What I’ve Watched, Read, Done – November 2025 – Blue Towel Productions

November has been a mysterious and puzzling month.

Or more accurately, it’s been a month full of mysteries and puzzles–at least, of the fictional and game-related variety.

In terms of real life, it’s been a month spent almost entirely in the United States, visiting family and friends, and stomping around my old stomping grounds.

It’s also included a short detour to Mexico, where my daughter was graduating from a missions training program from the same organisation that I work with in Australia. We probably wouldn’t have made the trip to see this if we’d been at home in Perth, but since we were in the “neighborhood” of New York, we decided to take the hop, skip and jump over the border to see her and add the country to my list of visiting-achievements.

Country #37!

More about all of that later. For now, I’ll get into the stuff I’ve watched and read, and it seems to be a lot. Various Spoilers Ahead. For instance…

Elementary (season 1)

My daughter and I started watching season one of Elementary last month, and then we lost access to it because we gave up the streaming service. But then we came to America and found out that it was available on the US version of the one of the services that my mother had, so of course we got to work.

Elementary is one of the several recent adaptations of Sherlock Holmes which brings the famous detective into the modern era. In this one, Holmes (Johnny Lee Miler) is the super-intelligent and observational detective we all know, but we catch up with him after a traumatic event has led to him becoming a drug addict, which leads to him being forced to move to New York and to meeting Dr. Joan Watson (Lucy Liu), originally his sober companion, and then his partner in crime-solving.

The overarching plot of the first season is the growing threat of Moriarity, a mysterious crime boss who is responsible for the death of Holmes one true love, Irene Adler. It’s a decent plot as season arcs go, which develops in some nicely surprising ways (though not particularly surprising to me, since I had it spoiled some time ago). I already mentioned Spoilers but skip to the next thing if you don’t want to have any for the show’s first season.

In the last couple of episodes of the season, Holmes discovers that Irene Adler is actually still alive and being played by Natalie Dormer, having had her death faked and been held captive by Moriarity. It’s an interesting, although not entirely unpredictable element that takes Holmes into some deeply unsettling places. But then the show pulls an even bigger twist and reveals that Irene actually is Moriarity, which is a creates a different take on the character than what we usually get.

Surprisingly, the season ends with Moriarity defeated by Holmes and arrested, which took me off guard because I fully expected the show to drag this out for a lot longer. No doubt that the show will continue her story anyway, but it might be a while before I get to watch it, since we’ll be leaving America pretty soon.

Watson

I’ll jump in here and mention I watched a few episodes of Watson on one of my recent flights. This is another modern day Sherlock Holmes adaptation. This one features Watson (Morris Chestnut), the victim of a traumatic brain injury following Holmes’ death at Reichenbach Falls. Using money Holmes set aside, Watson moves to Pittsburg to open a clinic where he can work with a team of young medical specialists to solve medical mysteries. So it’s kind of Sherlock Holmes meets House.

The show was enjoyable enough for what it was though I’m not certain it will retain my attention, even if I can figure out where to watch it when I’m not on an airplane. But I wanted to mention it because right at the end of the first episode, it also pulls a big reveal about Moriarity, who was supposed to have died with Holmes but apparently did not (presumably, neither did Holmes, since no version of the story I’ve ever seen has him actually dying at the Reichenbach Falls, including the original).

Anyway, Moriarity appears in the last couple of minutes of the pilot episode, and it’s a big surprise not because some previously established character is really him or anything, but because of the actor who plays him: none other than Randall Park. That’s right, Agent Jimmy Woo the MCU (also similar characters in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom and the streaming series The Residence). As Moriarity, he appears to be playing very against type, but also, it becomes apparent why that’s his type–his Moriarity seems to be pretty generically evil.

But then his appearance was only brief, so who knows?

DuckTales (season 1)

Like Elementary, my daughter and I finished the first season of DuckTales, the 2017 animated series about Huey, Dewey and Louis and their adventures with Uncle Scrooge. Similar to Elementary, we had a deadline for this one as well–not because of any lack of access, but because after five months away, my youngest daughter will be rejoining us pretty soon, and for sure once she’s around we’ll have other things to watch which we’ve put off for a while.

