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We discuss the season debut of The Simpsons seventh season, and its infamous puzzle. It wasn't 16:9 that foiled Flex at all, it was his sheer lack of humour. Smithers is pinned as the culprit after he confesses to shooting an old man in the streets. Fortunately, there is more than one old man in Springfield for him to shoot. That leaves one suspect for the mob in Springfield to go after - but unfortunately nobody can quite remember who that is. We're also joined by Abby Corson to talk about her debut crime fiction novel, 'The Concierge'. Hector Harrow is the longest-serving member of staff at the Cavengreen Hotel in the north of England. A dastardly murder on hotel grounds, just as new management is about to replace him, pins him as the culprit. How can he prove his innocence, through the very book you are reading? Thank you to Ultimo Press for providing copies of 'The Concierge', and their assistance in arranging our interview with Abby.

Welcome to your Murder Mystery Detour! Once a whenever-we-can, Flex and Herds go live (or undead, as the case may be), to talk about their latest fixations in the crime fiction world, and we hear from you about yours! We're also joined by our editor, Cameron Furlong, producer Max Mahood, and feature an interview from Jonathan Chang. Our guests are Brydon Coverdale, Dinuka McKenzie, and Robert Connolly. This iteration, we spoke about: Good Old Colingwood Forever by Brydon Coverdale, winner of the 2024 ACWA Louie Award. Tipping Point by Dinuka McKenzie You Had It Coming by B.M. Carroll Unfinished Business by Shankari Chandran The Mystery of Mr. E by Sophie Hannah and Martyn Tott Nest of Vipers by Harini Nagendra What I Would Do to You by Georgia Harper The Dry 2: Force of Nature by Robert Connolly, from the Jane Harper novel of the desequelised same name. Untitled 'Tank Water' Sequel by Michael Burge You can chat along live to future episodes via the YouTube page.

We talk with Quinns from People Make Games to about the Mystery Role-Play craze that has taken hold of China; Jubensha. What sets it apart from the Mystery Dinner Parties that accompany every crime fiction festival and book club? We also speak about role-play in the English speaking world, the complications of safety tools, and more of Quinns' experience playing Jubensha during his investigation. Make sure you also catch Quinns' work on Shut Up & Sit Down, and his new TTRPG channel Quinn's Quest.

We discuss the season finale of The Simpsons sixth season, and its infamous puzzle. Springfield Elementary is almost destroyed in an eruption, but fortunately, it's an eruption of oil, so they're wealthy now. At least, they would be, if Mr. Burns wasn't up to his antics, preparing to destroy all that is good in the world. Nobody in Springfield is free from his cruel machinations, so when he dies, we shouldn't be surprised, but the killer has the perfect alibi. Can you solve this mystery? Flex probably can't because he watched in 16:9. We're also joined by Quinns from People Make Games to talk about the Mystery Role-Play craze that has taken hold of China; Jubensha. What sets it apart from the Mystery Dinner Parties that accompany every crime fiction festival and book club? Get your TTRPG shoes on, it's time to cry. Speaking of which, make sure you also catch Quinns' work on Shut Up & Sit Down, and his new TTRPG channel Quinn's Quest.

Herds presents the much coveted Golden pants award straight from Sulari Gentill’s wardrobe to… Everyone, and by that we don’t mean the heart-warming everyone, as in everyone’s a winner, but rather the Everyone series by Benjamin Stevenson. That’s right, two books can share a placement, as long as they’re written by the same author. There was much internal debate on the Death of the Reader team as to how we could possibly choose one over the other, but with the power of a year long symmetry and some personal bias towards quirky meta narratives, we decided we couldn’t separate these two, bound by birth in a double homicide into our hearts and, we hope, yours.

