Dare to Dream: In the Red by Joan Fleming (1961)

My last three reads of Joan Fleming were more or less a disaster and I was in no mood to read another book by her. However, I needed to read just one more book of hers, to partially complete Rick Mills' Six-Shooter Mystery Challenge (if you want to join for the 2021 edition of this …

Ellery Queen: A Journey of Discovery

The first time I remember hearing (okay reading) about Ellery Queen was when I read a fine review of Cat of Many Tails at Yvette's blog, in so many words... Subsequently, I read my first Queen The Murderer is a Fox, and realised that there were not one but two Ellery Queen, the writer as well …

Tuesday’s Overlooked Movie: Taste of Fear

A couple of days ago, in mood for watching a b&w mystery movie, I decided upon watching the 1961 movie Taste of Fear, released in the US as Scream of Fear.The movie begins with the chirping of birds. The placid lake surrounded by mountains and lush trees seems like an ideal spot.The serenity is shattered, …

‘Scars and Chains’: Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth

In 1953, a young psychiatrist was assigned to the Blida-Joinville Psychiatric hospital in  Algeria, at that time a colony of the French. Battling a host of racial prejudices that even used scientific studies to designate Africans as little more than animals, Frantz Fanon started documenting the cases that came to him even as the Algerian …