Anyway, the first season builds to a big story about a villain named Magica De Spell who turns out to have been trapped in Scrooge’s first dime, a coin he keeps on his person all the time. It climaxed in a suitably rousing high-stakes action-adventure two-parter which did a good job wrapping up the season’s plots. It’s a good show with some nice characterisation and some decent pacing–something that a lot of animated shows seem to be a lot better at than some of their live-action alternatives. 

I guess you could argue that this isn’t a mystery series, unlike so many other things on this list, but the catchy opening theme song does boast that the characters “might solve a mystery”, so I think it’s close enough for government work.

The Bookfair Murders

There were a few mystery other shows that my wife and I had a look at, in our effort to find something fun to pass the time. Most of these we are still mid-season on, like Beyond Paradise and Death Valley. But there was also a TV movie that we made it all the way through, called The Bookfair Murders. It’s from 2000, and stars Samantha Bond (as a publisher) and Linda Kash (as a journalist) who get wrapped up in a murder when a celebrated author dies on the eve of publishing a book purported to deal with Jewish artwork that was stolen by Nazis. It’s passable but not exactly gripping, and more of an American-style (though I think it’s Canadian) general thriller than a British whodunit. Eli Wallach and Genevieve Bujold are both good in small supporting rolls, and no spoilers, but Saul Rubinek is only slightly less creepy here than he is the Star Trek The Next Generation episode The Most Toys.

Transitioning from the streaming image to the written page, I read far more than usually do this past month, and again most of them were mysteries, puzzles or both.

The Creeping Hand Murder

By Maureen Johnson and Jay Cooper, this is basically a solve-it-yourself casefile in book form. The reader (my wife and I, in this case) are given police reports, crime scene photographs, suspect interview transcripts about a murder which is the kind of thing that could be a Death in Paradise plot–someone is stabbed to death while sleeping in the corner of a room full of people who never went near the victim. (Actually, this almost is the plot of the the first episode of the third season of Death in Paradise, the episode that transitioned between Ben Miller and Kris Marshall).

It’s a fun mystery with a lot of information, but not too much information, to sift through. I was able to solve it, mostly–there were details I didn’t pick up on but which were the sorts of details that would require a fair amount of blind guessing. I got the main stuff–who committed the murder, how, and why, so I feel like I can basically chalk this one up as a win.

The Labyrinth House Murders

This Japanese mystery novel is written by Yukito Ayatsuji, and is something I definitely did not solve, but that’s okay because it’s a story rather than just a puzzle to tackle. It’s the story of a special gathering at mysterious labyrinthine house that’s been called by an aged mystery writer. Once everyone gets there, it is announced that the writer is dying, and that the gathering is a contest of sorts to see who will inherit a vast fortune. Even more than that, the contest involves some of the gathered people (who are themselves writers, and the hosts’ former students) to quickly write a murder mystery in which takes place in the house in which they themselves are the victims! Does that sound like a setup for something? If you answered “for murder!” then you are correct. Deaths ensue, the house turns out to be locked, and on we go with the story!

I found it confusing for a while simply because all the Japanese names are unfamiliar to me, so I was missing basic cues about whether a character was male or female, things like that. But I got a handle on everyone by the halfway point (and it’s not a long book). The story itself ended up being completely satisfying, and surprising at multiple points.

Strange Houses

This is another Japanese novel, by the mysterious internet presence Uketsu (a guy who does Youtube videos while wearing a black bodysuit, a white mask, and using a voice modulator.) I don’t know anything about Uketsu except for this book, which tells the unsettling story that emerges when someone turns to the author (Uketsu, presumably, though this isn’t specified) because of some strange anomalies that turn up on the plans for a house they are considering buying–things like strange dead spaces that seem to serve no purpose, and a bedroom that is oddly placed in the middle of the house so as to not be visible from the outside, and so on. As the author looks into this, and truly bizarre theory begins to emerge that is more or less confirmed as the book goes on. I won’t go into it here but suffice it to say the book is as much a horror story as it is a mystery, albeit one in which the reader is very removed in terms of time and place from all the horrific activity. Like the title mentioned above, it’s not a long book, and much of it is told in transcripts of conversations that the author has, peppered with frequent illustrations of the plans for the titular “strange houses”–so it’s a very quick and easy read.

