1: Good Eve-a-Ning

Afoot

Welcome to the latest member of The Incomparable family of podcasts: Afoot, the mystery podcast! What makes a mystery a mystery? It’s a genre with a puzzle at the middle, but which takes many forms across all media. Many mystery elements have also percolated out into mainstream fiction and media.

This show will be “genre for people who aren’t genre snobs,” where we will talk books, comic books, television, movies, audio plays, theatre, and more, and stretch boundaries while staying true to the form. We may even play mystery games. We’ll have a number of book-club episodes, too, and announce choices ahead of time so listeners can weigh in or read along.

In this inaugural episode, your host and several panelists describe what sucked them into reading and watching mysteries, and their favorites, and we all discuss what salient factors turn a story into a mystery.

Follow us on Twitter at @afootcast!

Introducing Afoot!

Glenn Fleishman with Erika Ensign, David J. Loehr, Shannon Sudderth, Jean MacDonald and James Callan

Show Notes & Links

Erika mentioned:

• Doctor Who as a mystery
• Nancy Drew
• Encyclopedia Brown
• Bobbsey Twins
• Dana Girls
• Castle
• Law & Order
• The Good Wife
• Jamie Lee Moyer (supernatural detective stories)

(Glenn notes Highlander is a mystery, and he never said the word Zardoz)

Shannon mentioned:

• Scooby Doo
• Agatha Christie
• Ellis Peters
• Anne Perry
• The Cat Who… books by Lilian Jackson Braun
• Broadchurch
• Sherlock series
• Charmed (TV)

And The Name of the Rose!

James notes:

• Laura Lippman: Tess Monaghan, etc.
• Harry Bosch by Michael Connolly (James got burned out after a run)
• Lee Child
• Alfred Hitchcock’s Solve Them Yourself Mysteries
• The Three Investigators
• Rear Window
• John Connolly with detective Charlie Parker

Future episode will discuss radio mystery plays.

David refers to:

• The Incomparable Radio Theater
• The Love Boat
• (David grew up in a doll museum)
• Ed McBain
• The Saint TV series
• The Man from U.N.C.L.E. tie-ins
• Travis McGee
• Ellery Queen TV show
• Craig Rice
• Robert L. Fish
• Happy Hollisters
• Sue Grafton
• Rex Stout and Nero Wolfe

Jean

• The Happy Hollisters

Glenn

• Reiterates his love for Nero Wolfe
• Edgar Alan Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin
• Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries
• Ngaio Marsh
• Inspector Morse (with John Thaw in the TV series)

Shannon also cited Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers as a murder-free mystery.