVIEW

“Fucking get in there, my son!” is an expression of enthusiastic support that I rarely shout aloud. I’m a very rational, circumspect kind of man who likes to keep his opinions to himself. I dare say few of my regular …

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#121 – In The Miso Soup, Ryu Murakami BOOK REVIEW

There’s something deeply satisfying about taking a chance on something unknown and being pleasantly surprised by how well things go. Think of it like doing an hour’s gutter game late on a blustery Saturday night and bagging an SDL with …

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