It’s generally a satisfying story, although on balance I’d say I preferred The Labyrinth House Murders just because I like the genre more.

Everyone in My Family has Killed Someone

This is the first in a series of murder mysteries by Australian author Benjamin Stevenson, but the third of the books that I’ve read (the others are talked about here and here). All three are witty affairs narrated by a writer named Ernest Cunningham, who relays events from his life which comprise the story, all the while commenting on how his telling fulfils all the classic rules of “fair-play” murder mysteries. He makes a particular point of saying that he is a completely reliable narrator, even going so far as giving the prices pages that people die right at the start of the book, so that you can check him on his claims of honesty.

The actual story he tells is quite good–a family reunion of sorts at a snowy resort that of course turns into a pretty gruesome murder mystery. I really enjoyed this book–Stevenson’s style is light and breezy and frequently funny, while at the same delivering a solid murder mystery that does indeed, as far as I can tell, follow the rules of such stories.

Cherry Ames, Student Nurse

This 1943 book by Helen Wells, the first of a series of medical adventures featuring sprightly young Cherry Ames, was impulse buy at a used book store. This copy of Student Nurse came without a dust jacket, but my fancy was tickled by the text on the back of one of the sequels, which I quickly grabbed a photograph of.

Anyway, Cherry Ames, Student Nurse tells the story of how Cherry gets started in her nursing career, and ends up helping to save the life of an unnamed general who is critical to the Allied war effort. It’s harmless fluff which spends most of its time talking about how Cherry has to get used to the personalities of the medical professionals and patients on different wards. I enjoyed well enough as something different, but it didn’t inspire me to go out and buy any more of the books (there are apparently 26 others, several of which were available at the same bookstore).

Incidentally, this book was by no means a mystery, but in reading up about the series it seems that at least some of them are considered mystery novels, maybe akin to Nancy Drew or Trixie Belden. So the mystery connection continues, albeit only barely.

Pascal’s Wager: The Man Who Played Dice With God

Clearly not a mystery, but still dealing with mysterious questions, I read this biography of Blaise Pascal by James A. Connor. This one took me a while to get through–it’s not long but it’s dense, and is steeped in the cultural and historical context of Blaise Pascal, a significant mathematician and natural scientist who lived in the 1600s in France. The book explored his significant advances in fields such as geometry, fluid dynamics and probability theory, which I am not ashamed to admit went mostly well over my head. It also talked extensively about his religious and spiritual journey, including his ultimate belief that it made more sense to believe in God than not to believe in God because of the enormous risks associated with being wrong about the latter position. I had pulled the book semi-randomly off a shelf full of theology, Christian living and missionary biography books, but it didn’t really fit into those categories. So it was interesting but not exactly inspirational.

Suicide Squad: Trial by Fire

Also not mystery stories are the comics I read this month.

As a DC Comic fan who was eagerly reading in the late 80s and early 90s, I’m a big fan of John Ostrander’s Suicide Squad (mostly illustrated in the early days by Luke McDonnell). The series is about, if you don’t know, a government program in which incarcerated supervillains are given the opportunity to have their sentences commuted in exchange for going on dangerous and potentially suicidal “black ops” missions. It’s an ensemble book with several core characters and lots of others who came and went, or came and died.

Trial by Fire is the first of a series of trade paperbacks reprinting the series, and one of the ones that until recent days has eluded me. It covers an issue of Secret Origins that dealt with and expanded the Squad’s silver age backstory and set the stage for the modern version of the team, as well as the series’ first eight issues. Most of these issues are really good and display the solid plotting and characterization that the book was known for.

I also managed to pick up another volume of this series on my trip to the US (which I haven’t read yet), which I think leaves me only two to go to get the whole thing.