Review Season is about recommendations. You don’t need someone to recommend you Sherlock Holmes. Whether or not you have read Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories, watched one of the many renditions, or experienced some form of pastiche, there is no doubt that some comparison to Sherlock Holmes worms its way into your life. Especially if you said something painfully obvious. What is far, far less common, is work endorsed by the Conan Doyle Estate. Coming in 2nd Place for our 2023 Recommendations is Moriarty, one of two ‘official’ continuation stories commissioned by the estate from powerhouse writer Anthony Horowitz.

There are three entries here and only one can take back the coveted Sulari Gentill prize, winning for themselves eternal glory and golden dance pants to take home. In the bronze position, standing tall head and shoulders over a dozen others, the bloody, the historical, The Red Death Murders written by Jim Noy. Noy’s work brings together three of Herds favourite aspects of historical fiction. You’ve got your gothic horror, your old timey medieval politics, and your elaborate medieval castles. Boy does he love a good castle. The novel is set during a semi-fictional period of time during the Red Death of Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, Mask of the Red Death.

It’s time for the controversial entry in our list of high class detective fiction, there’s always one. Usually any films that we cover will be contentious in terms of placement, is it really fair to place a work of a visual medium in the same competition as some musty old books? Am I even qualified to talk about film theory? Well, I’ll have you know that I completed at least one, and I quote: “unspecified film studies unit” in the course of my school education, so I’m the most qualified person in the room. It is of course Glass Onion by Rian Johnson that takes the fourth place in our competition for 2023, just shy of the grand podium. When this film came out I was excited, despite its strange titling as: Glass Onion, a Knives Out Story, I was intrigued. It seemed to be tackling more modern ideas, bringing the original structure of the classic Christie with the rich family suckling at the teat of their patriarch into a contemporary story, instead with a gaggle of successful celebrities reliant on an even more wildly successful tech bro for his blessings and budgets to sustain their fiscal dreams.

Why read one detective story, when you could have eight? Coming in 5th Place on Review Season for our 2023 Recommendations is Alex Pavesi, with his debut mystery novel ‘Eight Detectives’. Released in 2020, the novel takes Alex’s background in mathematics, and questions the numerical principles that define the genre, except, that’s not quite the whole story.

To follow up the historical supernatural mayhem that is the Chinese Gold Murders I couldn’t think of a more opposite yet familiar companion novel than our sixth place winner. I’m proud to grant G.K Chesterton’s The Innocence of Father Brown this position in our rankings. Father Brown is a detective who we’ve had literally tens of requests to cover, and that’s pretty high for us. He’s an unassuming father of the cloth, who uses a slow but determined application of observation and light questioning in order to force his suspects to confess their sins. I can’t imagine he’s much fun at parties though. The Innocence is not just one story, but twelve short ones, they vary wildly in terms of complexity and tone.

We’re officially in the upper half of the entries and it is with no small amount of nepotism that I would advocate to you a historical novel for seventh place. The Chinese Gold Murders, by Robert van Gulik occupy a bizarre place in the history of Chinese crime fiction, in that the credited author is as much an author as an adapter of foreign fiction. The myth goes that Robert, a Dutch diplomat on a mission to China, found a collection of 18th century Chinese murder mysteries, set in the Tang dynasty of the 7th century, though with some anachronistic elements mixed in so as to not alienate the audience, and Robert enjoyed reading these mysteries so much that he cut out half of the stories that he suspected had been written by a talentless hack separate to the first half, and set about translating and adapting the mysteries of Judge Dee for a European audience. Judge Dee as a character is based on a real historical figure, and follows in a long tradition of Chinese crime-solving magistrates.

Smack bang in the middle of our list is a novel that captured my heart when I first read it for its fun take on a distinguished no-introductions-needed character, in eighth place the always lovely Sophie Hannah’s Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night, which we covered on the show quite late in our year. Silent Night is a new and ambitious look into the life and times of Poirot and is the fifth in a series of revival novels which we sought out after tackling Anthony Horowitz’s acclaimed Moriarty. We’ve had a chance this year to just scratch the surface of new age revisitations of classic characters and I’m looking forward to diving into more of those next year.