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THE BLOG AT THE CROSSROADS
Article: PG Previews December 2013
Posted: September 28, 2013
It’s always time for great comics and graphic novels, even in the run-up to Christmas and the New Year. Here are my picks of what this December will bring, from compendia of two wonderful American newspaper strips to new graphic novels. Of them all, I’m singling out this month the opening episode of a truly classy period murder mystery set in the Twenties by Ellen Lindner. By an American ex-Londoner, now based in Brooklyn, The Black Feather Falls almost reads like a love-letter to the London and Britain she misses so fondly. Her title is not a reference to some waterfall, but describes the feathery clue which drops from a Holy Bible. This is one of the few possessions of a down-and-out double-amputee, apparently a survivor of World War I, who is found beaten to death in Jermyn Street in London’s fashionable St James’s district. Witness to this horror is American optician’s assistant and our narrator Tina Swift. When the police dismiss the case as accidental death, Tina is determined to get to the truth behind it, with help from sensible stenographer Miss McInteer, whose boss has been sent a black feather and has now disappeared. Chillingly, during the Great War a white feather, a symbol of cowardice, was given to men who did not enlist.
Sharply dialogued and elegantly designed and coloured, with a keen eye for period locations, manners and fashions, notably her passions for eyewear and knitwear, Lindner’s mystery entices and intrigues in the very best Agatha Christie tradition. Like me, you’ll find yourself hooked as it is serialised first online at Act-i-vate Comix and then in print in four parts by UK publishers Soaring Penguin Press. Read the rest of my PG Previews here…
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