Superman ’78: The Metal Curtain

The second miniseries based on the continuity of the 1970s / 1980s Christopher Reeve Superman movies, The Metal Curtain is once again by writer Robert Vendetti, and this time brings Metallo into the story. This version of Metallo is a creation of Soviet military science and part of a plan not only to kill Superman but to do so in a way that humiliates the United States. Superman ultimately turns the tables on him and wins the hearts of the Soviet people by his courage and selflessness, in pretty classic Superman fashion.

It’s a fun book which mostly does a good job invoking the classic style of the Christopher Reeve films, but also, by necessity, differentiates from them in order to put the story into a comic book that is designed to be part of an ongoing series (at least potentially).

So in addition to all that, I also played some puzzle or escape-style games this month.

Box Two

Maybe my least favorite of this small batch was Box Two. As the title indicates, it’s the second of a series of puzzle boxes created by actor Neil Patrick Harris. I did Box One a little while ago and generally enjoyed it. Box Two is larger and has more components, and some of them are pretty nifty, but it’s also got some annoying aspects to the gameplay. You spend a lot of the game talking to a chatbot online which is supposed to be you teaming up with Neil Patrick Harris (and there are some videos of him as well)–“he” feeds you the clues you are supposed to be working on, but it ends up feeling you are having your hand-held as you solve puzzles in baby steps. Basically, there is just nothing cool or fun about having to go through the process of pretending you are chatting with Neil Patrick Harris in order to understand what you are supposed to be doing. So it wasn’t terrible but if a Box Three comes along I think I’ll be giving it a miss.

Murder Mystery on the Dance Floor

This is one of many “host your own murder mystery” variations that are out there. This one has you taking turns reading out clues over the course of three rounds (and also doing the occasional silly challenge to make it a more fun party experience) to solve the murder of a DJ at a dance club. There were five of us playing (me, my wife, my daughter, and our friend and our friend’s daughter, who is also our daughter’s friend), but the game is designed for up to 12 people. You are supposed to competing, in a sense, to see who can do the best job solving the case, but we all just worked together and as a result were able to crack it. The clues added up reasonably well and some of the stuff you had to do was kind of funny.

The game facilitates three different endings by having three different envelopes which contain alternate versions of the clues for the rounds 2 & 3 (the first round is all motives; the other two get more specific with witness statements and different types of evidence). The instructions say if you don’t have twelve players, you have to have three specific characters included no matter what, and after the fact I realize that this must be because these are three guilty people in the three different versions of the case. I’m glad that didn’t occur to me until after the fact or solving the thing would have been a lot easier.

Mob Heist (Escape Room)

Way more successful was this Escape Room from Exit Escape Room NYC. This was the second room I’ve done with these guys–the first was “High Speed NYC”, which simulated a New York City subway car. This one, as it says, was all about breaking into a mobsters office to steal a bunch of counterfeit money or something. Both of these rooms are some of the best I’ve done–really well designed with a wide variety of types of puzzles. It was not terribly difficult (neither was the subway game)–we actually solved it in a bit over 40 minutes–but there was so much to do that the experience still felt very full.

Escape Academy

It’s rare that I talk about computer games on this blog but since it fit the theme I thought I’d give it a mention. My friend Matt put me onto Escape Academy, a developed by Coin Crew Games, knowing that it’s the sort of thing I like to do and because we’ve had the chance to do couple of online escape room-style games together (he lives in California, which is really far away from me), and because it was available for free!

I got it but haven’t been able to play it because I have a Mac and the game is PC-only, and I’m too unsavvy with tech stuff to know my way around that and have been too busy to figure it out. But I got to visit Matt on my recent big trip and so we sat down for a couple of hours and played it together, solo-mode on his computer, but working together to solve the puzzles.

The story of the game is that while doing a simple escape room, you get recruited to join a mysterious and prestigious school for escaping (kind of Harry Potter crossed with Now You See Me), and thus have to pass various escape room-based challenges to earn badges which I presume will allow you to graduate in the end. We did three of these major challenges and quite enjoyed them–there puzzles were suitably hard, with deadlines that gave a real sense of urgency to things. There wasn’t time for us to complete the whole game, but hopefully I’ll eventually get access to it directly on my end and then we can complete it remotely.

And, phew, that’s it for now! Hope your month was full of as many puzzles and mysteries as you find enjoyable!